As you head east out of Portland, the landscape starts to change and you leave the flat valley with a few hills and cinder cones behind and head out along the Columbia River, which funnels you into a deep gorge that has been carved into the Cascades by millions of years of water flowing through…
Since we’re almost always coming from Portland, we usually come down Highway 26 through Government Camp and past Mount Hood. As soon as you cross the Cascades and turn south towards Bend, you start to see the landscapes changing from the ferny underbrush and towering evergreens that are emblematic of Western Oregon, to scrubbrush and…
I grew up in the Seattle area, went to the University of Washington, and lived in Seattle for years after college before relocating for work, meeting Alysha, and eventually making my way back to the Pacific Northwest (this time in Portland). At its core, Seattle is a city that is optimistic and entrepreneurial. You can…
This is a hike that we were very, very close to not doing on a rainy morning in Bend that came 48 hours after a bout of food poisoning that had Matt down for the count. We were sitting at the gas station pumping gas and decided we would drive out to Sisters (which was…
A roaring creek (that turns into a babbling brook). An abundance of wildflowers. Jaw-dropping views of the South Sister and Broken Top. Crystal clear blue-green lakes. As Alysha said during this hike, “I think this is heaven for me.” Take all of those aspects we mentioned in the first paragraph and package them into a…
The San Juan Islands are one of the more unique places in the Pacific Northwest, if not the entire country. There are only a few places in the world that we can think of where a series of islands are connected by ferries loaded up with cars that serve as an extension of the highway…