Lewis River Camping Trip

Labor Day weekend has often meant camping or hanging out with friends, but this weekend it was just a time for Melis, Abee Joy & I to hang out and enjoy some solitude. We sought this solitude in the Lewis River valley, about halfway between Mt St Helens and Mt Adams. Out first stop was near Ape Caves, at the Trial of Two Forests.

The Trail of Two Forests is so named due to the hundreds of huge potholes (see above). We first trudged off through the woods without having seen an explanation for what they were. I was bamboozled, until an interpretive sign said that they were where trees had been over-run by a lava flow on a previous St Helens eruption (not the most recent one). Here, a downed tree was turned into a cave, quite similar to a typical lava tube.
Guys, did you know I'm one now?
We did a short hike up to Middle Falls.
More Middle Falls.
I hate slugs. In fact, just tonight I killed two of them for eating a few of my last remaining radishes. Slugs love radishes. And beans. And peas. And pumpkins. And squash. And spinach. And now I love to hate slugs. Geese used to be my animal of choice to hate, mostly because of their aggressive antics on a particular running trail I had in Portland. But 'gooses' can rest easy now - my choice of animals to despise has changed. So I got a pretty big kick out of seeing this guy with a bunch of pine needles sticking out of his tail end. And nope, I didn't even put them there!
Upper Falls.
Two chicks & Upper Falls.
Two chicks & a dude at Upper Falls.
It got pretty cold, but only a few sprinkles fell on us one day. The nights were in the low 40's, and we wrapped poor Abigail into numerous layers of clothes, then wrapped her in a few more blankets. But she slept 10 straight hours in her pack & play both nights, and woke up warm from head to toe! Thanks kiddo!
We drove quite a while down some gnarly roads in search for Little Niagara Falls, which the map depicted in a certain location. We found this certain spot with a very high degree of certainty, but there were definitely no falls. Other than this. Not quite what we expected. And I'm not sure it was quite worth all the scratches to our rig. But as Melis said with reckless abandon, 'We don't have a 4x4 for nothing!' That's my girl!
We drove on from the invisible falls, down more forest roads, and finally met up with some pavement. Shortly after, we hit Big Mosquito Lake. And thankfully, there wasn't a bug in sight!
Melis was an awesome navigator on this drive. We criss-crossed forest roads (the very thinnest lines on our 90-page Washington topo map), and headed down any that looked like it had the potential to be cool. Melis told me to turn down this particular 2-track, which took us to the top of Lone Butte. Well, almost to the top. Lower Falls. We camped only 150 yards or so from this one, but didn't go see it until our second evening.

I think this is my favorite scenic picture of the weekend. Simple. Elegant. Just. . .cool.
Abee watched the Olympic gymnasts, and said she'd like to start training for Seattle 2024.
Nothing like Mom & daughter, just chillin'.
This is the end of the line for salmon swimming upstream from the Pacific. The Indians used to hang out here during the salmon runs, and get tons of fish, and dry it for winter.
We camped at Lower Falls Campground #9 (I write that here for our future reference). We're convinced it's the best spot in the campground. It's so big even our cathedral-sized tent looks small.

No babies were harmed in the making of this picture.
We learned this is called Chicken of the Woods. It's edible when young, but this was too mature to eat. I don't mind picking just about any berry here in the PNW, but it'd take me a while to warm up to the idea of eating anything called 'chicken' that looks like this.
Abee loves hats. She loves to take them off, then give it right back to you so you can put it back on, and start the whole cycle over. If only we were all satisfied with such simple pleasures.
Upside-down baby!