A Trip to the Timberline Lodge

Last month for Emma’s birthday she decided to have an overnight trip to the mountain with family instead of a birthday party. She had always wanted to go up into the snow so this year I made it happen and we drove the two hour drive to Mt. Hood and stayed at the historic Timberline Lodge.

If you are from Oregon I’m sure you’ve heard of the lodge, which was declared a historic landmark in 1977 and has nearly 2 million visitors a year. Timberline is also the hotel that was filmed in Stephen King’s movie The Shining.

The lodge is the highest point that you can stay in at Mt. Hood, and it has plenty of accommodation options for visitors, including hotel rooms, chalet styled rooms, condominiums (south of the of the lodge in Government Camp), and event space at the Silcox Hut, which is above the main lodge.

We stayed in a large European styled chalet bunk room, which is a big room on the first floor with bunk beds, dressers, a table and chairs. Most chalet rooms have bathrooms and showers available right outside the room in the hall, but the large chalet room has 5 sets of bunk beds so it sleeps up to 10 people, and it has its own bathroom in the room.

The chalet rooms are right down the hall from the outdoor pool and sauna that is open year round. The kids loved soaking in the hot tub surrounded by snowflakes.

When you walk into the lodge you are immediately greeted by artwork and a large fireplace in the center of the room welcoming you to sit and stay for a while. There are many nooks and crannies for families to explore, and the lodge is full of history and charm.

There are plenty of dining options at Timberline - some inside the lodge and others located across the parking lot in the day lodge. We unfortunately didn’t have much time to explore our culinary options, but I did order some hand tossed pizzas to go from the Blue Ox Bar while everyone else was swimming. I sat there in this cozy little bar alone waiting on our pizzas to be cooked, so of course I tried one of their handcrafted cocktails named “Hear No Evil”. It’s created with ginger vodka, mint, lemon, brown sugar and served on the rocks. It was a very pleasant half an hour spent. And as for the pizzas – we ordered three different kinds and they were all very tasty and I’ll definitely order another next time I visit.

The gift shop on the first floor offers lots of great souvenirs as well as wine bottles to enjoy back in your room.

Of course most of the visitors go to Timberline Lodge to ski or snowboard. We did not. It’s on my bucket list, but we spent the day snow tubing at the Mt. Hood Ski Bowl, so our stay at the Timberline Lodge was mostly for relaxing overnight.

We left the Timberline Lodge and all of the magical snow the next afternoon and took many memories home with us. We will definitely plan another trip up there again!

~Melissa