Lost Lake

Outdoor Vino from Naked Winery- obviously!!

I am not sure if you googled "Lost Lake Oregon", but Oregon has at least 19 lakes with this moniker. This Lost Lake is probably the most known, I'd imagine. There is a small resort here that charges you $7 for parking for the day. The lake is about 21 miles southwest of Hood River, located just north of Mt. Hood and provides spectacular views on a clear day. There's some fishing available for brown, brook, and rainbow trout and kokanee salmon. There are no motor boats allowed. We saw quite a few paddlers as well as some aluminum hulls powered by oars and arms. The resort has some of these available to rent and some rustic cabins and a general store. We did not stop by the general store even out of curiosity. Despite being further "inland" from the Columbia River, it was still quite windy and gusty. We started out very chilly and quickly warmed up in the sun and with the exertion of human power. We clung to the northern half of the lake because it was the sunniest (widest area). Unfortunately the view to the south was still very cloudy and only the base of Mt. Hood was visible. We did notice that every time a cloud covered the sun large gusts of wind would arrive, which at least made it predictable. [...]

Naked Snowshoeing

Matt, Suz, and I went snowshoeing with Naked Winery on Feb. 9th. We met at the White River West Sno Park with a bunch of winery members. Just like the winery- all the members are fun-loving and easy-going too! This was our first event with the winery outside of tastings and wine pick-up parties. Matt and I went to REI and rented the gear. It was a lot of fun and my first time snowshoeing in years.

We trekked and along the way dug up previously buried bottles of wine. They were marked with fake red roses- easy to spot, right- but apparently someone not in our group thought they should collect them. We spent some time looking for two of the bottles after the roses went missing, but we found eventually! If only they'd known there was wine underneath! We maybe went 1/2 a mile to a mile the whole round trip, stopping every 10 minutes of walking to uncover another bottle. It was a blast and I wasn't the only one who wished they'd eaten a bigger breakfast.  [...]

McMinnville

Matt planned a really fun winery weekend to celebrate my birthday. I was very grateful to get out of town! We went to McMinnville and stayed at the Hotel Oregon and toured 3 wineries: Youngburg Hill, Yamhill Vineyards, and Amity. It was incredibly foggy all day, but it made beautiful hoar frost. 

The itinerary: Text from Grape Escape Winery Tours with italics comments from us. We are not expert wine tasters and we didn't take notes, so I will put down my amateur comments for what I remember.  [...]