Dog Mountain hike

Yesterday, on Memorial Day, Richard and I went on an 8 mile hike up and down Dog Mountain with some of our friends. Dog Mountain is about 45 minutes east of Vancouver near Stevenson, WA. I'm not really sure why they call it Dog Mountain, it doesn't really look like a dog, but there were a lot of dogs with their owners hiking the mountain too : )

We got up at 6:30 am and made it to the mountain around 8:30. It took about 3 hours to hike up the mountain, and another 1 1/2 to hike back down. We were all exhausted by the end and my legs are really hurting today!

This is the group that went with us, outside of the woman's bathroom...

These are our friends Sarah and Brandon. They just moved to WA not too long ago also, so we have something in common : )

The first half of the hike up the mountain was was pretty much in the shaded forest.

About half way up the mountain, you come out of the forest and the hills were covered with yellow, purple, white and orange wild flowers, it was beautiful!

This is the Columbia River. We were in Washington but the opposite side of the river is Oregon.

We made it to the top! I was so happy to sit down and eat lunch. To me this picture looks like we're sitting on a hill with a fake backdrop behind it, but that was really how high up we were!

Here's a little video from the top of the mountain.