USon8wheels – a travel blog

An Oregon Orchard

June 15-23

By Eliza and Erin

This was our longest time at one place–nine days. It was a beautiful, peaceful, fun, and very yummy stay. Let me explain why…

This was an organic orchard that grew lots of apples, pears, cherries, blueberries, kiwis, and some other experimental crops for fun. The orchard was on a hill overlooking a valley and underlooking Mt. Hood.

The beautiful part… We were situated with a million dollar view of Mt. Hood (Oregon’s tallest mountain) which was made even more beautiful when the rays of the setting sun made it glow a soft pink. Our camper was right across a gravel road from a field of wildflowers. There were yellow, blue, pink, and red flowers. They were so pretty!! One night we got to witness a stunning 360 degree sunset. It lit the clouds up with an unnatural bright pink color! There were bumpy clouds, streaky clouds, and puffy clouds, all in the same sunset! There wasn’t even any orange or red, it was just PINK!

Now, on to the fun and peaceful side of things. We did a lot of mountain biking here, since they have awesome trails. The boys REALLYYY loved this!!:) I’m not a lot into biking, but I did like a place we went called the Family Man. One of my favorite trails we biked was called the Cake Walk. I don’t know how they came up with that name for a mountain biking trail but… This trail had a long tree trunk as one of the obstacles. Dad said if we could make it all the way to the end he’d pay us ten dollars. None of us could make it to the end though.

The yummy part!! The CHERRIES!! These cherries were NOT like the ones you buy at the store. No, they were sooo much better! It was wonderful to pick a sun warmed, shiny red cherry right off the tree and pop it into your mouth and feel the sweet juice gush around your teeth, while savoring the sweet, warm taste.

Another great thing about this stay was that we got to help our hosts with their many odd jobs–fixing irrigation sprinklers, weeding the garden, collecting old, pruned wood off the fruit trees

to be burned, and (our favorite) picking cherries. After we picked in the morning we were allowed to eat as many cherries as we could possibly want! We did not take this kind invitation lightly! Instead we stuffed our selves with cherries for every meal and snacks…and extra snacks! We loooved these cherries so much!!:))

With the numerous flat bike tires we’ve had on this trip, Simeon and Abel could open a shop. Here, they’re working together to fix Lev’s most recent flat. A couple of photos of our amazing spot to set up camp.

Below: A couple of photos of our amazing spot to set up camp.