A couple of weekends ago we went camping for two nights with friends who used to live in our ward in NC and now live in Seattle. They like camping too and so we decided to meet in the Columbia River Gorge for a 2 night campout. Poor Russ couldn't get another day off of work and so he only got one night and missed out on most of our fun.
We camped at a place called Beacon Rock State park, on the Washington side of the gorge. Beacon Rock (named by Lewis & Clark, though they may have called it "beaten rock" first, though that would have been a dumb thing to call it) is a monolith. A gigantic rock. Not as big as Stone Mountain in Georgia, but still pretty darned big. It was so beautiful there.
There were lots of wildflowers everywhere and the campground was in a towering evergreen forest with all sorts of ferns and wild blackberries. The weather was very nice--I loved that it got cool enough at night that I wanted a jacket and to drink hot chocolate in the morning. (What's a campout without hot chocolate?!?)
When we reached the top (which was smaller than I expected) we sat in the sunshine enjoying the breeze and ate our lunches. 
Then we walked back down, which as you know was almost more difficult than hiking all the way up. My legs were like jelly by the bottom--all of those rarely used downhill muscles.
Next our friend got out all of his rock climbing gear and we hiked around the OTHER side of this mountain (more downhill, ouch!) to find the rock climbing section. He free climbed to each anchor and hooked in his rope (sorry--I don't know many technical climbing terms) and got all set up so that the rest of us could climb. He got up about 50 feet, and I'll be darned if Rachel didn't climb up the whole way to the top of the rope! Jared got about 25 feet, and I got up 20 feet. I still can't believe this--well I can believe it because my arms and legs hurt so bad for the entire next week. It is interesting that from the ground 20 feet doesn't seem so high, but boy does it seem high when you are the one at 20 feet and you can't fine any more hand holds. It was more than I expected to accomplish so I was happy with myself. 
When we got back to the camp we learned that we had made a mistake in not putting all of the food back in the cars before we left. :( Some creature (probably squirrels) had gotten into our food basket and eaten all of the hot dog buns, half of the sandwich buns, and chewed away half of the hot chocolate lid. It was a real mess and I hope it didn't leave behind any toxic germs.
We haven't seen even a single mosquito in Oregon up to this point but we finally did see some at the campsite. Then at the climbing site there were approximately 29 million mosquitoes, dive bombing us in formation. They were crazy, and not terribly intimidated by our weak bug spray. (We needed the good Deep Woods Off.) I decided though that the biggest difference between camping in Oregon and in North Carolina was that in North Carolina you don't have to watch for slugs when you go to the bathroom at night. During the night there were big (as big or bigger than my thumb) slugs every couple of feet on the path through the woods to the bathroom. And I didn't have my glasses on! Thankfully I don't think I stepped on any, but I did have to watch carefully. And no I didn’t take a picture of the slugs. For which you are grateful, I know.
The favorite campsite activity was anything that involved fire. Josh had just bought a box of matchbooks, and by the end of our 2 days all hundred or so matchbooks had been burned to ashes, as well as several dozen marshmallows.
It was a great camping trip, and we’re looking forward to many more in Oregon!
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That looks amazing...I love how there is true wilderness, so close to big cities on the west coast.
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