Mother's Day adventure

For Mother's Day, Anne found a fire lookout cabin for rent and booked us a night - just us and our daughters, camping out on top of a mountain. It was so exciting - we were so excited - such an adventure! We were booked at the Timber Butte cabin, in the Umpqua National Forest outside Eugene. The drive down was easy until we headed into the forest and promptly got lost. There were no signs; the directions were unclear; we weren't on any map; there were a LOT of intersecting roads going in circles. We drove around for a really long time, not even sure if we were lost (i.e. on the wrong road) or just not there yet. Finally, after flagging down everyone we saw (3-4 trucks) to ask if they knew where we should go (no one knew), we took some more turns and magically found it. Phew!!

 

It was cute and cozy inside - we schlepped our stuff up the hill and unpacked, and tried to light the stove. It wouldn't stay lit. The pilot light kept going out. We ransacked the place looking for instructions and followed them exactly, five or six times in a row. No luck - the stove would stay lit for 4 minutes and then turn off, and it was the only source of heat. So it was 40 degrees outside and in, and the light rain turned to pouring rain. And then it started to hail.

During a brief break, we explored the fire pit and gorgeous forest, but then the rain started again and drove us inside the very cold cabin. We all put on all our clothes and cuddled together on the bed, under the sleeping bags, to play a game of Apples to Apples and eat rhubarb cake.... and at 4:30 we gave up. No one could feel their fingers and we had many hours more to entertain ourselves inside, and no hot food. So we schlepped everything back down to the car, drove back down the hill, and took ourselves to a hotel in Eugene.

There was a pool and a hot tub and everyone was entirely delighted.

We had a hotel room picnic with all of our packed food - fruit, nuts, carrots, and microwaved cheese sandwiches for the girls, and a cucumber salad, canned salmon, and sourdough for us. We played Scrabble, read books, and curled up in our cozy beds, happy to be together and warm.

So in the end, it was not the lookout tower adventure we had planned, but it was still really fun and probably even more memorable for its sheer fiasco-ness. In the morning, we woke up and drove back into the national forest for a spectacular waterfall hike, and that was terrific. (Although also marked by some ridiculously near-disaster circumstances... blog post to come!)