Camping at Mt. Hebo

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The men (Roma and Peter) escaped from work early on Friday so we could get to the campground early and set up to have a relaxing evening in the forest. Unfortunately (and a little fortunately for the view's sake) we took the curviest route--that happened to extend our drive by about an hour. Luckily we are early in the camping season and there were plenty of camping spots still available at the Hebo Lake campground--although the women's stomachs hardly survived in the passenger seats.

The campground is almost paradise—beautiful, quiet, clean—the little lake is picture perfect; only lacking the swimming area (that is why it is only almost paradise) There is a wonderful trail called the Pioneer-Indian trail; it is about 8 miles long and you climb around 2000 ft to make it to the top of Mt. Hebo. I think we walked about a mile and half and then went back for lunch. In the evening we cheated and drove to the top of Mt. Hebo, where we had a huge view of the Cascade mountain range and the whole coast. Supposedly on a clear day you can see a huge swath of the Coast Range, numerous Cascade peaks from Mount Rainier south to Mount Jefferson, a section of the Willamette Valley and, to the west, the shimmering Pacific Ocean all the way to the horizon. We could see very, very far—and only imagine the sunset on the Pacific (the kids were too tired to enjoy—yeah, we’ll blame it on the kids—not the pregnant Mommy)

Sunday, we went on to the coast, the same place we viewed from atop Mt. Hebo. Since it was Mother’s Day, I got to relax and Roma built sand castles and searched for crabs and rolled down sand dunes and basically ran around all afternoon on the beach until we ate fajitas. What a wonderful weekend it was!