Fifteen Year Anniversary Trip to Hood River, Oregon and the Deschutes River

To celebrate our fifteen year anniversary, Eben and I took a four-day trip to Oregon. We were so fortunate to have had help from my mom, Floyd and Kathie, and my dad with watching the kids while we were gone - that was amazing! Our first stop was Hood River, Oregon - one of our favorite towns from our early twenties. It is known for its outdoor recreation, views of the Columbia River Gorge and its breweries. We stayed at a very nice hotel with a balcony on the Gorge and went out for a delicious dinner.

 

The hotel sat on the edge of the Gorge right on a rushing waterfall and was surrounded by beautiful grounds!

 We even made a stop at the Chinese restaurant that we used to go to in our twenties and had a "Scorpion Bowl" for old times' sake.

 The next morning we drove south to Warm Springs to begin our rafting trip. On the way, we drove right by Mount Hood and crossed the White River. It smells of sulfur and that smell reminded me of when I crossed it on foot at age 16 when backpacking the Timberline Trail around the mountain.

 Here we are now at Warm Springs with the raft all loaded up and ready to shove off. Eben did a great job of figuring out how to load up the raft and we ended up with a lot of room on every side for paddling. We packed up for three days on the river and camping out along the way.

 

  

The scenery was amazing and the hills were super green at this time of year. There were a ton of fly fishermen on the river as apparently this was THE weekend for fly fishing!

 We logged 30 miles on the river and then found this sweet campsite, complete with a tree for the hammock.

 We had really nice neighbors that loaned us a firepan, which we didn't know was required. They'd already been on the river for several days and were done with fires. It definitely made the trip! A couple fishermen from another camp spot came over and we chatted around the fire that night.

 Can you find our tent?

We intended to stay on the river for three days. But couldn't find a camp spot in the right place and ended up just pushing through to our take out at Sandy Beach at the end of day two. After packing everything up, we went back up to Hood River and had a very yummy meal at Full Sail Brewery.

 After Full Sail, we crossed north into Washington and were contemplating rafting the White Salmon River. We camped out in a favorite old camp spot at Buck Creek on a mountain top above the river. This is a picture of the take out at what used to be Northwestern Lake before they took out the dam a few years ago. Totally different now!

 After scouting the river and seeing that it was running way above usual and noticing the gauge was above 5' which would mean potentially getting hung up on a tree on the way down, we decided to just head home in the morning. But it was fun contemplating Husum Falls! Eben and I both ran this in our kayaks back in our twenties!

 We stopped at the Vista House at Crown Point on our way back home. It has an amazing view of the Columbia River Gorge and it was a lovely way to cap off our trip!