Winter weekend travel: Smith Rock!

Winter weekend travel: Smith Rock!

• 11.23.2015

The other weekend we took an impromptu trip to Smith Rock in Central Oregon! We had started planning for a road trip to four or five of the Seven Wonders of Oregon in June but then we started talking about selling the house and had too much going on. But Central Oregon is usually pretty sunny even in the fall/winter, so it was a great trip for us to do in November for a weekend getaway!

We escaped from torrential rain in the Portland area on a Saturday morning and took a one-day trip to Smith Rock and Bend!

There are miles and miles of hiking trails around Smith Rock but the first thing you notice is the rock itself. First thought: awe. Wow, that's a lot of big rocks.

Next thought: This is an amazing, beautiful place.

Next thought, as you look across the river and up at the rock again: Wow, really big rocks! I'm going to climb that, you say?

Here's some of the rock itself. Pretty hard to capture it all!

We climbed that trail! Look at all those switchbacks! And that's not even all of it, it wraps around the rock!

Some of the payoff from the top. There's a loop you can hike back down to the river on the other side, so you don't have to go back down all those switchbacks (my least favorite part of hiking - the gravely, steep downhill climb).

Trips like this make me so grateful to live in a beautiful state, and so grateful for state parks like this one - a $5 parking pass got us full access to this amazing place!

We will have to go back soon and explore more of the zillions of trails and rest of the park!

The trip was awesome and relaxing and it was great to get away. Unfortunately, it took me another week + weekend to get caught up with stuff I normally do on the weekends... lesson learned: take a Friday or Monday off even if you're only gone one night!!