Lake Merwin August 2011

When Chris and I lived in Portland, Lake Merwin was our favorite place to take our boat. Lake Merwin is about an hour and 40 minutes North-East of our old house in Tigard. It is actually a big reservoir at the base of Mount St. Helens.

We liked to go to Merwin because it was much larger than any of our other local options. There isn't much in the way of lakes in the Portland area, a fact my friend Kimberly, from Michigan, was quite astounded by! Mostly there are rivers, and lots of them!

The problem for us with rivers is that they are typically somewhat narrow. We have a jet boat and it doesn't handle all the wake and waves that great, so when we are in a narrow river filled with super-wake producing wake board boats...well, we just aren't having that great of a time.

So, we liked Merwin for the fact that it was big and open and we could usually find a place to get away from all the wake boats.

A few years ago we introduced some of our Portland boating friends to Merwin and it was a hit with them as well. Just before Chris and I moved to S. Ore we had a last hurrah of summer, and went up to Merwin with our friends. It was a great trip and our last time at Merwin. Last year, the same group of friends decided to make it a little longer trip and we all headed over to Lake Billy Chinook in Eastern Oregon for a weekend of camping and boating. It was spectacular.

This year we decided to do our camping and boating weekend back at Merwin! Fun! Nostalgia! But a long ass drive for us...over 7 hours towing. Sheesh! It ended up that I towed the boat the first leg of our trip, just over 100 miles, due to Chris' work schedule getting all messed up. That was a first for me...I was totally alone, hauling the boat for the first time on the freeway! EEk! Scary, but I did it! So empowering!

After some stops and starts with getting going and getting the work truck stashed so we didn't have to make the ENTIRE trip in separate vehicles, we ended up getting to Portland Thursday night around 9. We stayed with some friends overnight and we all headed up to the lake Friday morning.

We had an excellent weekend. Four couples, some kids, some dogs and some siblings (mine included) managed to make it up for all or part of the weekend. The weather, suprisingly, was absolutely gorgeous and warm! The lake was beautiful, as usual, and the water was even warm enough to swim!

We had a great campsite at Cresap Bay Campground. It was very quiet; there was a lot of greenery and foliage between the sites, which really helped buffer the noise between campsites. They even had hot showers!! Ah...bliss!

The food all turned out great! Our stuffed peppers were SO good. Oh my gosh...I cannot wait to make those again! My salsa was well loved, as were the turkey burgers. YUM! Some of my food did get soggy. So gross. I am totally going to try my friend Shorey's idea of dry ice next time I go camping. Overall, it was good.

Here are just a few pictures, I didn't take that many this year. We did have a great time. It was great to see our friends, get to visit and laugh, and get to hit up our old stomping grounds again.

My brother...cold chillin'

I think Chris did win the fishing derby...



Silly Self Portrait




Lake Merwin, looking East....so beautiful




Lake Merwin looking West Saturday evening.



The lake was kind of choppy Saturday evening and the wind was kind of blowing...it made the rooster tail look so awesome!!

Sunday morning we got on the road about 11 and drove for about 7 hours. My view looked like this:




Only 15 more miles to go!

We had a really great time! Lots of laughs, fun, food, sun, boating, fishing and most importantly: friends!

We are already planning and looking forward to next year!