Back in the Wilderness Again...

...Well, almost.

Now that my season of debilitating neck pain is over, I decided it's time to get back on the trails and start hiking all over the northwest. I started getting really interested in hiking pretty late last year, so I really only had time to whet my wilderness appetite in 2010 before all the trails were mudded over and, well, my neck broke, so I had to wait a few months before I could head back out again.

So this last week I tied back on my hiking boots and tried to get back out again In the interest of breaking ourselves back in slowly, my hiking buddy Wendy and I picked the easiest hike listed in our entire "hikes in Oregon" guidebook. Luckily, it happened to be just a few miles from both of our houses, because to be honest... as a hike, this was a little bit of a bust. The guidebook listed it as "a walk in the park" and it was, literally, a walk in a park. Champoeg Park, to be exact, and for you non-Oregonians, that's "Shampoo-ey" to you. For you Oregonians, you know we didn't really need water packs and tents or even hiking boots- we just had a nice little stroll.

Even though most of the "real" trails were too muddy to walk on there were quite a few paved trails for us to stroll on. Not exactly a typical challenging hike with stellar views, but hey, we tried. To further perpetuate the illusion of a real hike, we made sure to bring along the summit moose just in case we got to walk up a legitimate hill. (We didn't.)

The summit moose was finally named (Walter Peyton Moosedeer) by these three tagalongs, who are showing WPMD how to fully embrace his moose-iness:

(Walter really doesn't get the whole antler thing. The boys have it down.)

Wendy trying to look as enthusiastic as possible about our super-tough flat, paved trails.

Even when it's cold, wet, flat, and paved, Oregon still has some beautiful photo ops. I love our mossy trees!

Equally cool is this red-algae covered pond:

Okay, admittedly that cool red-algae pond is from the nature reserve just down the street a few days later and not even close to Champoeg, but it's still pretty.

So, time will tell whether or not I can actually get back into regular hiking. I hope to have lots more hikes and photos to post about in the upcoming year, but for now I guess I'll just go walk circles around the playground down the street. At least then I'll know ahead of time that I'm just going for a walk in the park.