Beacon Rock State Park
While Summer has officially come to a close and we are well into fall, I’m still reflecting on the great Summer we were able to have! We were able to camp at 7 new State Parks and explore a few others. Some of these parks we definitely enjoyed more than others. The State Park down the road finally opened and we enjoyed a nice camping trip with our home school pod! One of our most memorable camping trips was to Beacon Rock State Park! Located on the Columbia River, this park had so much to offer!! This was one of Odin’s favorite trips this summer so I couldn’t resist sharing some of the highlights!
The campground is just beautiful. This was the first year they were allowing reservations so we snagged a site without being able to see pictures. As we pulled into the camping loop Sam and I were getting pretty nervous. The campsites we were seeing were SMALL! We pulled up to site number 18 and we both breathed a sigh of relief! This site was absolutely amazing and plenty big for our giant tent!
One of the things we loved the most about this campground was that there were several trail heads located inside the campground. We decided to hike out to Rodney Falls, Hardy Falls and Pool of the Winds on the Hadley trail. There was a little detour out to Little Beacon Rock that we are very glad we took! This section of the trail to the waterfalls was pretty easy and very enjoyable.
Fun fact: Beacon Rock is the core of an ancient volcano! So naturally Odin was impressed because volcanoes are one of his favorite things.
After our detour to Little Beacon Rock we hiked under some power lines and got a good view of Bonneville Dam on our way to the falls.
We made it to the falls! This was such a peaceful spot to be. Even with a later start than usual for us, we found ourselves alone for good chunks of time while enjoying the water.
After a nice break at the falls we continued on to Hamilton Mountain Trail to get to the Hamilton Mountain Lookout! It was not our original plan to continue on after the bridge but we were all motivated to see what else this trail had to offer!
It was a difficult 1.7 miles up to the lookout after we had already been hiking for a few miles!! We are so beyond proud of how well the kids did! Sam and I made sure to ask several times if they wanted to keep going. They were not about to quit! The view sure was worth the hard work it took to get there! Odin is so incredibly proud he accomplished this hike. He talks about it often and he loves to tell others about it! It was such a proud parenting moment to watch our kids marvel over this view and watch them realize just how much hard work they had to put in to get it!
It was pretty incredible to look back on the hike down and realize just how high and far we had hiked to get to the lookout! The picture below shows where we just were at the lookout on top of the cliff! The total hike was just under 5 miles but it sure felt like we hiked a lot more!
After a long, hard hike we took it easy the rest of the weekend. There was a great park on the river where the kids we able to ride around and even watch wind surfers! It was really cool to also get a closer look at the dam.
So grateful to explore another new area with our kids!
On to the next adventure…