Hart's Cove Trail Run

My mom and I decided to get out of the hot valley for a day and headed to a hike that we both couldn't believe we hadn't done before. We couldn't count the number of times we'd hiked Cascade Head, the gorgeous Nature Conservancy-owned bluff which shelters an endangered species of butterfly. However, we'd never hiked to Hart's Cove, just on the north side of Cascade Head, and featuring one of the waterfalls which so impressed Captain Cook (I think) when he named the area.

The weather turned grey, cold, and rainy when we drove through thick second-growth forest to the trail head. Freezing, we decided to just take off running down the super-steep first part of the hike! It was a blast, we both felt like deer running through the woods!

The steep part of the hike ended at a short creek crossing, where we got our first glimpse of the massive old-growth sitka spruce for which the area is known. We kept on running to Hart's Cove, and here I'll let the pics do the talking.





We finished off the day with IPA's at one of my favorite brewpubs - Pelican Brewery, on the beach at Pacific City.

Boundary Waters July 2008

The week after my birthday I was fortunate to visit one of my best friends from college, Nate Young, who I hadn't seen in a few years, since he had just spent two years in Costa Rica in the Peace Corps. His family have an awesome house on Burnside Lake in Ely, MN, and they invited me up to hang out for a week. We took tons of saunas (followed by swims in the lake), went fishing for bass and pike, took an incredible three day canoe camping trip through a corner of the Boundary Waters, and went water skiing. I was blown away by how awesome the area was, and how cool Nate's family was. I hope to make it back in the future.

Epic after-dinner entertainment

After dinner tonight, we sat out on the deck to watch the fireworks at the St. Paul Rodeo, approximately 20 miles away across the Willamette Valley. The fireworks were nice - small at that distance, but colorful. What made the evening though, was that SIMULTANEOUSLY an incredible lightning display was arcing through high elevation clouds to the north. The combination of fireworks and lightning was awesome - it was like God was saying, HA you think that is cool, well watch THIS!