Spencer Butte

The weather in Eugene has been wet. Infact we haven’t had a day when it hasn’t rained so far. So when we got up this morning and it was fine we decided to take the opportunity to get out of the town and head to one of the many surrounding national parks for a walk.

So we got up and went out running. Just the one training session for us today so we hoped we could go out for the whole day once we got the run out of the way. However, just over half the way into the run, the rain started to pour down once again and for a moment I thought I was back in Manchester. Sodden and cold when we returned to our apartment, we decided to give it a couple of hours to see if it cleared up. To fill the time we decided instead to head to Wal-Mart to muse over the Lucky Charms, Peanut Butter Goober and Twinkies. Restraint was in force today though and we settled with the standard healthier groceries.

Fortunately, the rain cleared up in the afternoon and we were finally able to head South of Springfield to Spencer Butte Park, where we decided to climb up to the Spencer Butte Summit. This is our kind of hill, or so we thought. The summit is about 2000ft, although we were only required to climb 700ft of it from the car park, and there were well formed paths taking you to the top. It was a fairly steep climb on the dirt trail but we made it to the top fairly quickly. Just in time for it starting raining infact, and armed with non waterproof jackets (we didn’t bring any with us on the entire trip…school girl error), we didn’t linger too long before beginning the descent.


The view from the top

By this time however, the dirt track had become a mud slide and so we had plenty of unwelcome chances to perfect the art of a form of side ways ski-ing from one mud slide to another. Whoever fell on their behind would lose out on the Snicker doodle cookie (yes it is actually called that) which was waiting for us back at the apartment. Thankfully it didn’t come to that, as I am the balance queen and Chris cheated by sitting on his hands when he slipped. I must remember to be more specific with the rules next time.

Despite the rain, it was a worthwhile trip as we got some cool views of the area around Eugene and the forests are pretty amazing. The only disappointment is not having seen any blog worthy wildlife so far…oh apart from all the red squirrels..


Chris' sparkly new bike