Family at Mount Hood

In which Moominmama meets up with her brother's family to explore Mount Hood and takes a look back at some special sculptures...

For much of the past week, Moominmama has had her brother, sister-in-law and their dog as hiking companions. We camped together near Mount Hood and explored some trails around its base. 

Mt. Hood is another one of those dormant volcanoes that stretch up the northwest coast, in this case, the tallest in Oregon at 11,125 feet. My brother is more familiar with the area, so it was nice to take advantage of his expertise starting with a primo creekside campsite on the East Fork of the Hood River.

During our days together, we hiked to a spectacular overlook where these photos were taken, swam in Trillium Lake at the mountain's base and did a section of the Pacific Crest Trail near the Timberline Lodge, a historic site featured in the movie The Shining. 

Back at camp, we shared meals and conversation. It was a nice visit and a chance to scope out my brother's new travel trailer.

They returned home to meet up with my niece and her two children (my brother is a grandpa!) while I did a solo hike up the ridge known as Tom, Dick and Harry then swam in Mirror Lake on my way down. 

I'm now headed north into Washington State and will soon be in Olympic National Park. I've had difficulty getting cell service and finding places to get online. That may continue. There are so many tall trees out here in the Pacific Northwest! If the blog posts are delayed, that will be the reason why!

But before I sign off this week, I wanted to share a couple photos from my last two days on the Oregon coast. This is one of two sculptures in the town of Bandon, created by the community with help from a non-profit organization called Washed Ashore. 

Volunteers collected plastic waste from Oregon beaches. Then Washed Ashore artist Angela Hazeltine Pozzi designed this 6-foot-tall tufted puffin sculpture and directed the volunteers in its construction. "Cosmo" now stands at Coquille Point, a cliff overlooking the sea.

Washed Ashore: Art to Save the Sea is based in Bandon and North Bend, but it has brought communities together to create and display sculptures all over the country. It uses art to raise awareness about plastic pollution in the ocean in hopes of sparking change.

Take a look at this close up and see how much you recognize of our waste stream!

There is a second sculpture on the docks in the town of Bandon, a rockfish with orange and white stripes, lips of old rope, scales and fins of thousands of bits of junk. Perhaps it's no surprise that the shoreline along Bandon is remarkably free of debris. 

If I come back to the Oregon coast in the future, I'm going to look into volunteer workshops, or at the very least, use my beach time to hunt down marine debris and deposit it at Washed Ashore collection points!

I encourage you to check out this website and learn more! Or seek out one of their sculptures on the East Coast at Washington D.C.'s Smithsonian Museum of Natural History or Chattanooga's Tennessee Aquarium.

I'll be spending more time near the Pacific Ocean and on the Salish sea in the coming days. My swim in Mirror Lake may be one of my last freshwater swims for a while. I leave you with a photo of the lake, illustrating how it got that name!







Location: Mount Hood National Forest, Sandy, OR 97055, USA

Comments

  1. JeffoFittsJuly 15, 2025 at 2:56 PM

    Nice sounding reunion. Aren’t you two really twins? Great story on art’rash.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mount Whitney and Manzanar

Image
Wherein Moominmama hikes in the John Muir Wilderness and joins a ceremony where Japanese Americans declare "Never Again is Now"... Driving into the eastern Sierras is like arriving on a different planet from the sand and sagebrush below. At 10,000 to 11,000 feet, the air has a chill, there's snow on the mountaintops, and everything smells of ponderosa pine and moist earth. Even the bird calls are different. After a week in the valley, the mountains were calling, and Moominmama drove up to hike in the John Muir Wilderness, choosing a three-mile trail up Mount Whitney to Lone Pine Lake. The days had been warm, but I wasn't sure how much snow I'd find on the trail. As it turned out, I got a good 2.5 miles before I had to put on microspikes to navigate the snow, which was firmly packed down. What spectacular views! And fascinating plant life. This is manzanita, a bush with tiny teardrop flowers that will eventually turn into berries. It is related to a bush I'd se...
Read more

Moominmama at the Bay of Fundy

Image
In which Moominmama sees the amazing tides in the Bay of Fundy and slips on the ocean floor... The Bay of Fundy between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia is famous for its tides with a hundred billion tons of water pouring in and out of the bay with each cycle. Water can rise at high tide by as much as 56 feet, and at Hopewell Rocks, pictured above, it averages around 46 feet at high tide. According to the Mi'kmaq legend, the giant Glooscap wanted to take a bath and got Beaver to build him a dam across the mouth of the bay. A whale took objection and slapped the dam down, sending water rushing into and out of the bay with a force so strong it continues to this day. Since it pours in at about 6-feet an hour, the bay fills quickly and can be dangerous. Visitors are allowed to walk on the "ocean floor" at low tide but the staircase is closed as the tide comes in. In fact, the lower levels of the stairs flood. Moominmama joined the crowds for low tide to explore the rock features...
Read more

Moominmama's Adventures: Year Five

Image
  In which Moominmama reflects on the start of a new year and what it means to reach Year Five of a life on the road... Starting on my fifth year on the road, Moominmama wonders if it's an adventure anymore, or just a lifestyle. Somehow, "Moominmama's Lifestyle" just doesn't have the same ring! But the truth is that not everything is new and exciting! Having picked up the trailer in New Mexico and driven to Arizona, I'm enjoying a Sonoran Desert that's actually somewhat familiar. I enjoy being back among the grandfather saguaro cactus, unique to this particular desert. The Sonoran Desert, unlike others, is marked by two rainy seasons: the summer monsoons and winter rains. But as I've learned, last year there were no significant monsoon rains in the Phoenix area, deepening an already serious drought. This year, no flowers greeted my March arrival. The plants were dry and dormant, and the local park ranger was taking photos of stressed-out saguaros on my...
Read more