Month: November 2014

White House Gorge

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Another accident, we pulled into a parking lot so we could shoot some photos of Mount St. Helens that we could see from the road and found an English style country pub called the “The White House Gorge.” As well as the pub, it had “u-pick” flowers and hard cider. Marc has a different definition of the word “cider” because he comes from the UK where cider means an alchoholic drink made from apples or pears, otherwise it is just apple juice. This was “hard cider” as us Americans call it and we both liked it very much. It was a delightful turn off the main road, once again. I shot a bunch of flowers, sipping Marc’s cider while he sat in the shade and enjoyed the view. They had probably 2 -4 acres of lovely colorful flowers available for picking (or photgraphing in my case). The view of Mount St. Helens was good and a nice glass of hard pear cider on a warm day hit the spot. I love these little off the beaten path surprises!

Views of Mount Hood

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The drive to Mt. Hood was beautiful. Just past Gresham it opens up into small hippy towns such as Sandy. “The Mt. Hood Gateway” is a lovely drive through forests and then all of a sudden there it is right in front of you! Mt Hood staring you right in the face with snow still on it from last winter. We started climbing in elevation up the mountain with views of nothing but evergreens and more evergreens and then turned a corner and there it was again, covered in snow and clouds. Beautiful. Our destination was Trillium Lake where, if the clouds would have cooperated, we would have had a gorgeous clear view of Mount Hood looking over this gorgeous lake but we didn’t drive 60 miles for clouds to hold us back. After a few shots at Trillium Lake we kept going towards Mt. Hood and got some great shots and great views. The mountain is magnificient at 11,239 ft tall and the drive around it was just as beautiful as the drive up. We then drove around the other side and stopped at Tamanawas Falls Trailhead, almost by accident because we wanted to photograph some fall colors that we had just driven past. We did not make it to the falls this time as we were running out of time and energy but it was such a beautiful place we decided to come back the following week when we did get some great fall color shots.