Berries, grapes and butterflies

It's been a busy summer. I've been working full time and while it's a real blessing to have a job, and to be able to save up for the future, it keeps me from getting out and taking pictures as much. I wish I had time for more adventures with my camera, but I guess this is a season where that will just be a bit more of a challenge. 

Well, we have gotten to do some fun things lately. One of those was going on our annual huckleberry-picking outing. We head up into Gifford Pinchot National Forest to do our picking. The berries were great! Sweet, juicy, and wild.  

Huckleberry hands. :-) My dear friend Breanna's and mine. 

Our little huckleberry harvest.

We've had another little harvest here at home. Our grape vine that we've had for three or four years finally produced some real grape clusters! City girl that I am, I was really excited to watch the whole process from tiny flower clusters to fully ripened grapes.

We've also had some golden raspberries ripening.

Another find out in the yard--I'm pretty sure this is a skipper. There have been lots of them on Mom's lavender bush.

Silver Star Revisited

Last weekend we headed out to take on another one of the hikes on our summer "to-do list." Christina and I last hiked Silver Star back in 2009 with some friends (pictures of that hike here). Mom had not been since a very cloudy, wet hike we took in 2005. Dad had not been at all. So it was high time we went as a family! 

In my opinion Silver Star has two main attractions. One is the views--you can see four or five mountains from the top and the views along the way to the top are pretty stunning, too. The second attraction is the wildflowers and the meadows are chock full of them during July! Overall, it's an amazing place, the sort where I feel like I've left a little piece of my heart.

Alright, ready for pictures? When we started off, it was really cloudy. That actually makes the best weather for flower photography, so I was okay with it, hoping it would burn off by the time we reached the top. 

Tiger Lilies

(I'm going to try to identify some of the flowers as I go, since we have a really great NW plant book.)

Wild Carrot (or Queen Anne's Lace), I think

Yes, my family was actually there! (I know sometimes in these blog posts you wouldn't know that anyone was with me, since I'm not normally very good at including people pictures.)

Subalpine spirea (I love how fuzzy it looks!)

Bear-grass

The red flowers are Indian Paintbrush. Aren't they lovely?

Looking down into the mist. 

I'm not totally sure what this flower is, but I loved how delicate it was.

Subalpine daisy 

After taking in the beautiful fields of wildflowers, we climbed to the summit. Sadly, the clouds had not burned off as I hoped they would. This is what the summit looked like. 

The view. 

While we had been protected from the wind on the rest of the hike, the wind was fairly strong and cold on the summit. It was interesting to watch the clouds blowing by. Every now and then we'd see the sun shine faintly through the clouds, just to disappear again. It was disappointing not to see the gorgeous view, but there was still something neat about being up at the summit. You could feel that you were really high, even when there wasn't anything to see.

After hanging out at the summit for a while, we headed back down. The clouds were actually starting to lift some by that point, so we had a better view coming back.

Looking down the trail at Pyramid Rock. 

Visibility had definitely improved, but you can see the cloud ceiling there in the back, so I think the summit was probably still covered in clouds.

The view to the west. 

A Trip Down the Gorge

We have a little list of hiking/camping destinations picked out for this year (there's never enough time to do everything we'd like!). First up was a trip down the Historic Columbia River Highway. We drove up to Sherrard Viewpoint, which we had never been to before. From there you have a 360 degree view of the Gorge and (sometimes) five mountains. Today Mt. Ranier and Mt. Jefferson were hiding. We'll have to go again on a totally clear day.  

Mt. St. Helens on the left and Mt. Adams on the right. I'm sorry they're not that easy to see. I'd like to experiment with using some filters to get clearer mountain pictures. 

Mt. Hood.

 Mt. St. Helens.

Looking back toward Portland.

 

After we came down from the viewpoint, we drove up the old highway to the Latourell Falls trail.

Lower Latourell Falls. 

To see Upper Latourell Falls, you have to hike about a mile up from the lower falls.

Another view of Upper Latourell.

The old highway crosses Latourell Creek on this neat bridge.

Lower Latourell Falls again.

We were going to visit some of the other watefalls, but by the time we finished at Latourell, things were getting really congested in the waterfall corridor! The parking for every waterfall--Shepherd's Dell, Wahkeena, Horsetail was close to filled to capacity. And of course, Multnomah was very busy. It took us quite a while just to drive by, because it was so congested. So, we didn't end up visiting any other waterfalls. Sigh. But there's always another time! Maybe this fall, when there aren't as many people. 

All in all, though, it was a great little excursion! 

Moulton Falls

I've had a goal to take some little photo excursions to local places. My Gorge waterfall pictures were the result of such a trip last fall. I've been wanting to do another one and decided to go to Moulton Falls this time. This past week was pretty wet, but I decided to get out there and try it out a little anyway (thanks to Mom for tagging along with me!) 

Here are a few favorite shots.