The weather finally worked out for us on the weekend. Unfortunately, that meant our friend Jenn couldn't join us. Our destination for the night was Tenas Lakes on the Benson Lake trail between Benson Lake and Scott Mountain.
We started driving up OR-242 Saturday morning, along with many people. It was a popular weekend for all the trailheads and lakes in the area (and likely many other places, it being one of the last weekends of the summer).
The hike to the lake went pretty quickly. We stopped for a bit at Benson Lake, and watched the dragonflies zoom around, then pushed on to Tenas Lakes. After searching around for place to camp, we took the trail past the second of the lakes to a nice overlook of the entire valley.
Along the way, we encountered some hunters, mushroom hunters, that is. They were looking at a nice one and I made a note to take a picture of it on the way back, but when we came back that way, it was gone. :( Oh well, here's a picture of one that they didn't get.
For dinner, we tried a recipe from the backpacking cookbook that Kevin and Laurel gave us. This time, "Tamale Pie for Ungrateful Waifs," a corn meal dish with ground beef, beans, peppers, olives, and spices. The food dehydrator worked out well for the ingredients, as well as the beef jerky and apple snacks. We both found the dish a little hot, since it had two cans of peppers in it. The peppers were hot before we dried them and they were even hotter after!
The next morning, we started out with an epic breakfast. Thanks to pre-freezing, we were able to have bacon, eggs with smoked cheese, and pancakes with syrup. A tad bit of weight, but very tasty.
The hike out went even faster than the hike in, thanks to the downhill trend. In the afternoon, we drove out the rest of OR-242 to Sisters and found a folk festival in full swing. We found lunch at a nice BBQ place. They had a great automatic hand washing station that we used when we left. It was like a car wash for your hands!
We headed to Portland Friday night to see the opening night of La Boheme by the Portland Opera. The venue was great, I really liked the sets, and I thought some of the characters did a phenomenal job.
The next morning, we headed to the Portland Japanese Gardens and arrived just in time for an hour tour. The tour group was large, and it was difficult to hear the guide until we stayed close, so after the tour we retraced the entire gardens to spend more time at certain places and to hunt for lanterns. The guide said there were 28 lanterns, but we were only able to find 18 (I think).
