out. The name of the place was Gravy and Sarah had claimed that they had the best biscuits and gravy that she had ever had. I was eager to put this claim to the test. Apparently so was half of Portland and we arrived at Gravy to find an hour wait before us. We chose to wait it out, again not having anywhere to be. Luck was on our side today though and after 20 minutes a spot opened up for 2 people at the bar and apparently no one else fit the bill. We happily took these chairs which gave us a view into the kitchen to watch as the master chefs cooked up our food. As I don't like eggs, I have never enjoyed the fun of an omelet in the morning though they always seem the most appealing to me because of the jumble of ingredients that usually accompany them. Because of my hatred for eggs, I had planned on going with the old standby, biscuits and gravy, until I inspected the menu a little further. They offered all of their omelets to be served with either eggs or hash browns! It was like a dream come true! Of course I still had to order a
side of biscuits and gravy to test them out, but the main portion of my meal was a hash brown scramble with peppers, bacon, and cheese. Katie ordered a standard omelet with cheese and onions in it. We watched the cooks in the back as they made each of our orders. They literally took giant, softball sized handfuls of each ingredient and threw them into the frying pan. We got our meals after a short time and were amazed at the amount of food placed in front of us. Katie commented how the one ingredient that she thought was lacking in her omelet was egg; the same could be said of hash browns in mine, and believe me this is no complaint. If this place has not already been on Man vs. Food, they are just asking for an appearance. The meal was incredible and not only provided us with a gut busting brunch but also allowed us leftovers which we would eat late in the evening for dinner. The biscuits and gravy were pretty good, definitely hand made which is unusual for restaurants, but I am still partial to my grandfathers gravy which he made for us every time we visited. He taught me how to make it as well, but I still have not made a batch that I feel has been truly up to par... someday. After brunch we
hopped in CJ and headed toward the coast. We got to Fort Clatsop around 3p.m. and inquired at the visitor center about the Fort to Sea hike. We had noticed as we were pulling in that they locked up the visitor center parking lot at 5p.m. which posed a small problem for us if we wanted to drive anywhere else that evening. The ranger first told us that the last 1.5 miles of the 6.5 mile hike was not worth the time it took to hike. He told us how it wound in between homesteads now and that we would be walking on a narrow track in between property lines. He also informed us of a place a half mile down the road where we could park our car and be able to drive it safely out after hours if we decided to do the whole hike to the beach anyway, just to say we had done it. We took his advice and pondered it as we walked to the newly recreated replica of Fort Clatsop itself. After looking around a bit we decided that we had better hit the trail before we lost too much daylight. We found the parking spots, packed water and flashlights just incase, and began hiking the very trail that Lewis and Clark themselves had blazed from their fort to the Pacific Ocean. Many times on our previous hikes Katie and I have mused about the people who were responsible for making the trail, thinking about what a horrible job it must have been. Now we thought back to the trailblazers with wonder and excitement, imagining what it must have been like be the first American travelers to explore the west and reach the coast, we were literally walking in their footsteps and it was exciting. The first portion of the trail was pretty tame, wide enough now for both of us to walk side by side. After the top of the hill where there was an impressive overlook from which the Pacific was visible in the distance, the trail took a different turn, heading down into the river valley via a small path filled with numerous switch backs. On the way up to the lookout, Katie and I spotted easily the largest banana slugs we had seen yet, and lots of them. Now on the decent into the river valley, Katie spotted something else that made us stop and look. She called it a
lizard at first and I thought that it looked like a salamander. In the end we were both wrong and it turned out to be a rough-skinned newt. It was lucky for us that we never picked one up, which both Katie and I had a fleeting temptation to do, because it turned out that the newts are poisonous. We never found out how poisonous they were and what it would have meant for us had we picked them up, but we were happy with our decision to leave them alone all the same. We saw dozens of these newts as well as banana slugs and before long we couldn't even look up
to enjoy the scenery because we were so scarred of stepping on one of these creatures with every step. We did manage to stop and enjoy our surroundings plenty which reminded both of us of the rain forests of the Olympic Peninsula. The trail itself was extremely diverse in its terrain, moving from forest to wetland, then down into the rainforest like valley and eventually spitting you out onto the prairie before reaching the sea. We decided to take the rangers advice, both because we did not feel like walking through peoples farmland to get to the ocean and because we had no interest in hiking in the dark. On the way back we took a newly built path that the park service had constructed last year which takes you past the wetlands area near the fort. Just as
we were starting down the path we ran right into 2 black tailed deer. One of them took off into the woods instantly and the other froze, still as a statue. We sat and watched it for a bit before deciding that we had to move on. We walked along the path which lead right beside the deer and pretty much circled it completely. It stayed put the entire time, sometimes caring more about eating than us, but always popping up its head after awhile to see where we were. The next wildlife we saw was CJ sitting alone in the parking lot keeping guard and anticipating our return. We opted to drive to the coast, cheating slightly on the final 1.5 miles of the journey; surely Lewis and Clark would be disappointed with our effort. We made it to the coast at dusk,
the sun had already set but there was still sufficient light for us to see without flashlights. We walked the .5 mile trail to the beach and enjoyed the last moments of daylight. To our surprise there was a number of cars parked and driving along the beach, some people even had a bonfire going. Briefly we thought of bringing CJ out there to stretch her legs for a bit, but by the time we got back to the parking lot it would be dark already, so we decided against it. On our walk back to the car we were almost completely shrouded in darkness and just able to see the path when suddenly something jumped out of the woods 10 ft. in front of us! Both of us gave a yell of freight and jumped back as we watched a black tailed deer walk the trail in front of us for a few steps then disappear in the woods moments later. After this excitement we geared up for the 4 hour car ride that was before us. That night we had also planned to make it to Bagby Hot Springs located in Mt. Hood National Forest which is about an hour and a half southeast of Portland. We not only had to retrace our steps 2 hours back to Portland from the coast, but also set out another 2 hours through back roads and National Forest roads to get to the hot springs. Dustin, Alyssa, and Sarah, had all visited this place the week before and had insisted that we go, and go late at night. We were somewhat worried about locating the place in the night, but after only 1 detour we found it, just was we were about to give up all hope. We had arrived promptly at 11 p.m. on a Sunday and to our surprise the parking lot was relatively full. We had expected some people as Dustin had warned us that even when they arrived at 1 a.m. they weren't alone, but we just didn't expect this many. From the parking lot, you have to take a 1.5 mile hike back into the woods to reach the hot springs. I am sure that this path is beautiful during the day since it clearly followed a river up most of the way and we could hear various waterfalls as we climbed to the top. Once we arrived to the actual hot springs we didn't know what to do. There was clearly 2 structures that had hot springs but they both looked occupied from where we stood. One had a group of people, probably about our age, carrying on loudly and probably pretty drunk, not exactly the peaceful scene that we were after that evening. The other we could clearly see lights on as well and one was moving around looking to us as though they were packing up. We decided to approach these people and see if they could help point us in the right direction. As we got closer we realized that we had stumbled upon the private bath section, which was exactly what we were looking for. Currently the large public one was under construction, but we had heard that the private ones were much more of an experience anyway, so everything worked out. We found a room that suited us and began to fill the tub. Keep in mind that it is now around midnight and there are no lights around except for the ones that we brought with us. The "tub" is a large tree trunk that has been hollowed out leaving only the shell of the tree for you to sit in. It comfortably fits 2 people, one at either end, feet touching a little in the middle. At one end there is a plug in the bottom as well as a spout up top. The spout was plugged with a stick and a towel not letting any water inside the tub. To fill it, we had to first plug the bottom then release the stick up top which released boiling hot water flowing into the tub. To counter this intense heat, there were about 3 buckets inside our room which we had to take outside and fill from a cold water well at the far end of the structure. We put in about 8 or so buckets of cold water and filled the rest with the hot spring water. While I was lugging the buckets back and forth, Katie got to lighting all of the candles. We had purchased 3 candles from the Saturday Market specifically for this occasion. After the tub was ready and the candles were all in place, we each opened our one bottle of beer and proceeded to relax the night away. The roof only covers half of the building leaving the other half exposed to the starry night sky which was clearly visible if you turned your head toward the heavens. We stayed in the tub until 3 a.m. By that time we were sufficiently relaxed and both agreed that it was hands down our best hot springs experience to date. As we took the 1.5 mile return hike back to the parking lot, we passed another couple that was just heading up to the hot springs complementing the fact that the hot springs never close. From the hot springs we drove another 2 hours to get to our rest area near Hood River where we planned on spending some time before we headed south. Finally around 5:30 a.m. we went to bed, exhausted after one of our best days in a long time.
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