Today we went to the Eagle Creek trail in the Columbia Gorge. There is a short route (about 1.5 miles), a medium route (about 6.8 miles round trip) and 13.3 or so for the full route. We opted for the medium one. (This trail has many other variations and a person could simply turn around and go back at any time.)The weather was perfect: a cool-ish fall morning and then sunny and temperature low 70s (a little cooler than in town) on the way back. It was a not too steep steady incline on the way in.
We passed several falls, some very narrow areas (cliff going up on our left and cliff going down - sometimes straight down) on our right.
The stock photo I found online (left) is of one of the Punchbowl falls up there.
It felt good to be out of town, hiking with a friend, and away from everything electronic and work related. When we reached the steel suspension bridge at the 3.4 miles turnaround point, we considered going another 0.4 miles to another falls - but opted to head back. We had plenty of energy on the bridge and felt fine to contine. About halfway back we were both glad we'd headed back to the car.
Despite a few aches (such as knees from the steady downhill hike back, especially from places where there were rocks in the path), it felt good. We were both feeling tired about that halfway point - but it was the tired of having hiked and physical activity, instead of lack-of-sleep-too-much-work tiredness. That felt good, too.
We also scheduled our shared workout times through October. We didn't find as much compatible time as we would like, but we do have at least once a week together and a couple all day workouts/hikes/trips planned (partly weather pending, we think).
Ahhh - fresh air, running water, waterfalls, birds, and lots of green surrounded us. Mmmmm - nice.
