A Very Spontaneous Adventure

Because of the holiday weekend, Nick has 2.5 days of freedom (as opposed to his normal 1.5 day weekends, boo!). Unfortunately the forecast called for rain on both Saturday and Monday. We wanted to do a camping trip or go backpacking, but the weather was not cooperating! Instead we decided to just take it easy at home...
...Until I woke up early Sunday morning and checked the forecast! Apparently the weatherman decided that it wasn't going to rain on Monday after all, which meant we could have some fun. Nick and I looked through my new "One Night Wilderness" backpacking book that lists tons of amazing trips within two hours of Portland. Once it was decided, we scrambled to get all our gear together so that we had plenty of time for our hike into the wild. We chose a 4-mile (one-way) mild-to-moderate trail in Washington, northeast of Battle Ground. The drive took us about 1.5 hours--the last 30 minutes were spent driving on a semi-paved one-lane road up a mountain. I'm glad we took Nick's car for its 4x4 capabilities. We felt like we were on an Indiana Jones adventure at some points because of the crazy wildlife, overgrowth and bumpy roads.
When we arrived at the trail head, we loaded up and started out, sniffing dog in tow. I pulled out my camera for a picture of us at the beginning--and of course the darned batteries were dead. Ugh! Luckily my iphone takes decent pictures, so that is what I used to capture our entire weekend.

Warning: Photo overload ahead!

There were countless waterfalls along our hike and the "creek" that our trail followed was really a roaring river! It's called the Siouxon Creek (pronounced "su-sawn").

 Steps away from our campsite:

 Our little setup:

 Next to our campsite:

 On the other side of our site:

 Nick and I are pretty certain that this place is a part of Washington's hidden rainforests (yes, Washington has rainforests!). The entire hike had a mystical feel-- it was SO lush and beautiful. Moss, ferns and clovers covered the whole forest in green.

 Here's a video from our campsite:

If you look closely you can see two other creeks flowing into the Siouxon, one on either side.

Toby was an excellent traveling companion. We let him off the leash for some of the hike and for the most part he was an excellent listener. Only when he saw other people or dogs (or a chipmunk at one point) did he go a little crazy. 

 Since we got home, he's been glued to his bed. 

Speaking of which, I'm going to head to bed too. We are all wiped out, but it was well worth it. What an awesome, spontaneous adventure!