Skamania Stone House, Columbia Hills State Park, Rowena Crest and Fall Creek Falls

With all the moving I have been doing during the week it was nice to get away.  Mom had been doing some searching about some local hikes we could do and she found one she really wanted to do, Columbia Hills State Park, but we had to do it soon because the flowers would eventually go away.  I said, why not do it this weekend? I would be by myself on Saturday because Ben has a shift at the fire station.  She said sure.  She continued to scope it out so we knew where we were going.

We decided on a leave time and where else we were going to explore while we were down there.  I suggested Skamania Stone House, Rowena Crest and Fall Creek Falls if we had time of course.  I got up super early, had my stuff packed the night before and headed to my parent's house in Rainier.  Mom was actually ready and I moved my stuff from the Escape over to the Expedition.  I told her since this was her trip, I would only drive if we took her vehicle.  Dad said to have fun.

We headed to I-5 through Tenino and Grand Mound.  We talked about work, stuff that was going on at home, moving and anything else that came up as we visited.  As we got closer to Vancouver and our exit for 205 we started talking more about the Skamania Stone House.  I was doing some research on it a few days ago (because mom was interested in it) and found a blog post from some lady who found it.  She gave a good description of where these ruins were.  I wrote them down in hopes that we could also find them as we drove closer.  I could see that it was across Hwy 14 near Franz Lake between the two mile markers.  She said that there was a spot for one car to pull off the highway.  We got closer to our location as we watched the mile markers.

As we approached Franz Lake we payed close attention to the mile markers and the pull outs on the side of the highway.  Luckily, we were on the road early enough to where there wasn't a lot of traffic.  We saw the spot the lady had described and pulled over off the highway.  Mom's Expedition just barely fit.  Since I was wearing flip flops, I took some time to change my shoes before walking up the small bank to the remains of the stone house.  We were pretty excited that we actually found it.  Mom loves exploring old "ghost towns" and remains of buildings.

We spent probably a good half hour exploring the old stone house.  We were careful not to touch, move or disturb anything.  We just went for photos.  It was time to move on to our next adventure so we made time to do everything on our list while we were in the Gorge.

We drove past Beacon Rock, Stevenson and a bunch of small towns before we made our way to Columbia Hills State Park.  Prior to a few weeks ago, I had never heard of this state park and wondered why it wasn't chosen as a location by the WSGA when we did the state parks tour in 2013.  Columbia Hills is a 3338 acre camping park with 7500 feet of freshwater shoreline on the Columbia River.  Horsethief Butte dominates the skyline.  It stands over the lake like an ancient castle.  The lake itself is about 90 acres in size and is actually an impoundment of the Columbia River.  The lake was flooded into existence by the reservoir created by the The Dalles Dam.

We grabbed The Dalles Bridge Intersection (GC5PQQK) just because it was easy to park and grab.  Plus, it gave us some time to look at our map to make sure we were headed in the right direction.  It took me a few seconds to locate the cache, sign our names and return back so we could start our state park adventure.

We followed Nuvi's directions and it led us to the Dalles Mountain Ranch and the trail head by the bathrooms.  This state park has a lot of open land and trails so we grabbed one of the maps so we didn't get lost.  We looked at it and I asked mom which walk she wanted to do.  She chose to go clockwise on the Vista Loop Trail which turned into Eightmile Creek Trail just before you got back to the trailhead.  We did the entire thing which was about 7 miles.

There were flowers everywhere!  I could see why this park was hit up hard during the spring.  You almost needed to come a few weeks sooner because you could tell the flowers were barely holding on and that they were almost done for the season.  It was a moderate trail.  There were parts that were flat and easy to walk and there were a fair share of hills to walk up and down.  After the first long hill I was getting sweaty and needed to take off the sweatshirt.  As we rounded the first long bend in the trail, there was a fantastic view of Mount Hood in the distance.  This park was very picturesque.

By the time we got to the intersection of Vista Loop and Eightmile Creek, there was a bunch of hills and a small creek that snaked through the valley.  At that point, there were a lot of hikers walking along the trails.  I started asking mom about the car with the flowers that I see photographed a lot on Instagram.  She said it was somewhere near the Dalles Mountain Ranch.  I started looking at my phone as we got closer to the end of our hike.  I figured out where we had to go.  We walked back up to the vehicle, used the restroom and drove down to the entrance to the old car.  It wasn't that far away from where we parked which was nice.  I was kinda tired after that hike.

As we got closer we could see where it was.  There was two groups of people, some Asians and a 20-something year old couple.  We patiently waited our turn.  The Asians finished with their million selfies and now it was the couple's turn to take their photos.  We still patiently waited for our turn.  It looked like they were done so we moved in on some photo taking.  Then he said something rude about us to his girlfriend about us not waiting until they were done.  We just ignored them and they moved on with their day.  We were there for about 10 more minutes and then we walked back up to the Expedition.  This is one of the most photographed cars in America.

From there, we crossed over the bridge into The Dalles and got onto I-84 and headed west to the tiny unincorporated town of Rowena.  We followed the instructions to the viewpoint.  That was the curviest road I've ever driven.  I have been to San Francisco but never down Lombard Street, which is deemed the crookedest road in the world.  We find one of the last parking spots near the viewpoint and walk towards the sea of people.  We find a good spot and get our photos.  Of course there had to be a stupid car in our photo.  You could see that people will go to extreme lengths to get a perfect Instagram photo even though this area was really dangerous.  Mom and I saw some stupid people at the viewpoint that afternoon.

We get back into the Escape and continue west down I-84.  I asked mom if she wanted to go see the waterfall we had on our list and she said sure.  I plugged into the coordinates and made our way there.  Mom has never been over the Bridge of the Gods so we made the effort to do so.  We paid our dollar to cross over to the Washington side.  We got back onto Hwy 14 and headed to Carson.  We had been here last fall when we did Beacon Rock and Panther Falls.  I followed Nuvi and she took us to a really weird location.  We decided to turn around and follow the signs instead.  It was getting late in the day and I asked mom if we still wanted to do this hike and she said yes.  We drove down the pot holed filled dirt road and knew we were in the right place when we saw signs.

We parked in the lot, there were quite a few people here enjoying the trail, grabbed what we needed and headed town the trail toward Fall Creek Falls.  It said it was a mile and a halfish but man, that was a long mile and a half.

It seemed like it took forever to get there.  Once we rounded that last corner we could hear the waterfall.  As we got closer we were like, wow!  This was impressive and totally worth coming out here to see.

There were a few groups relaxing at the falls.  Some were eating food and some were taking a rest before walking back to the parking lot.  Mom and I took a few pictures before we headed back to the Expedition.  Of course the walk back seems shorter than walking to your destination.  We actually made it back to the parking lot pretty quickly.  I changed my hiking shoes into flip flops.  My feet needed a break from being inside shoes.

I plugged home coordinates into Nuvi and we got back onto Hwy 14 at the Carson junction.  We made our way west through Camas and Vancouver.  We merged onto I-5 and continued north until we got to Ridgefield.  We were super hungry.  We hiked at least 12 miles that day and needed some food.  Mom wanted pizza and I knew there was a Papa Pete's there.  We got off the freeway, parked and we ordered a medium peperoni and olives pizza, a side salad and drinks.  We both took some time to use the restroom and wash our hands.  The salad came out first and we shared that.  Our pizza followed shortly after.  We ate our pizza so hard.  It felt so nice to be full.

We called Ben and dad and told them we were on our way home.  We stopped at the Walmart in Chehalis because mom needed a few things. We got into Rainier after 9:30 p.m.  I grabbed my stuff and swapped it into the Escape, told mom bye and headed home.  I was tired.  When I got home I grabbed my stuff, took a long shower, put on some comfortable clothes, watched a show for a bit, called Ben to say goodnight and went to bed.  It was a nice adventure, saw a lot of stuff and hope we can put together another one soon.

Next Adventure:  Valley Cities GeoTour and AC/DC Cover Band