"Lacamas Park is gonna surprise you"
I'll add
"With how crappy it is"
It was probably the most disappointing excursion I've had in the gorge so far. I wanted to do Hardy Ridge again, this time with Girlfriend in tow. Sadly, the day proved to be 82 degrees by 10am. The humidity was up, there was no wind, and a mile into Hardy Ridge was gave up. It was awful. I had sweat so much and we hadn't even reached the hard part. So we turned around, and on the way back decided to try Lacamas Park, which I remembered from Mr. Cook's book. We drove into Camas and admired the fantastic conservative small town-ness. Somewhere Obama was burned in effigy.
Anyway Lacamas Park is around a small lake created by a dam. It has 6 miles worth of trails in it. I see it billed as Camas's version of Portland's own Forest Park. It kind of is, if you add a smelly lake, a smelly paper mill nearby, lots of algae, beer bottles strewn about in various nooks and crannies, and remove any charm. Camas is a small town with few people. PDX is a big city with lots of people. Somehow Forest Park has way better atmosphere. I didn't even bother taking pictures because they would have been poopy. We walked down to pothole falls, admired the stash of bud lights on a nearby log, and turned around.
Maybe I just had the wrong mindset going in and expected something more peaceful. This must be a party park, which is not the reason I go outside to the gorge area. I go for solitude and beauty, not fat guys with too small bikes farting and drinking booze in the river.
On our way back from Hardy we did stop at lower Beacon Rock and admired the view from the river level.
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| Beacon Rock from the river, Hamilton Mountain says hello from the back. |
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| Better angle of Hamilton Mountain looming to the northeast. |
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