birthday bike camping:) (a self-indulgent post)

This last weekend was my birthday–what could be better to celebrate than a bike camping trip to Stub Stewart State Park?? :)

I’ve already written about Stub Stewart a few times since it’s such a lovely and close-to-Portland campground. So rather than write about it again I’ll just direct you to the “Local Camping” category over there on the right of this page.

Instead, I just want to mention how lovely a bike camp adventure is for a birthday weekend. The beautiful weather helped, but it was so nice to spend all day (all two days!:) outside biking and hiking with this handsome goofball:

(who wouldn’t smile on a gorgeous day like this?:)

On Saturday, both the Tour de Cure and the Gourmet Century were going on too, so we spent a lot of time on country roads with a whole bunch of other cyclists. It was almost enough to make us feel like roads were built specifically for bikes instead of cars–awesome!

The hiking at Stub Stewart, which I’d never really done much of, was also fantastic, awash in lovely woodsy trails and ripe berry bushes. And speaking of ripe berries, on my birthday proper, we took a detour to visit Love Farm Organics, the farm that brings us our CSA share of veggies each week. They had just started U-pick blueberries that weekend, and being the blueberry fiends that we are, we ended up picking about 8 pounds of them. That might have been a bit heavy if we’d been for-serious touring, but it was just perfect for a mellow weekend of camping.

(the Love Farm tractor makes friends with our bikes while James readies the tupperware!)

Apparently we also made an impression on Amy and Dean, the Love Farm farmers, with our pedal-powerdness, since we even scored a mention in their farm news for the week! Super sweet of them!:) And I’ve been eating their amazing blueberries for DAYS, which makes me a very happy stasia.

Anyway. I know, this is a silly post, but I’m just so happy with this weekend! It was everything a birthday should have been, and it all happened via bike. I fricken love living in Portand where this kind of thing is possible:)

(More pictures, including blueberry porn, are here! Enjoy:)