Friday, March 4 – Sunday, March 6, 2022
This weekend was a first for us: we rented a lookout operated not by the U.S. Forest Service but by a private landowner.
In November I saw a post in the Fire Lookouts of Washington Facebook group that the Lorena Butte Lookout was available to rent. Lorena Butte is on private land outside of Goldendale, WA and the old 1974 lookout has been moved from the summit to a different spot on the butte. Recently the owners have fixed it up. I contacted the owners to find out about renting it and chose the first weekend in March. By the way, you can see photos and history here, here, and here. (UPDATE: This lookout has now been listed on Hipcamp for rental.)
We arrived at the ranch house on Friday and we were immediately greeted by this sweet old farm dog:
Paulette drove ahead of us and led us up the road to the cabin. These next two pictures were taken later in the weekend. You can see the cabin at left below:
There are a few rough spots on the road. A sedan could probably make it with careful driving, but I was glad we had high clearance:
The cabin interior is nice, with new floors and even a rug! There’s no bed so we brought our camping cots. We also brought our camping toilet because there’s no toilet up here:
There’s a nice big deck that they’ve built, but it was too cold during our visit to sit out here:
Mt. Adams hiding in the clouds and the town of Goldendale below:
Paulette told us to text if we needed anything and left us to it. After we unloaded some gear we drove into Goldendale and did a walk on the trail network on Observatory Hill:
From there we could see Lorena Butte with a big “G” for Goldendale on the side of it, which we hadn’t realized was there. You can just barely see the bump of the cabin on the right slope of the butte:
It was a beautiful, but chilly evening at the cabin:
Sunset was lovely that evening:
Later the stars came out, although there were some clouds too:
The cabin has a propane heater which took the edge off, but didn’t keep the cabin as warm as we would have liked. In the morning we could see Mt. Adams:
We could see Indian Point and Simcoe Butte:
As the clouds cleared Mt. Hood started coming out too:
The true summit of Lorena Butte is up there, but it’s off-limits:
We enjoyed a sunny leisurely morning:
One downside to this lookout is that there are cow pies everywhere:
We drove down to Oregon and did a hike on the Deschutes River Trail:
Back at the lookout we enjoyed sunset while making dinner:
That night we went to the Goldendale Observatory and participated in a three-hour star-gazing session which was pretty neat. Through the telescope we saw the moon, the Orion Nebula, and the Andromeda Galaxy:
Back at the lookout we had clear, cloudless, starry skies:
It was a gorgeous Sunday morning:
We got a look at distant Mt. St. Helens:
Looking down on the Lefever Holbrook Ranch, the property owners here:
We packed up and headed out. We enjoyed our stay here, although it was quite a bit different from staying in a remote Forest Service lookout since there was highway noise and a town right below. Great views, though!
