Much to our surprise, it started to rain in the middle of the night. I don’t know why we were surprised, after all this is Oregon! However, the day before the temperature gauge kept playing with the 90 deg. mark and it was bright and sunny. When Ned and I woke up this morning I peeked out of the Winniemobile window to see how Josh weathered the wet night. His tent looked mighty cozy. Apparently the rain woke him up in the middle of the night and he made a mad dash to put the fly on, held down by our bikes – nice touch. It was cloudy, but dry and pretty warm this morning so we decided to take a spin around Champoeg park. It is situated on the banks of the Williamette River and we had a great time visiting the museum, visitor’s center and the pavilion where the Oregon government was first started. The park has several miles of bike paths and we enjoyed seeing the working farm and riding out to the historic general store in Butteville. The paths are lined with thickets of blackberry bushes, lush with juicy ripe berries. The highlight of the morning was stopping along the way to pick berries. Josh donated his water bottle to the cause and we had a blast filling it up, eating quite a few along the way. (See today’s pic). We didn’t pull out of the campground until after 11:00. Next stop Portland. Josh wanted to see downtown Portland and we used the excuse of stopping by an REI store for justification. While Josh perused the store (and bought some stakes for his tent fly), Ned and I hung out at an nearby coffee shop. It was a great excuse to post yesterday’s blog and check-in on facebook. (Congrats Megan on running the Virginia Beach Half Marathon!) After the boys had a snack, we caravanned over the Columbia River and into Washington. We took the back roads into Mount Rainier Park, going through Packwood. It was a gorgeous drive. The sky had cleared up and we drove past green fields with the mountains rising up between layers of fog. We finally reached Mount Rainier National Park, Ohanapecosh Campground at about 4ish and are camped in a beautiful rain forest on a rise above the river. As is typical of this time of year, the campground is barely populated. Nice. The three of us hopped on our bikes ready to do some exploring. Our first stop was the Visitor’s Center and then a short hike to the natural hot springs. Towards the end of the hike it started lightly raining and it seemed like a good time to make a beeline back to the campsite. As I write this blog, we have bbq chicken and corn cooking and are ready to settle down for the night in the Winniemobile playing some games – with some red wine of course!
