Coyote Wall: 10/26

Written November 2019

Kicking off the Weekend

We started off our Saturday with a small breakfast – whipping up some cheddar bay biscuits, before packing up the leftovers and heading out at around 10.  Just as we were on the outskirts of Hood River, we stopped off at a grocery store to find a couple subs for our mid-hike lunch.  They had a fried chicken sale going on though…so we decided to go for an 8-piece instead – and ate a few pieces there for an early lunch, then packed the rest for later.  Since it was still decently early in the day, we decided to make our way to Coyote Wall instead today, and save Rowena Crest for Sunday.  So we made the short drive across the river into Washington, and a few minutes later, we were at the Coyote Wall trailhead, ready to start our day hike!

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Coyote Wall

The lot was pretty full of mountain bikers, and we were lucky to get a parking spot.  I guess it’s a pretty popular area for it, and it was a beautiful fall day.  So we started our hike on a gravel road to do the labyrinth loop hike.  Unfortunately, there were no signs that said anything about labyrinth loop, and the web page I was following didn’t say anything about the trail names out there…so we had a little trouble at the start, but eventually were able to figure it out.  Really, we could’ve gone in any trails and direction, and we probably would’ve got in some good hiking and views in…but I think we did well with where we wound up…getting some nice views of the river and Oregon, the coyote wall, and all of the fall foliage.

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We eventually made our way up to the base of the Coyote Wall trail now…a pretty steep and straight shot up to what I think was the high point of the area.  For some reason though, I was pretty tired by now…and Norina was basically trotting up the hill, as I struggled to keep up, laboring up the hill.  It was worth the hike though, as we were able to get a wonderful view from up top, and decided to stop here the rest of our fried chicken and biscuit lunch.  We also found a dead tree with some really vibrant moss on it that was ripe for the picking!

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After we got all filled up, we decided to continue on our hike, but had to backtrack a bit down the coyote wall trail, as we apparently missed a turnoff to another trail to do the “labyrinth loop”.  As we were going down though, we saw that the sky was getting super dark behind us….and not much later, we started to feel some drops coming down on us…which turned to sprinkles…and some harder sprinkles.  So we decided to cut the hike short and just go back the same way we came.  Thankfully, we didn’t get too wet (and were prepared with our rain jackets)…and still got in about 5 miles overall…so a pretty good day!

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White Salmon

Back in the car now, we decided to go drive around a bit on some windy road we saw while hiking earlier, just to see what it was about. It wound up taking us up to a hunting area, at which point we decided to turn back since it would take us a little too far out.  From here, we decided to go to White Salmon to walk around the town a bit, since the rain had stopped.  It was a lot smaller than I thought…as we walked around the main strip in probably under 10 minutes.  Nice little street with some fun quirks…but too much around…a couple restaurants and bars.

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Hood River

Getting close to the evening now, we decided to make our way over back into Hood River and to our airBnB.  Our place was a couple miles out from the center of town, in the basement of an old couple.  It was a nice place to stay…clean…nice amenities…friendly hosts.  So we got all showered up, rested a bit with a little nap…then made our way out to find some dinner.  We decided to get some pizza at Double Mountain Brewery.  There was supposedly a 20 minute wait, so we walked around the town to kill the time…but it wound up a table was ready for us in like 5 minutes!  The pizza was really good though…we went with the Truffle Shuffle plus some sausage…perfect meal to end the day!  When we got back to our place, we played a little ping pong…threw some darts…then called it a night.

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