Beer Tasting, Ice Cream and Hiking

I left off with our morning bike ride on Saturday. The perfect sunny, summer day in The Gorge.

Bike Ride

I should have made this Disclaimer during Post #1 for our trip: VACATION CALORIES DON’T COUNT!! 😉

For lunch we went to the Horsefeathers Brew Pub. It’s a three story house built into the side of the hill with a fantastic view of Hood River and the Gorge. It also has outdoor seating on the top floor.

This was our view during lunch:

I ordered the small beer sample tray. The beers I sampled were: Easy Blonde, Pale Ride IPA, Phat Dog and the Red Ale.

I am not a fan of dark beers (extra special bitters or stouts). I usually like the blonde or red beers. I’ve recently discovered a few IPAs that I like. I love beer samples at restaurants because I’m not much of a beer drinker (wine is my thing) so I’d rather not commit to an entire glass of something I might not like.

Beer Samples

I gave Michael a full review of each beer. He also had a few sips of the samples. He ordered his own pint of the Blonde Ale.

Liquid Lunch

I drank my samples in order of what I thought I might not like first. I’d rather finish on a good flavor. I didn’t really like the Phat Dog. As I could have guessed, it was a bit too dark for me. And it had a very strong coffee taste. Michael drank most of that for me. I moved on to the next one.

We didn’t just have a liquid lunch…no, in fact, I remembered the AWESOME fish tacos I’d had at that restaurant last year. I wanted to have them again and they were just as good as I remembered!

Lunch

I LOVED the spicy sauce and the salsa it came with. Wish I knew what they were so we could recreate it. The fish tacos were fish, avocado chunks, mango, cabbage and lettuce, and lots of spice and flavor. I want more. Michael got the burger and fries and told me afterward that they overcooked it. 🙁 I wish he’d said something! There’s no excuse for food not prepared the way you order it.

We were stuffed but as we walked back up the hill to our room, we saw the Ice Cream Stand.

Ice Cream Stand

This place must make millions a year because there is always a line out the door and people sitting at the benches eating ice cream. Always. It was like 85 degrees out and we said “Let’s get ice cream!” Don’t have to tell me twice!

I got a small sugar cone with two scoops of the Minty Oreo. It was fantastic.

Michael got a chocolate malt–like a real one. It took them a few minutes to make it. I didn’t get a picture because honestly I was preoccupied. 😉

Leave Me Alone- I Have Ice Cream

We got back to the room around 3-ish and fell into a food coma. Michael napped and I laid in bed staring at the view.

Nap Time

I read my book a little, napped for maybe 10 minutes, and just relaxed. As Michael pointed out earlier “Doing nothing is my new favorite thing.” And that Bed n Breakfast made it a nice experience. Our room was so peaceful and with all the big windows open we got a wonderful cross-breeze. Lovely. After we woke up and sort of shook off the nap-cobwebs, we decided to go for a short hike before going out to dinner. It was probably 4:30 at this point and neither of us were very hungry yet.

We headed up Highway 35 to part of the “Fruit Loop” (a 35 mile loop of farms through Hood River) and found the Old Dalles Road we were looking for.

Fruit Loop

The old road was narrow and totally TERRIFYING as we drove up. I have a fear of heights and was too paralyzed with terror to take pictures until we were going down later. So here’s a picture to give you an idea:

Scary Road

Basically a narrow road going up the side of a mountain. The directions to the Hood River Mountain Summit Trailhead were sketchy at best but we finally found it. The trail was remote and overgrown. There were also a LOT of mosquitoes. And bugs love me–so I was already itching.

A few times I felt a tad nervous–like, “This is totally the premise of a horror movie” and “I wonder if this is actually the trail??” But we kept going and eventually came to the summit. And oh my god was it worth it! We came to a clearing and took some pictures of Mt. Adams (which is on the Washington side of the Gorge).

Mt. Adams

We took some goofy photos of us “hiking”.

Hiking

And then we turned around and walked around a tree and saw THIS!

Mount Hood

The summit opened up to a view that was absolutely breathtaking. I don’t think my pictures can really do it justice. First, the sun was out and it was hot. But it also had a wonderful breeze. Check out how the trees were growing because of the wind:

And then you turn to the right and see the entire valley–which we later discovered was the “Fruit Loop” area with farms and vineyards.

Hood River Valley

We sat down together on some big rocks and just took in the view. It was so amazing!

We spent a good amount of time on-top of that mountain just relaxing. And, I’m not embarrassed to admit, texting friends and family pictures of the view! Michael even “checked in” on Foursquare! How was there service up there?!!?

Then all of a sudden our peace and quiet tranquility was disrupted by a startling sight!

Glider

It was a Glider! An engine-less plane that I guess just floats through the air? It was so close to us I thought he was going to crash! I’m pretty sure the pilot saw us because he started doing tricks in the air: diving and dipping down really low and then flying right over us. It was strangely cool and frightening!

After the air show was over, we took our last pictures and headed back down to the car.

Hiking stats:

Time: 1 hour 11 minutes

Calories Burned: 329

And those calories were on top of the cycling calories from that morning! Michael joked that I had just done a “Brick Workout – Northwest Style”! Biking and then hiking! I like it! 🙂