Author: Hiker Mama
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The High Desert Museum in Bend, OR – 2/18/17
My brother recently moved his family to Central Oregon, and we took advantage of our 5-day weekend for President’s Day to drive down for a visit. On Saturday, I took the kids to the High Desert Museum south of Bend, OR. It has been several years since we’ve visited, and Annika didn’t even remember the…
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Gear Review – Armadillo LT Gaiters from Hillsound
At the beginning of winter, I received a set of Armadillo LT Gaiters from Hillsound Equipment to review. Thankfully, we’ve had a great winter so far, with plenty of opportunities for me to try them out. First of all, these gaiters are a step up from my old, inexpensive set I’ve been using for years.…
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Salmon Ridge Sno-Park Snowshoe, 1/28/17
I heard about the REI-sponsored event called AllOut, in which they were partnering with other organizations all over the country to host all kinds of activities. It sounded like a neat way to explore a new area, so I picked an event to go to that I hadn’t explored before. The Salmon Ridge Sno-Park area…
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Pete Lake Backpack, 8/20-21, 2106
Way back in August, Gabe had a camping trip near Salmon La Sac with the teen group at our church. I was ferrying boys up there for one night, so I thought I’d take advantage of the weekend and explore a trail I hadn’t been on before. I asked around for people to come with…
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2016 Year In Review
I finally got around to tallying our hikes for the year. It was fun to look back and remember what we’ve done. I feel like we had an excellent year for hiking. We explored a lot of new territory, from hikes in town, up in the Bellingham area, and farther afield, to our big road…
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Gold Creek Pond Snowshoes, Day and Night (December 2016)
In December, we made two trips to Gold Creek Pond for snowshoeing. The first was a normal day-time trip, and the other was our second-annual twilight year-end snowshoe. We did both trips with our friend Cindy and her dogs. The first trip was after a large amount of powder had fallen, and the snow was…
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Little Cranberry Lake Trip Report – 11/25/16
Even before REI made #OptOutside an event, we have tried for several years to get out into nature on the day after Thanksgiving. This year, Annika was fighting a cold, and I was pretty worn out myself, so we slept in and rested up. In the afternoon, I took Gabe up to Anacortes for a…
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Rattlesnake Ridge Winter Hike – 1/2/17
We went on our first hike of the New Year yesterday, up to Rattlesnake Ledge. We had originally planned on snowshoeing, but the forecast in the mountains and on the east side of the crest were for temps in the teens and windchill below zero. That really didn’t sound fun, so we picked a hike closer…
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Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail : Washington, by Tami Asars, Book Review
When I was younger, my biggest dream in life was to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. I was never able to figure out how to tackle that audacious goal, and life moved on, and I set that dream aside. But now Tami Asars has come out with a unique new book about how to…
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Big Rock Park and Ebright Park, Sammamish
Annika and I went on an local outing on Friday. We wanted to explore some of the parks on the east side of the metro area. We also wanted to check out some nature play areas as we research ideas for adding a new play area to our school. I had heard good things about…