Intentional Community Tour Days Ten and Eleven
Day Ten was a rest day. Flying to Portland put us two days ahead of schedule. Efforts to reschedule and confirm with the last dozen stops on the trip are underway, but this was too short notice to meet anyone on Sunday. We drove east from Portland toward Carson, where our next scheduled stop would be.
We stopped at Multnomah Falls (https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/crgnsa/recarea/?recid=30026) for a short steep hike. The view of the falls from the bottom is awe inspiring, the hike is tough but worth it, and the view from the top is even more exciting. Overall a fun quick stop in nature, with fewer people surrounding us the higher we got.
Our relaxing stop for the day and night was at Carson Hot Springs Resort (https://www.carsonresort.com/resort) where we spent a lot of time in the mineral hot pool and relaxing around the fire. There was also a bit of scouting for an adventure tomorrow, more to come on that that.
First thing in the morning we set out to explore a local natural hot spring. An hour of rocky scrambling later we were relaxing in a ~95F pool alongside some raging river rapids. More posts about that will come later, to update various online sources of info that are 3-15 years out of date.
After checking out of the hotel we had lunch nearby then made our way to the Flying Bobcat Honey Ranch (https://www.bee-folk.org/path-to-membership/index.php) for a tour and discussion about their goals. Currently it’s a small community with a few folks staying short term, but they have long term plans to grow and convert to cooperative ownership. They have many small agricultural spaces, from fruits to herbs to vegetables, growing in various styles including hügelkultur mounds, using grey water, etc. Their community operates a meadery as their business (https://www.melchemy.wine/) and we had a small tasting.
Unfortunately our planned stop in Portland proper was canceled due to the scheduling changes, so we headed for Beaverton next where we met some folks at Trillium Hollow Cohousing Community (https://trilliumhollow.weebly.com/) for a short tour and conversation about the history of their community. They built this cohousing community with a single condominium building of dozens of units 27 years ago, using the original and architecturally unique house on the property as their common house. They gave us a guest room in their common house and a kitchen to cook ourselves dinner, and we plan to have a longer tour and meet more of their residents in the morning.