Mobilization: The Dalles and Taylor Creek Wildfires in Oregon

This summer in the Pacific Northwest was especially bad for wildfires.  We had a very dry summer and we were paying for it in July and August.

Just after the 4th of July is when some of the worst ones started.  Typically, they happen in the central and east part of the states and in Oregon parts of the southern border.  In British Columbia, a lot of the eastern part of the providence was on fire.  Most of them were caused by severe thunderstorms and others were accidental and or man made.

Ben missed the first call at the beginning of July on our way to watch fireworks in Fife with Walter and Wendy.  He told them he would be ready for the next one whenever that was going to be.

We had been getting ready for Lindsay and Justin's wedding when all of a sudden the night of July 19th, we got the call Ben has been waiting for and of course it would be the weekend in which we had plans.  He was super bummed that it conflicted with their wedding but he was glad because it would be a little extra money.  I texted Lindsay and Nicole that night and told her Ben wasn't coming.  They were both sad but they understood the circumstance.  I was riding solo that weekend.

Ben got together the rest of his stuff for his red bag and headed to the fire station with his crew.  He didn't know how long he would be gone but up to two weeks and he also had no idea if he would have cell phone service but when he did he would check in.

This would be the first time since 2012 he has been on a MOBE.

His first assignment was just south of The Dalles in Oregon on the Substation Fire.  The Substation Fire started on July 17 on private land.  The strong winds spread the fire over 18 miles in just a few short days.  A lot of agriculture, which was very important for the livelihoods of farmers, burned up quickly.  The governor of Oregon declared a state of emergency and the National Guard was called in among several fire departments from all over the Pacific Northwest to come fight the fire.  The three communities closest were evacuated.

Ben was only there for about four days.  There, he met a fellow firefighter named Ricky, he was from Yelm and was with the SE Thurston County fire station (Ricky is not pictured in blog).  He would be spending the remaining time in Oregon with him.  Their job was spent driving around looking for hot spots in the fields.

They got the call from their unit lead and found out they were needed down by Grants Pass/Medford, which was about a 300 mile drive, for the Taylor Creek Fire.

This fire was started on July 15th due to lightening.  The fire burned approximately 52,839 acres in about three months.

Ben and his unit got down there and settled into a building that was part of the North Valley High School campus.  They called it the "Kingdom".  It was air conditioned, which was absolutely necessary, they worked the night shift because it was so hot during the day.  It was super smoky the entire time he was there.

During this time I only got to talk to Ben during a very small window of time.  Usually the cell phone service was so terrible I didn't hear from him until they got back into town.  He shared several stories of his adventures in the wilderness which included burnt rattlesnakes, a very weird mural inside a drug lord's house, ass bats and a resort in which the patrons applauded the firefighters.

The night shift consisted of burning acreage (which helped contain the fire, fighting fire with fire), hiking, saving structures and warning people who have not evacuated yet to prepare for the possibility.

He said it was very hot and sweaty work.  The food was appreciated but it soon got old.  My friend Jessie who married Mike a few years ago, moved to Medford to pursue his aviation career.  She asked me if bringing Ben and his unit some extra food (muffins, jerky) from Costco would be plausible.  I said it probably was but she would have to get a hold of him because his schedule was pretty erratic.  I gave her his phone number and they did cross paths one afternoon while in Grants Pass.  I got a text message from Jessie telling me that after five years she finally got to meet Ben.

Ben and his unit came home the afternoon of August 2.  He and all of his belongings smelled like smoke.  I told him to leave them out on the back porch or in the garage and to take a shower.  They really didn't have time to do much grooming except for showers while he was down there so he came home with a gross beard.  He shaved, cut his hair and showered.

Over the next few days he went through his red bag.  A lot of the stuff was washed, re-packed and ready for the next call.  Those calls can happen at a moments notice and you'd better be ready to go.

**His next call was in mid-September when he went over to Yakima county for a fire near Mabton called Glade Creek.  It was also started by lightening and burned about 13,000 acres before it was contained.  He was gone for about four days.**

Next Adventure:  Erika Moved in Again

Windy Ridge: Mount St. Helens

I have been trying to go to the Windy Ridge side of Mount St. Helens for three summers now.  Last summer we took an emergency trip to Reno, Nevada to bring Erika back to Washington and the summer before that we were moving into our new house and didn't have a lot of time for daytrips around Washington.

I called mom and asked her if she wanted to go with me and she said yes.  Ben was still gone with the fires in southern Oregon.  July was the perfect time to go because the weather would be decent (I will not go to the mountains if the weather was going to be cloudy) and it worked out this year (even though this summer was a rough one for us).  We seriously have not been to this side of the mountain since the mid 1990's.  I am sure a lot has changed.  I got my stuff ready the night before and made sure to check and download all of the caches I wanted to get.  There was a virtual I really wanted to get and made sure I definitely had that one written down.

I got up at 9:00, packed up the stuff I would need, some snacks and drinks in the cooler and put it in the Escape since we were going to drive my vehicle down there.  I drove into Rainier, picked her up (thank goodness she was ready to go and I didn't have to wait for her) and took the backway to Hwy 12 via Hwy 702, into Eatonville, Hwy 7 and into Morton because we had to stop for gas in Yelm and Walmart for a few things since we got new phones (Galaxy 9+) last week.  We got onto Hwy 12 and we were pretty lucky...we didn't have to follow anyone for a while.  When we got to Randle, we turned onto the 131 and then onto NF25.  The last time mom and I were out here was November 2016 and we were trying to cross off some of the Rainier100 cache series while the weather was nice.  We went as far as the Iron Creek campground before we turned around.

NF25 is paved but it endures some pretty harsh weather throughout the year so there are spots where the road is pretty chunky in some areas so your really couldn't drive very fast.  The road wasn't super busy either which made it nice while driving even though it is a pretty windy road.  We were coming up on our turn, NF 99 to take us towards Windy Ridge.

In a few miles there was going to be a pullout for a first view at Mt. St. Helens and our first geocache of the day which happened to be an earthcache.  I'm On the Edge (GC7CV55) took us to the edge of the blast zone to where we had to answer a series of questions about destruction and rebuilding of an entire ecosystem.  We took our picture to verify we were there as well.

A little further up the road we made another pit stop at Meta Lake and Miner's Car.  I remember visiting these places in the mid 1990's.  I can't believe I haven't been up this way since.  We parked and got out.

Mom wanted to walk around the short interpretive loop and I said sure, let's go for it!  We read some of the signs as we walked past them.  I vaguely remember being here but once we got to the lake I definitely remember being here.  We came up on the small dock that gave you a great view of the lake.  The trees, plants and animals were still recovering almost 38 years later.  I walked along the cement sidewalk to an even better view.  Because this area is under snow most of the year; a lot of the water from the snowmelt had not evaporated yet.  There was still a lot of water on the walkways you had to avoid.

The water was so clean and clear.  You could see tiny fishes and frogs swimming around in it.  You also could feel the coolness and the warmness of the air because of the elevation we were at.  It is an unusual sensation and similar to when we were at Crater Lake last summer.  We spend a good half hour/45 minutes out here before we decided to go check out Miner's Car before heading to Windy Ridge.

Instead of driving, we decided to just walked there because it was a really short walk.

We had to wait our turn to read the informational sign because of the couple in front of us.  Once they left we had it all to ourselves.  It is really hard to imagine what this place looked like before the eruption since I didn't have the luxury of experiencing the area before it did (I wasn't born yet) but you could imagine though.  Lots of dense forests, creeks, forest roads, hiking trails, shade, animals running around...you probably couldn't see the mountain as easy as you can now.  We read the sign and it explained who's car this was.  They parked their car here and walked up to a mine that wasn't that far away from the car.  They thought they were safe from the mountain that morning.  They all died within seconds of the eruption.  As you can see the car endured a lot that day however, almost 40 years of weathering and people stealing parts off of it didn't help it either.

We walked back to the Escape and followed the road closer to Mt. St. Helens. Two winters ago I read two books called Path of Destruction:  Eyewitness Chronicles of Mt. St. Helens and Eruption:  The Untold Stories of Mt. St. Helens.  Both were really awesome books and I couldn't put them down.  They talked about a lot of the activities on the north and northeast part of the mountain...the part we were in.  They also discussed the stories of everyone who survived and who also thought they were safe where they were that morning.  A lot of them had to go beyond their capabilities to survive that day.  It just fascinates me to no end.  I love this stuff and part of me wishes I was alive to see the eruption.

We stopped at the Smith Creek Viewpoint to use the restrooms and to check out the informational maps inside.  There wasn't much to look at and I was disappointed.  I would have liked to take one of the signs home though.

We stopped briefly and pulled over to check out Spirit Lake.  When we stopped our phones blew up!  Usually when we were out in the mountains our phones didn't work so it was very surprising when I got text messages and mom was getting phone calls.  The phone call was from Doug and he was upset we didn't ask him to go to Mt. St. Helens with us.  We just didn't think they would have gotten up in time to meet us out there since they were coming from north of Seattle.  They would have had to come down the night before.  It didn't mater because he and Jenn were on their way to Vantage to see the horses because she wanted to see them.

We made it to the Windy Ridge Viewpoint, found a parking spot and knew we had to pay a $5 recreation fee since I didn't get one before we left.  I didn't bring any cash on me so I had to write out a check instead.  I shoved it in the envelope and dumped it in the slot.  We sat in the Escape, ate our lunches, put our shoes on and made our way up the 368 step sand ladder.  It was a half a mile and we gained 200 feet in elevation as we went up.  We had to stop a few times to catch our breath because that mountain elevation will get ya.

We spent a good hour up on the ridge overlooking Spirt Lake and a view of the crater.  While we were up there I took the time to reflect on everything that has happened since January.  This year was especially difficult and it was about to get painful because Grammie wasn't improving.  It was literally breaking my heart.  I also sat there looking at this amazing geology.  The sheer fact that this mountain did so much destruction in such a little amount of time; but no matter how devastating it was it still is recovering with time.

We walked back down the sand ladder and did the virtual cache, Mount Saint Helens - Windy Ridge (GC5097) by the edge of the parking lot.

We walked by a group of Canadians visiting the mountain and they asked us a few questions.  I answered them the best I could, they thanked me and went on their way to their next adventure in Washington.

We both decided it was probably time to head back towards Hwy 12.  We meandered our way down FS99 and onto FS25.  Mom saw a sign that said Iron Creek Falls so we stopped and hiked the 500 feet in. There were also a few sets of people, their dogs and kids also enjoying the falls and river on this hot summer day.  I took my shoes off and waded across the river to the other side.  That side gave a better view of the falls.

Mom asked me if I knew of any other places out this way that had falls.  All I could remember off Hwy 12 was Cowlitz Creek Falls.  We got back into the Escape and followed FS25 back to the main Hwy in Randle.  I had to stop one more time at the Iron Creek Campgrounds for Berner on the Loose (GC4GEXC).  I basically had to guess where it was because my phone reshuffled itself so I didn't have a clear view on this cache since I didn't have service here  I used my car GPS to get me as close as I could and then used the hint I wrote down to find it.  Victory was mine after checking a few places along the trail.

We got back to Hwy 12 and headed towards Cowlitz Creek Falls.  We followed the signs off of Kiona and made it to the campground.  Once we got to the parking lot and the boat launch we really didn't know where to go so we asked someone if they knew about any falls here.  No one seemed to know.  There was no falls here.  Why do they call it Cowlitz Creek Falls if there aren't any falls.  So misleading.

We got back into the Escape and headed back to the highway.  Mom saw a lavender farm, Cowlitz Falls Lavender Company that was founded in 2014, on the way and wanted to stop.  We really didn't have anywhere else to go that day so I said sure.  We followed  the signs to the back of the building and parked.  We got out and we were instantly welcomed to the farm.  We looked at their products that they make there on site.  That included hand lotions, soaps, essential oils, edible lavender and lavender starts for your own garden.  She explained the different kinds of lavender in the rows, handed us a basket and some shears and told us to have fun.

Mom and I picked a row and she asked how we were suppose to cut it.  I have some experience cutting lavender so I told her where to cut the bundle.  She cut quite a few pieces and shoved them in her basket and then asked me if that was enough.  I didn't know how much she wanted so I asked her if she thought it was enough.  She said sure.  We went back to the building to pay for stuff.  We saw the essential oils and decided to buy some for grandma.  We thanked the family and drove back to Hwy 12.

I wanted to stop at one more cache called Surprise! (GC5WG73) because it had several favorite points.  When we got closer I noticed that it could be a guard rail cache and I was disappointed.  However, when I got out to actually find the cache I was indeed surprised.  The container is what made it worthwhile sort of like a surprise snake that comes out of those joke plastic cylinder containers.

I put it back and got back in the Escape.  It was getting about that time and mom mentioned she was hungry and wanted Papa Pete's in Centralia.  We were about an hour out of Centralia.  I texted my friend Liz to see what she was doing and if she wanted to meet us at the pizza place in about and hour.  She was happy to see the invite but sadly she couldn't make it there due to her kids sports.  I said since I was in the area I thought I would invite her out if she could but I would see her anyway at work on Monday.

We usually got the same thing when we went to Papa Pete's, pepperoni and black olives, a side salad to share and some drinks.  We got the large size so we could bring home leftovers.  We ate and chatted about some of the upcoming events.  We had a trip to the southeast planned for the end of next month.

I dropped mom off in Rainier and then headed to my house for a quick second to change.  I had promised my HR people at work that I would come to Joe's off site karaoke retirement party at Emperor's Palace.  I basically went to support Joe because I do not sing in front of people.  I hung out with his sons, Nick and Chris, for a little while since I basically grew up with them.  It was fun to catch up with them for a while.  I stayed for about two hours visiting with the other HR people until I got tired.  I thanked them for inviting me out.

I went home, got cleaned up, chilled a bit watching Netflix, talked to Ben for awhile and then went to bed shortly after that.  Today was a long but fun day.

Next Adventure:  Mobilization:  The Dalles and Taylor Creek Wildfires in Oregon

Silver Falls State Park Hike, Witch's Castle and Papa Pete's

Mom and I got up around 6:30, went downstairs for our free continental breakfast, packed up our stuff and took it down to the tank.  We checked out and wanted to be at the state park before everyone and their dog came out since it was Memorial Day weekend and going to be a really warm day.

We plugged the address into Nuvi and followed the meandering road to the state park.  The lot was empty when we arrived except for the three other cars in the parking lot.  I walked up to the kiosk, paid our $5 and grabbed a map.  We got our hiking shoes on, put our water an snacks in our back packs, made sure mom had her camera and lenses and finally grabbed our hiking poles.  We locked the tank and headed to the stone circle trail head.  We parked in the west side of the park entrance so we had to orient our map and find the Rim Rail on the south side of the Trail of Ten Falls.  We were told to start here and this trail and then take the Canyon Trail on the way back to the parking lot.  It would be about a moderate 8 miles total.

I brought the GoPro with me to document some of the trail, the waterfalls and the experience for Ben since he couldn't make it this weekend because of work.  We started walking.  The path was paved for a while and then it turned into a gravel/dirt mixture.  It was dry so we never really encountered any muddy spots unless we were next to one of the waterfalls so that made the hike easier.  This side of the trail was more trail than waterfalls.  This side only featured two while the other side featured the other eight.  There were some steep parts and a few switchbacks...nothing we couldn't handle.

While hiking, we talked about a bunch of random stuff.  We talked about how work was going and the fact that I had one more week at L&I before I had to go to WSDOT.  Mom talked about some of the stuff happening with her office.  She shared more stories about Ecuador and I told her at the end of June Ben and I would be going to the TriCities again for the geocoin challenge.  We talked briefly about Grammie being in rehab for her stroke, the things that mom and dad were helping Grandpa with and the next steps in this new process we were experiencing.  It was very hard to talk about without crying.

We got to our first waterfall after about a mile of walking.  Winter Falls which was 134 feet from the top to the bottom.  It's probably more active in the late winter/early spring months when the rain it more plentiful.  We took a couple of photos and then trudged on.

After the first falls we started seeing people because we were getting closer to another trailhead.  A little bit more than a mile and a small spur, we found ourselves at our second falls, Upper North Falls.  This was near the North Falls trailhead with a small parking lot, picnic tables and some outdoor bathrooms!   We enjoyed the Upper North Falls.  You could actually walk out to this one and stand underneath the falls if you wanted to.

We took the short spur back to the junction and decided to use the bathroom since we probably would not see one until we got back to the south side.  For some reason, we must have that "I look friendly and know stuff" face. A college student from some Asian country asked us about the trail.  One, this was the first time we came here, two, we aren't from Oregon and three, I'm going to do the best I could to answer her questions.  First off, she had very good English which would have been my first hurdle if she didn't and secondly, I could answer her question thankfully.  She basically asked about the trail.  Where they should start, where the waterfalls were, etc.  I told her we were doing the "8" mile loop and that we parked at the south trailhead.  As far as the waterfalls, I told her where we came from there was only one and forward were the ones she and her friends probably wanted to see.  She thanked me and met up with her friends.

We headed to the next one, North Falls just down the first set of stairs.  This was the first falls we encountered that we could walk behind.  It was 136 feet waterfall that plunged over a lip giving it its distinctive look.  This is one of the several waterfalls people came to look at because you could walk behind it.  We enjoyed it for a while since there wasn't that many people on the trail.  It was pretty awesome.

Now came the longest gap between waterfalls, a 1.1 mile stretch to our fourth waterfall, Twin Falls.  This is where we started seeing more and more hikers, families and little kids...plus it was getting later in the morning and more people showed up to the park.

This falls really wasn't all that spectacular...in fact, it was really hard to see it from the trail.  Even one of the hikers that walked past us said it was really hard to see and photograph.  We took one shot of it and moved on to the next one which was a little over a quarter of a mile up the trail.

We approached Middle North Falls, which is a 106 foot waterfall, and you could hear it before you saw it.  During certain times of the year it is much wider in size however, today it was not as wide but still pretty cool because you could walk behind this one too.

We walked a little less than a half a mile to the next one.  The trail was getting busier and busier as we got closer to the end of the loop.

Drake Falls was another little obscure falls that we really couldn't see very well from the trail.  There was a small platform with handrails so you could see the falls from a better angle than from just the trail.  This one was only 27 feet.  We didn't take very long to check this one out.  Mom got a picture and we hiked to the next one, which was about a quarter of a mile away.

Double Falls was a pretty cool waterfall.  The picture doesn't really give it justice because you couldn't see the falls at the top of the canyon.  At this point we were running into people who were slower than us and lots of places we had to maneuver ourselves around them.  I couldn't believe how many bad-behaved kids were on the trail and their parents let them be rude to people.  Mom was getting tired of it and I told her to trip a few of them to see if their attitude changes.

Just up the trail, not even 500 feet was the Lower North Falls.  This one was actually a really pretty one with the sun hitting it.  I hated that there was a fallen tree in the lower left had corner of it.  We found a place to rest and had some snacks while we enjoyed the view.

Lower South Falls was another waterfall you could walk under.  This one was really muddy and very narrow.  There were several people who weren't patient to wait long enough for their turn.  One bad step or one accidental shove from a kid and your shoes are muddy and wet.  I got through pretty quickly but mom got stuck behind two families with kids and the parents did not have a hold on any of them.  Her and another woman chatted about how rude the parents were not grabbing their kids out of other people's ways.  I took pictures as I waited for her.

We went around the corner and made our way to the stairs.  There were warnings about how steep some of the sets were and to be careful.  Mom and I had no trouble with them but some of the more elderly people struggled and moved off to the side so we could pass.

The final part of the trail lead us over a foot bridge on to our tenth and final waterfall, South Falls.  This was the only waterfall in the park that seemed to have the most notoriety amongst the park's ten waterfalls (even though none of them were named Silver Falls).  Mom and I were very impressed with its size since many of the ones we just saw really weren't that spectacular in size.  South Falls has a direct plunge of 177 feet dropping over an over hanging edge to give it its classical skinny curtain shape.  While we were here, we stood on the foot bridge and did the Basalt Erosion at Silver Falls State Park (GC17JE8) earthcache.  This waterfall was the busiest one because of its proximity to the south end parking lot.  It took us a while to get around underneath the falls.

Once we got around the trail under the falls, we hiked back towards the tank.  When we walked through there that morning the little gift shop was closed.  When we walked by the second time it was open so we went in there to see what they had.  Of course I bought a few postcards.  When we got to the tank, I was amazed of how many vehicles were in the parking lot.  It was packed! We changed into some flip flops, dumped off our hiking stuff, grabbed the cooler and tried to find somewhere to eat some food.  It was hard to find an open picnic table but we managed to find one to share with a family who was enjoying the river rather than the picnic table at that moment.

We thought this was a great state park and a really nice hike.  You should definitely come early before it gets busy.  It's up to you which way you start and end up.  I highly recommend it if you want a somewhat easy 8ish mile hike.

We managed to get out of the insane parking lot. We left the park and headed back towards Salem.  I wanted to find a couple of caches while we were here so I checked the app.  I knew the 45th parallel was down here and wanted to find a cache at the line.  We drove out towards the northwest side of Salem to get a cache called Pinball Wizard (GC3R6V0).  We stopped here because it had over a 120 favorite points.  We pulled over on the side of the road directly across the road from the cache.  It was attached to a power pole.  I walked over while mom hung out in the tank.  I videoed the entire experience and took a photo as well.  It was just like the title said, pinball wizard.  You grabbed the knob at the bottom of the cache and let go and the cache came out of the top similar to a ball in the pinball machine.  It was pretty cool!

I put the next set of coords into the Nuvi and it took us to the other side of Salem.  I really wanted a cache on the 45th Parallel, halfway between the north pole and the equator.  We got to the cache site and parked at the bank.  We found the plaque and the cache very quickly.  Between Top and Middle (GC1GCYQ) was a container that was held together through friction.  I signed our names, took a quick picture and put it back before muggles showed up or walked by.  I found out later that we were the last cachers to find this cache.

From there, we got back onto I-5 and headed north towards home.  Just before we got to Portland, we got to talking about something I saw on the internet a while back.  It was called "The Witches Castle" and it was located on the western side of Portland.  She asked if we could go.  We put the address in and maneuvered our way through Portland via Hwy 26.  We found a place to park once we got there.  We had read a blog to park near the Audubon Society and walk down but turns out that was wrong.  We had a bunch of kids join us in the search for the trailhead.  We finally found it and made our way down the canyon.  For further reference, the trailhead is about 500 feet east from the Audubon Society.  You are looking for a sign that says Wildwood Trail which will take you down into Forest Park.  It was a short half a mile.  We walked past several people going to and from the castle.

When we got there there I expected the structure to be bigger.  It still was cool though.  Since we didn't have service I couldn't look at any of the information about the virtual on my phone.  I took pictures of everything to make sure I didn't miss anything for Witches Castle (GC7B679).  We were there for about a half hour and then walked back up the hill to the tank.  I was getting hungry.

We left the area and got back onto I-5 north.  I asked mom what she felt like and she said pizza.  I knew there was a Papa Pete's in Ridgefield.  The last one I had to visit to complete the quartet of Papa Pete locations.  It wasn't that busy so we got our food pretty quickly.  We shared a salad while we waited for the peperoni and black olives pizza.  We devoured it.

Before we left I grabbed the cache that was outside in the parking lot, Iron Horse (GCKQN6).  It was a very quick hide.

We got back onto I-5 and headed north towards exit 88.  I dropped mom off in Rainier around 8ish and got all of my stuff into my Escape.  I got home shortly after, unloaded my stuff into the house and took a much needed shower.  Overall, we saw some new places, found some geocaches, hiked around 11 miles all together and enjoyed some much needed sunshine.  Until the next mini adventure!

Next Adventure:  New Job and a Night Out with the Tacoma Rainiers