This may be a tradition now: 4 days off for Memorial Day with no idea what I want to do with myself until basically the day before;) What I did definitely want to do was have that feeling of exploration that I’ve been loving lately. So with that in mind, I looked at my Oregon atlas and picked a spot I knew nothing about: Table Rock Wilderness, not so super far from Portland and yet a whole wilderness area I’d never heard of.
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(okay, so I could see not only Mt Hood and Mt Jefferson from Table Rock, but also the Three Sisters, and, with my binos, Mt Bachelor, Three-Fingered Jack, and Mt Washington. So that was an amazing array of Cascade volcanoes on display. The prominent one here is Jefferson)
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A quick google search of “bike route Portland to Molalla” also gave me hope that there was a serviceable bike route between here and the Molalla River Recreation Corridor and then Table Rock, and thus an adventure was born:)
In classic stasia fashion, since I had Saturday off (which is unusual for my work schedule), I started not with the bike adventure right away but with volunteering at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market, which I do whenever I can be free on a Saturday morning. And then I had to finish packing, and I didn’t leave until a leisurely 12:30 or so, but I only “had to” (i.e. until I got to public lands where I figured I could camp) go about 50 miles so it was just fine.
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(even if this kind of thing was one of the first things I ran into leaving Oregon City, ha!)
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Gosh! It’s been a while, I realized, that I’ve been on a legit bike adventure, like the kind where I set off on my loaded bike with no real ideal of where I’m going to camp and going somewhere I’ve never been and just trying to figure it out. I have missed that feeling! And it was extra delightful, on a busy Memorial Day weekend, to have that stealthy bike-camp feeling, where I know there are lots of people out and about doing their thing but I have what feels like total solitude since I can easily disappear into the woods.
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(oh my gosh, this was the most delightful campsite I’ve maybe ever found:)
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So, I guess the summary version is: I camped near the Molalla River Corridor on the first night, behind a gate that I could bike past but no one could drive past. I biked the next day up the semi-brutal (i.e unpaved and steep) road to the Table Rock Trailhead, where I hiked at first not to Table Rock but beyond to Chicken and Rooster Rocks — though the Table Rock Wilderness website mentions several trails, it seems like any trails that aren’t the main Table Rock one aren’t being maintained, and it was hard to even see the turnoff to Chicken Rock. Although once I found it the trail was actually easy to follow, but it made it such that I had that whole hike to myself too. And then since I was back at the Table Rock summit fairly late in the day after my Chicken Rock excursion, I even had that to myself. Which, again, felt extra special on a busy Memorial Day.
P.S. I feel like I should stop here and say Table Rock Wilderness is rad. Definitely worth some exploration:) I would like to go try to find all the other trails too;)
I camped that night not too far from the turnoff to Table Rock, and spent the next day day-tripping (i.e. not moving my camp). I was trying to get to the trailhead for Nasty Rock and Not Nasty Rock about 15 miles away, but I got stopped by snow, so instead I had a sweet time at a little lake I found, Joyce Lake, where again it felt like I was the only person in the world. Heck, on the road between my camp and where I turned around, it felt like there was no one and would be no one for dayyyyys (although I did end up seeing a few jeeps and some ATV folk eventually). I even saw a bear!
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(we had a sweet moment before little bear took off up the hill and I biked by slowly singing to it:)
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So, I would say this was just what I was hoping for: going somewhere new, not knowing what I would find, having no real plan but some things I might try to see, and just generally having an awesome time in the woods, on my bike and my feet.
Yay for the loosely-planned, last-minute adventures:)
General route here for anyone who’s curious:)