Silver Falls State Park

Trafton B.

September 23, 2010 - 8:33 PM

Well, I succeeded at getting some time off work to go camping. I could only get one day off due to a meeting on Friday morning, but it wasn't the worst that could have happened considering the circumstances of our outdoor excursion.

Long story short, this might have been the most failed camping trip I've ever been on. Allow me to elaborate.

To begin, Boo rented out a cabin for us at Silver Falls State Park outside of Silverton, Oregon. She supposedly reserved a two-room cabin for 8-10 people with electric outlets and a fridge, which would be more than enough to accommodate our party of six. We quickly discovered that we didn't exactly get what we paid for.

The cabin was barely a full-sized room. It was about 10' long by 10' wide, there was no refrigerator, leaving us with one tiny travel cooler to keep all our food, a small table in the corner, and two beds that comfortably fit two persons.

Technically one of the beds was a fold out futon and to be fair the other was a bunk bed. The catch was that only the bottom bunk had a mattress while the top bunk had a sign that read "recommended for storage, not sleeping." Obviously, a sign wasn't going to stop Ross, but he understood its purpose when he woke up the next morning with an extremely sore back.

Our next folly had to do with our food for the evening. Someone in our party, who shall remain nameless, happened to forget the grill she'd promised to bring. If you're keeping track we were without any way of cooking or keeping any of our food fresh for the evening.

Luckily the campsite manager had firewood and ice for sale, which kept us alive for one night. It may have taken us two hours to start a fire with damp logs on a humid night, but I've never eaten a bratwurst that tasted that delicious. It tasted like victory with ketchup and mustard on top.

Our streak of bad luck didn't end there though. A family of raccoons raided the fruit we left sitting on ice outside in the middle of the night. That left us with bagels and cream cheese for the breakfast and one bag of potato chips.

On Thursday morning, we all woke up around 9 o'clock, ate our bagels and looked outside to see a dreary, overcast sky looming overhead.

"Well, should we hike around for a little while?" someone posed to the group.

We looked around at each other's droopy eyes, bodies weary and aching from a less-than-restful night's sleep and with very few words spoken, we all fell back asleep and didn't roll out of bed until 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

The highlight of our trip was hiking through the canyon trails and underneath the token waterfalls on a guided tour. Our tour guide, Earl, led us down through the valley, teaching us little fun facts about the local flora and fun stories about the history of the area. He was exactly what we were hoping for, and it made me sad that I won't be able to volunteer at Mount Pisgah this year. I recognized at least half of the stories and anecdotes he told us from training.

Earlier tonight Katelin and I drove back to Eugene. We both have meetings tomorrow unfortunately, but at least we had someone to share our disappointment with. It was a nice trip, but we'll be sure to plan everything out more than a day in advance next time.