Trek in the Park

As we just recently learned, Atomic Arts (http://www.atomic-arts.org/) reenacts each year a Star Trek episode (free of charge, just for the fun of it!). This is their fifth and final year AND they are showing 'Trouble with Tribbles' - so we couldn't miss that, of course!
Located in Cathedral Park in Portland, we found ourselves among probably a few thousand people strong audience. Fans,supporters and sponsors had chipped in to make more than 1500 Tribbles, which added a lot of fun to the episode!

As in every Star Trek episode, a brawl scene has to be part of the story:

Here come the Tribbles burying Captain Kirk (Spock is to the left):

And here's the entire cast:

We were even able to bring Pepper along, who was very well behaved throughout the show!

Long weekend, Part 2

After Sunday's brief hike in Forest Park, we set out for a longer hike up north in Washington State: Ape Canyon in the south eastern part of the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

As we started hiking fairly early (~8:30 am) and given that it was a Monday, we had the trail pretty much to ourselves (we came across just one other hiker in the first 2 hours) and enjoyed the piece and quiet as well as a lot of spectacular views of Mount St. Helen and its surroundings.
Pepper was a bit of a straggler at first. However, after removing his harness, it became obvious that he was just playing us: without the harness, Pepper suddenly had all the energy of the world to explore his new surroundings...


Good times!

Long weekend - Part I

We had grand plans for this weekend: after living in Oregon for more than 5 years, we would finally cross the eastern Cascades and visit the edge of the high desert (a.k.a. Bend) for some fun hiking, sightseeing and camping. Alas, the weather had different plans for us: due to flash flood warnings we decided to pass on Bend. Very sad.

Hence, I joined Rob and Kristen on a Windsurfing trip to Hood River on Saturday instead:


The wind was not as good as we had hoped, but we had fun nevertheless, of course.

On Sunday we had planned to drive north to Washington to hike along the Ape Canyon (not too far from Mt. St. Helens), but the weather front that caused trouble in Bend extended all the way up north. We are hoping for better weather tomorrow.
Today we explored parts of Portland's Forest Park instead - a nice warm up hike of 4.3 miles in preparation for tomorrow.



Wild life in Forest Park is typically on the small side...

Tomorrow: Ape canyon...hopefully...keep your fingers crossed!