Sunday, October 14, 2012

Washington and Oregon 2012 - Mount Hood

Mount Hood sits about an hours drive SE of Portland, OR.  Similar to Mount Rainier, it is volcanic in origin.  My wife, her family and I visited this area during the evening hours.  We first stopped at the Trillium Lake Campground, where the first couple pictures (below) were taken.  This lake is one of the best vantage points in which to view the mountain.  Trillium Lake is supposedly a great place to bird, however, we had to make this first stop brief in order to get to Timberline Lodge.  This lodge is where some scenes of the movie "The Shining" were filmed.  Particularly, the outdoor scenes. 

The birding up near this lodge was excellent!  I got up there with about half an hour of usable light left in the day so I had to work quickly.  Running up the mountain I spotted a large group of mixed birds, including: Mountain Bluebird, Pine Siskin, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Clark's Nutcracker, Gray Jay, Dark-eyed Junco of the Oregon Group and Common Raven.




Mount Hood







Mountain Bluebirds 



Yellow-rumped Warblers








Dark-eyed Juncos, Oregon Group




Clark's Nutcracker



Townsend's Chipmunk


The Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel (above and below).  My sister-in-law took the photos below with her iPhone.  These were around Trillium Lake Campground.






A view of Trillium Lake from Mount Hood. 


A sunset on our way back to Portland.  After I took this shot I looked behind me at Mount Hood and a full moon was rising almost directly above it.



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