Grassy Knoll Hike

The paper showed today as the last blue sky mid 70's day, so I decided to go hiking. Nobody was available, so I asked my old hiking partner if he wanted to go and he jumped around and grabbed his leash and carried it around until I was ready to go. He's 10 now so I picked an easy 4 mile hike because that's 70 in human years! Drove to Cascade Locks and took the Bridge of the Gods to Washington and up towards Carson and then about 12 miles of dirt road later got to the Grassy Knoll trailhead with one other car. It starts out really steep, so I let the leash drop and Spenser would go just out of sight and then turn and wait for me. I took a picture of him coming back down the trail to see what's taking me so long.
About halfway up the trail is a viewpoint with a vista of Mt. Adams (very faint in the background) and the Big Lava Bed that looks like a lake of trees in the picture. My daughter and I drove the dirt roads all the way around it when she was learning to drive and under the trees are huge lava boulders.
Some more steep climbing and we got to the top and a view of Mt Hood (top picture). It was very windy, so we ate some trail mix and headed down. Spenser was starting to get tired, so we went really slow on the way down. Stats- 4.4 miles 1200 feet elevation gain.