I’m apparently terrible at being consistent at anything. I’m not going to make any more promises about updating this consistently, although I will try to. Thanks for sticking around, dear reader.

“One misty, moisty, morning,
when cloudy was the weather…”

–“One Misty, Moisty, Morning”

Supposedly there’s a mountain up there somewhere…

We flew out from JFK at 9 pm EST on Father’s Day evening and landed in Portland, OR at 11:30 pm PST. It was dark because it was night time, and as we continued through the 1.5 hour drive to Government Camp, OR in our sweet mini-van rental, it became increasingly cloudy and misty.

We got there at around  2 am, which was 5 back in New York, and we all promptly picked beds and passed out (my bed was the couch!). The morning came earlier than I had hoped, because my dad and sisters are early risers and my bedroom was the living room, which was attached to the kitchen. As usually happens with me, though, no matter the hour, after being grumpy and groggy for a few minutes, I got up and felt good. I went to look out the back window of our mountain view chalet, and got a wonderful view of fog and clouds.

We headed south for about a half hour to the nearest real grocery store, all the while wondering if the mountain was really there, and hoping that Bigfoot wouldn’t jump out of the mist in front of the van.

Misty? Check.
Moisty? Check.
Morning? It’s always morning somewhere.

We stocked up on probably more food than we’d be able to eat for the week and headed back to the chalet. The next step was to head up to Timberline Lodge, where the climbing trail begins. Surely, surely, we would see the mountain there. But nope, still fog, still all sorts of clouds. And it was freezing and there was snow on the ground. At least the lodge was there, I thought that that was a good sign.

I might have lost them if there weren’t such bright coats!

My dad picked up the forms we’d need to fill out and leave while climbing and my sister Jules and I headed into the gift shop in the lodge. Just as we started to quietly comment to each other on the large amount of handmade and fancy souvenirs and their even larger price tags, the lady behind the counter says, “There’s a t-shirt shop across the street.” I knew I should have tried to look richer for this trip.

The lodge itself was really nice and had lots of cool history to it. There was a giant fireplace and chimney, and lots of little plaques explaining how historic the lodge was.

The writing on the wall- err, chimney.

After wandering around and exploring a bit more we decided to head back to the chalet. We got back and ate and watched the World Cup, and I started to have some intense Ruzzle(iTunes / Android), a Boggle clone that I’m enjoying more than Scramble With Friends, and Word Chums (iTunes / Android), a Scrabble clone that I’ve similarly been enjoying more than Words With Friends, matches with Dave and Jules.

Tuesday morning started out remarkably similar to Monday morning. Extremely early (in my opinion) and extremely cloudy and foggy. I was still taking it on faith alone that this mountain even existed. My dad claimed that it was going to clear up that night and that we would attempt the climb starting at around 12 am-1 am Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. The majority of the climb is done at night, because when the sun comes out in the morning the snow starts to get melty and mushy and dangerous.

The majority of Tuesday was spent similarly to Monday, with soccer on one screen,  word games on others, books in hand, and some napping mixed in. We also spent some time making sure that all of our packs were, in fact, packed and that all our gear worked and fit. I think I was the last one who went to bed, as I couldn’t put down the Marvel Civil War comics I was reading. I finally went down at around 6:30 pm. I woke up at around 11:45 as everyone else started to stir.

I looked out the back window and all I saw was clouds. I was disheartened and thought that surely the mountain was still enshrouded and that this would not be the night to do the climb. We were still going to drive up to the lodge to see if the clouds were moving out or if there was an break in them on the mountain.

To be continued…