Hood River – Windsurfing and Post Canyon

Shawn, Henry, and I all had a weekend off, with Kayla in Ontario with Cheryl we decided to go to Hood River. Hood River is a world class windsurfing destination, that also happens to be close to Mt. Hood – which is open for skiing throughout the summer. It’s a great place to bike, hike, and has some good breweries, and wineries nearby.

Usually we camp outside of the town center, but this time I decided to splurge and book a hotel room – such a good idea. We stayed at the Best Western which was minutes from windsurfing, a walk to the core town center, and the bike rental shop.

We didn’t decide we were going to go to Hood River until Thursday night, so my Friday afternoon was spent finding a place to stay, and making sure we had enough stuff to do for the weekend. The weather forecast everywhere within a 5 hour drive radius from Seattle was for rain, so we had to mentally prepare for it.

We left Saturday morning, bright and early. It rained on the way there:
 

Luckily it cleared up as we got into Hood River. We arrived in time to get lunch at the Full Sail brewery ahead of our windsurfing lessons that were booked for 2pm.

 

Shawn signed up for the more advanced lesson while Henry and I took on the beginner lesson, so after the brewery we went straight to Big Winds to get ready.

Here we were getting ready for our lesson:

Henry and I split from Shawn for the beginner lesson. The wind was strong, and we did a pretty good job, but I managed to somehow crush my baby finger between the board and the rudder, so that cut my lesson short. Henry wasn’t out much longer, but Shawn was having such a good time that we decided to go back to Full Sail, and let Shawn hang out in the water for the full length of the lesson.

Once done, we decided to take the hike across the river to the Maryhill Winery. We made it there just in time to get a good tasting in. I bought a couple of bottles of Merlot, and it was about 40 mins out of Hood River, so by the time we got back we were ready to check into our hotel.

This was the view from our room:

We then went out for dinner, and spent the night looking for live music – which wasn’t difficult since the band in town could be heard from a mile away. We sat in the local pub and watched live music all night. When we got back to the hotel room we were definitely ready to hit the sack.

In the morning we went to Mountain View Cycles to rent bikes for our ride out at Post Canyon. They had enough rentals to outfit us for our trip, soon we were packing the car and getting ready to go.

Post Canyon was much closer to Hood River than I expected. Literally a 7 minute drive from the bike shop. We could have biked it actually. It’s a network of trails that includes everything from slick XC riding to massive freeride stunts. We stuck to the cross country stuff for this trip.

Here’s Shawn up at the top end of our loop:

We rode for a good 3 hours. We even found ourselves lost at one point, but eventually found our way. The bike shop closed at 5, so we needed to get back. Instead of taking the XC run out we took a run called “Frankenstein” which was clearly to big for cross country bikes.

Anyhow, at the end of the day we packed the car back up:

After bringing back the bikes we once again ate at the Full Sail brewery. So good. I decided it was worth buying a case of their LTD02, and their Session Black.

Henry drove us back home, we packed a lot into the two days we were gone, and hopefully we organize another trip out there.

Here was the take from the weekend:

Until next time!