Day Thirteen

Erin and I had the day to ourselves so we decided to go on a serious hike and mingle with the incredible natural beauty that is such a huge part of the Pacific Northwest experience.

I picked her up at 9:30 and off we went to the Pichott National Forest a couple of hours away in the state of Washington.

The weather was perfect but as the day went by it got pretty toasty even in the forest. Erin had packed a small lunch. The road into this park was in very poor shape and I was glad I had a vehicle with plenty of ground clearance.  There was almost zero traffic on this very remote part of the world and so we were surprised that there were a handful of other vehicles there when we finally pulled into the parking lot.

After lathering on the sun screen we set out on the trail. Angie had told us that they had followed the trail about 2.5 miles to some waterfalls so that became our goal for the hike. Signs and markers along the trail were few and because there was no trail map we just decided to walk and hope we’d find the falls we’d been told about. There was no internet service either so we couldn’t google any information to help guide us to our destination. The hike through these majestic fir trees that towered above us was magical. We were in awe of these silent giants with their moss draped branches. The trail followed a mountain river that had the clearest water I’d ever seen. The terrain was anything but flat and as the land seemed to undulate beneath our feet it gave way to several smaller waterfalls along the path.

We came upon a man and daughter who were returning from their hike and got some sketchy directions on how to reach Wildcat Falls which he highly recommended us to see.

Even though we were deep in the forest and totally surrounded by these massive old trees, it was starting to warm up. We took a bit of a break and shared a sandwich, water and some really tasty organic beef jerky before resuming our hike. Using the “Health” app. On Erin’s iPhone we were able to roughly determine how far we’d come and it was beginning to look like a much longer hike than we had planned for. Erin is a great conversationalist so we had lots of interesting chats as we made our way to the falls. We also both love taking photographs so we were constantly stopping for photo ops. Ultimately we managed to find these fabled falls and I must say it was well worth our significant effort.

Later on the trip back to civilization I decided to invite Erin to join me for dinner at my RV park. We stopped along the way and picked up a nice bottle of wine as I only had red and Erin preferred a rose.

She had no concept of RV living so she was very interested to see my rig and get a brief glimpse into this alternate lifestyle.

Naturally we started by having drinks out under my huge awning as I unpacked and setup the BBQ and chairs. We were both pretty pooped after walking nearly seven miles through the woods so after a delicious meal of grilled spicy Italian sausage, brocolli and rice I ran her back to her B&B. Another incredible day spent making memories with my beautiful daughter. For me it’s these moments that make life so worthwhile.