frog lake - mt. hood camping
First word... brrrrrr
This was my first time camping on Mt. Hood and in my naivety I thought in June it would probably be descent weather. Maybe a little colder than normal at night but you know, manageable cold. The forecast was calling for rain and I saw it was about the same daytime temperatures as it was at my house, on the other side of the mountain, so I figured if I packed to stay dry we'd be fine.You can imagine my horror as we neared the campground and I heard my kids yell, "SNOW! There's snow here!"
Ok.... it's one thing to manage wet kids, or cold kids, but wet and cold kids is a lost cause. My husband was kind of like, duh Jenny. What did you expect? I packed long johns! And I was like, fist to his face, why didn't you warn me? ME, the lady that packs all the children... He's lucky he's good at making fire and cooking camp food or he'd be out of the tribe with that sass! HA! Seriously, he handles ALL of the provider duties on these adventures. I clean, pack, and organize. He cooks, makes the coffee, and keeps the fire. Oh yeah, and sets up our monster tent. He's great! I forgive him. ;)
ok. ok. ok. It's going to be fine. It's a little colder than I anticipated but we can definitely do this. We couldn't do it. We only stayed one night instead of two. After 24 hours, between rain storms and kids falling in the lake, my youngest daughter was out of dry clothes. We're definitely re-booking at this campground! It was an instant favorite!
Frog Lake Campground is a small, rustic campground in the Mt. Hood National Forest. If you're interested in booking do so early as it is a popular family campground and only has a small number of sites available. We're going to book in August next time we go! Frog Lake is named appropriately. FROGS. I remember as a child friends would go to Frog Lake and come home with frogs. I was so jealous! I was pumped to finally be going and find frogs with my kids. I think my oldest son saw a frog. I think. We weren't disappointed in the lack of frog sightings though. We saw hundreds and hundreds of newly hatched tadpoles and egg clumps. The kids would put their hands in the water and "hold" tadpoles and point out eggs. It was a lot of fun. And if you're like me and sleep best with white noise you'll sleep pretty easily here as the frogs will chirp and croak all night until dawn when the birds take over tweeting.
Remember this campground is rustic. Vault toilets and water pumps are easily accessible but it's a non-electric campground. You can bring non-motorized boats for the lake or just jump in for a swim. Fishing is also a great activity if you have a license. I'd say the Bald Eagles that live at the lake are an indicator that fishing may be good. Of course, maybe they are on a frog heavy diet! I can't vouch for the fishing since we didn't fish on this trip. If you don't catch any fish you can always just make these insane s'mores.
Gluten Free S'mores:
Justins PB Cups - dark chocolate
Glutino chocolate chip cookies
Roasted marshmallow
See you at the lake! I'll bring the coffee you bring the long johns!
