On Sunday, we packed up Evan and Gauss, piled into the Highlander, and headed East on our first official excursion out of Eugene with baby in tow. The four of us went up to the Willamette Pass ski area in order to ride an Oregon Skyway gondola to the summit of Eagle Peak. We were hoping to escape some of the heat currently plaguing the Willamette Valley, but as it turned out, it was still hot even at an elevation of over 6,600 feet! (The shade was nice, though.) So, we only stayed up there long enough to walk around a little, take some pictures, and eat some sandwiches, but it was a fun time.

At some point later in the Spring, Willamette Pass replaces the ski lift chairs with gondola cars like the own shown here. For $12 (adult price; kids are like $8 and dogs are $2), hikers, bikers, picnickers, Frisbee golf players (yes, there is a course), and sightseers can ride up (and down, if desired) as many times as they want in a day. The ride offers great views of Diamond Peak and Odell Lake to the South (psst! look in the photo gallery). From Eagle Peak, you can hike over to Peak 2 and get great views to the North. (We didn’t do that since it’s a pretty good climb up to Peak 2, and we’re just getting started on doing this stuff with a baby attached to one of us!) Gauss thought it was all pretty exciting, especially the gondola ride. On our way back, we stopped at nearby Salt Creek Falls so Jen could feed Evan. All in all, it was a great day — hopefully one of many more to come.

This entry was posted by Steve on Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 at 10:43 am and is filed under Dog, Family, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.