Hamilton Mountain & Beacon Rock with Leo

After a very rainy Saturday spent looking at a few houses and touring neighborhoods Emily and I were ready to take Leo out for a hike on Sunday.  The weather cleared a bit with only a few showers and we ended up hiking a loop trail that proved to be one of my favorites in the Portland area.  We saw some great waterfalls, our first spring flowers, a ton of great views from some crazy terrain and even had time to finally run up Beacon Rock for some views of the Columbia River and surprising elk herd in the Gorge below.  Click the title to read on…

Lazy weekend of Sun and Drinks

Well, not completely lazy as I did get out for about 6 miles of walking with Leo during the sunshine on Saturday…. On Friday Em and I joined Layne and Rob at Fire on the Mountain for some yummy wings.  On Saturday I ended up driving out to Troutdale with Leo to explore some urban parks.  Saturday night was a shit show of a bar crawl for Eric and Anna Li’s dual birthday and Sunday was spent recovering… click the title to read the quick details if you care…

Klickitat Trail & Swale Canyon Bike Ride

On Saturday Emily and I decided to make the best of the nice warm weather and headed out past Hood River for some high desert mountain biking on the Washington side of the Columbia River.  We shuttled cars and biked a 31 mile “Rail-to-Trail” loop down Swale Canyon and then the Klickitat River to Lyle, WA.  It was a beautiful day and we saw lots of wildlife.  Click the title to read on….

Roller Derby Night with Friends

On Saturday after interviewing a Real Estate agent and stocking up on groceries, Emily and I joined Katie, Arley and Ryan for a night at the Roller Derby.  We met them first at the Oaks Bottom Public House in Southeast Portland for some Totchos (Tots with Nacho toppings) good beer, and great clam chowder.  I had wings which I hadn’t had in a long time and the mess was worth it!  After a few pints we headed over to the Oaks Bottom Fairgrounds for the Roller derby.  To our surprise it was mostly girls that seemed no older than Jr. High… Apparently this was the finals for them, which is why the tickets were $20 each.  The rules of Roller Derby are pretty unique and it was certainly “interesting” watching the young girls push each other around and knock each other over on old school roller-skates.  The tall boy cans of PBR and Girl Scout cookies for sale there helped.

We watched a match and a half and Emily and I kept losing to Katie who seemed to be good at guessing the winning team (I owed her a beer on the way out).  Since it was still pretty early and there was a Timbers game on TV we headed into town to watch the Timbers pull off an amazing last second game tying goal before heading to Life of Pie for some late night pizza.  The Margharetta  pizza was the best I’d had in a long time.  Although it was an odd night watching young roller derby girls I did get a roll-by high five from “Jill the Ripper” and it was a lot of fun hanging out with Arley, Katie and Ryan as usual.

Maiden Peak Backcountry Ski Trip

This weekend Emily and I wanted to get out of dodge so we joined Colleen and others for a backcountry ski tour around the backside of Willamette Pass Ski Area.  Because we were passing Corvallis on the way through we also used the opportunity to stop for dinner with Holm, Paris, Jason and Jen and then stayed over with Jen and Jason.  It was a long tour so we left Leo for a little vacation with Aunt Anna Li before heading south.  To read more and see more photos click the title to read on….