We booked a dog friendly room at the Mount Hood Resort and headed up Friday after work. Mount Hood is an easy getaway from Portland as it is only an hour’s drive so we arrived and checked into our room before 6 PM.
We brought Summit, our lab/pitt mix, with us so we took him for a walk around the resort after we put our bags in the room. We decided to go ahead and eat at Mallard’s, the casual restaurant near the golf course. They have a large, dog-friendly outdoor seating area that overlooks the golf course. The menu was limited which made be due to COVID impacts but we had beers and Korean short ribs and Summit happily chewed on his bone while we ate.
Saturday morning we stopped for pastries at the Dragonfly Bakery on our way to hike. The bakery is a little, family run operation and my strawberry cream pastry was tasty. The bakery only offered basic coffee so we also stopped at Coffee Brewsters in Mount Hood Village so Rich could get a campfire mocha to help him wake up and prepare for the hike.
The plan was to hike Cairn Basin but our hiking book is outdated and we couldn’t find the trailhead. So we headed back down Lolo Pass Road to the Tree Top trailhead to hike to McNeil Point. We hiked up to the trail split of the Pacific Crest Trail and Timberline Trail but downed trees made the trail we wanted to take (Timberline Trail to the left) a bit dicey so we continued to the right on the Timberline Trail. As we traversed around Mount Baldy, we had amazing views of Mount Hood. We continued through the woods about 3 miles to a river flowing through a valley with more great views of the mountain and decided to turn back since we heard more downed trees made the trail ahead tricky to navigate.
After the hike we had lunch at one of our Mount Hood go-tos, Zig Zag Inn. I tried the pizza which was decent and very filling and Rich had a club sandwich. I had a delicious Ice Axe IPA from Mount Hood Brewing up the road in Government Camp and Rich accompanied his sandwich with an apple-tini.
Back at the resort, we cooled off with a dip in the rather crowded but refreshing pool and then spent some time lazing and reading on our balcony. Later in the evening we returned to Mallard’s for a drink (I had an IPA, Rich a strawberry daquiri) and a light dinner- I had a salad and Rich got a quesadilla appetizer- before heading back to our room for the night.
Sunday morning Summit let us sleep in a bit and then we headed to the Lower Salmon River trail for a shorter, flatter hike before heading back to Portland. The trail led us through the woods over wooden bridges along the river. Back on the road, we stopped for lunch at the new food cart pod in Sandy where I had a poke bowl and Rich had an interesting crepe with turkey, cheese, jam and powdered sugar. Sounds a bit strange but he enjoyed it.
It was a quick getaway but a good mix of active and relaxing with some good food and drinks. Exactly what I was hoping for!
