Armed with a sturdy new roof rack, our vacation was finally underway! Getting to our starting point was luckily much less eventful this time around. After 3 hours of sitting in the truck, we were ready to walk around a little bit so we found a small hike right by the Columbia River called the Beacon Rock trail. Beacon Rock is actually the hardened insides of a small volcano where the softer outer rock had been eroded away. Neat! and also a beautiful hike.
The wildflowers were in bloom and there was a Camaro in the parking lot. Good start to the trip!
From here we started on the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route (WABDR) and headed towards the small town of Packwood. Had some beautiful mountain views along the way.
Along the way are the Guler Ice Caves. There was a giant warning sign in front of it, which almost always guarantees a good time. Temperature dropped at least 20 degrees on the stairs down into the cave. We were in shorts and didn’t stay very long. Lets just say that caving is not going to be my new extreme activity. It was a very neat spot to explore though. I need a much better flashlight.
We got a bit of a late start to the day, so we weren’t going to make it to Packwood today and found a place to camp. Set up our tent and Jason made some delicious Seattle Cream Cheese hot dogs. Good end to a pretty good day!
