Early April Explorations

I'm lounging in bed this morning researching PhD programs, giving my housemate the opportunity to use the main space in the house for her video conference call, and daydreaming about hiking for Earth Day. The responsible side of me decided not to head to the Gorge this morning in order to save gas and time...especially since I'm heading to Seattle on Saturday and hopefully back to Central Oregon the weekend after. Sometimes making the sensible choice isn't the most fulfilling one though :) but it does demonstrate that I'm trying to slow down still too. :) Instead, I intend to finish the weeding that needs to get done and hopefully do some other yardwork that needs to happen also.

Since I'm not heading out into the wilds today however, I thought I'd finally post some pictures from the fun explorations that the dogs and I did as the term was starting. The first week tends to take a lot in terms of admin type of stuff but also is slower in other ways, so it allowed for great flexibility to get the dogs out and about and enjoy some parts of the local outdoors that we haven't explored. Both of these spots were about 30 minutes from my house and were so neat to check out.

SELLWOOD PARK & OAKS BOTTOM REFUGE:

In my dreams, I will eventually move to Sellwood or SW Portland....and on this particular day I fell even more in love with this area....

Crossing this lil bridge reminded me so much of our old treks in Louisiana

River beach access! The dogs LOVED it here! That's downtown PDX in the background.

Non-fenced in dog park. Roxi did great and this accessibility made me love Sellwood even  more...

Oaks Bottom 

There's a lot of history and controversy with this empty building...

The trek around Oaks Bottom Refuge...great running trek.

LOVED IT!

SAUVIE ISLAND "HIKE":

Technically we were trying to do the "hike" aka walk to the Lighthouse, but I ran out of time and also had just kayaked to the lighthouse so didn't necessarily see the point in needing to get to it this day. We had a blast walking stretches of the beach though and then trekking along the trail. There are wildlife/bird refuges out in this area too so it was pretty incredible to see so many birds stopped on their migration patterns AND to see all the calves running around the fields. Roxi was so excited in the back of the car as the calves ran along. 

It was a pretty overcast day but it was great to have patches of sunshine break through. The dogs loved being able to be in the water and we did a couple of miles along the beach.

One of the neat things about this stretch is you can watch ships and barges traveling along the Columbia River (which separates Oregon and Washington, so that's Washington state across the river...) We also had a seal swimming along side us in the river on the way back.

I absolutely loved seeing all the plant life and was so mesmerized by these... They looked like dead branches along the shore but are actually root systems that have plant off shoots coming up out of them seasonally. Amazing how nature works :) There were so many parts of this trek that made me see new aspects of nature that I don't normally get to enjoy.

The "trail". We ran part of this but mainly just strolled along :)

Those cows!

One of the bird areas. So incredibly neat!

It's always a lot of fun to explore new nearby areas. We didn't cover a lot of miles on these treks but they really filled our souls right up :)