Weekend Camping Trip to Suttle Lake

As one of our first summer camping trips of the year, Hans and I decided to explore the Suttle Lake area in the Cascades. We spent 3 nights camping at Link Creek Campground on the far side of the lake, aptly named, with our two pups, Winston and Link, along with us.

This was just the second camping trip in which we tested the new bug shelter Hans got for his birthday last April, and the first trip in which we tried out our new Coleman 6 person tent that Hans found at Goodwill! Both proved to be great additions to our deluxe camp setup.

Another fun addition to our car camping gear was the purchase of a camp stove toaster that we tried out on the trip, greatly improving the variety of our morning breakfasts.

We enjoyed our first delicious breakfast of the trip with toasted waffles and pop tarts, an egg scramble and sauteed breakfast sausage patty, served with a side of fresh strawberries. Yum!

For our big outing on Saturday we climbed Black Butte for the first time. It was close to a 7 mile trek round trip, with an elevation gain of 1,760 feet. From the top we had amazing views of the Cascades including the Three Sisters, Mt Washington, Mt Jefferson, and Three Fingered Jack!

When we were driving back to the highway along the Forest Service road we were stopped by a group of girls, and when Hans asked if they were alright they replied: "what do you know about mufflers?" Being the handy guy that he is, Hans jumped right in and cut open a soup can we acquired from another group of hikers to re-secure their muffler which had been held together by an old bean can, now corroded. It was quite the adventure!

The gals were very grateful that we saved their bachelorette party, and when we came back to town we learned that Hans' best man, Jake, and his wife, Sandra, are friends with one of the group! Such a small world! We were happy to learn that they made it all of the way back into civilization on Hans' soup can handywork :).

Back at camp we relaxed in our final car camping upgrade we scored at the REI garage sale: a deluxe kingdom queen sized sleep system. We do feel like we've taken car camping to a whole new level, and Hans now refers to our setup as RV camping in a tent ;).

On our final full day in the area we went on a long hike along the Metolius River. It was a gorgeous day and we thoroughly enjoyed hiking along the beautiful river with summer wildflowers along the bank. Overall it was an incredibly fun trip full of surprises, and we look forward to visiting the area again, maybe during a good snow year to cross-country ski along the Metolius!