Summer has arrived, and with it the long days of sunshine and hot weather. Halfway through June and already there have been an intolerable number of sweaty, restless nights where the temperature in our apartment doesn't seem to drop below 75. There are many things I love about summer, but I could do without the heat! With a vacation to get ready for, Andy and I spent our weekend close to home, although we did make time for another day trip to Whidbey Island to pick up more of our favorite coffee from Useless Bay in Langley. It wasn't until we were on our way home that we realized while we'd eaten lunch on their patio, we'd completely forgotten to pick up more coffee! Of course that just means that we'll need to make another trip to Whidbey. How unfortunate...
Read moreLife: Week 23
Ah, Bellingham. Since some friends moved north, Andy and I have been making frequent trips to visit, and every time we do, I come home dreaming of making a permanent move to the city. Bellingham has all the things I love about Seattle (mountains, water, tons of nearby hiking) in a smaller, less crowded package. Recently, there's also been an explosion of fantastic new bars, coffee shops, and restaurants. It certainly didn't hurt that on the particular weekend we were in town, while rain was forecast from Portland up into Canada, we had nothing but sunshine in Bellingham! It was like a lovely little island of summer. Perhaps someday Andy and I will find ourselves moving north, but for now it's certainly lovely to have good friends who don't mind our frequent visits!
Read moreLife: Week 22
Now that Memorial Day has come and gone, work has slowed down, and I'm finally starting to have the time and energy to do more during the week than work, eat a quick dinner, then binge a few episodes of Veep (which I finally got around to watching) before bed. This week, that left me with the time and energy to tackle our mess of backpacking gear so we could hit the trail over the weekend and finally break in the new tent we bought last fall! It turned out to be the perfect weekend for our first trip of the year - the trail we'd picked was bursting with wildflowers and inexplicably uncrowded. We even had the campground where we set up camp to ourselves! Raging Ingalls Creek may have been loud enough to wake me up a few times over the course of the night, but the view from our campsite was well worth it. With such a short hike back to the car, we even made it back to civilization in time for a late lunch at the soft opening of a restaurant in Duvall that will certainly be a new favorite! My summer weekends are quickly filling up, but I'm hoping for at least a few more weekends like this one!
Read moreLife: Week 21
Holiday weekends mean crowds, traffic, and stress, so in the past Andy and I have tended to just spend long weekends close to home. Especially after weeks of overtime at work, a quiet weekend at home sounded pretty perfect. That is until I noticed that WTA had work parties scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday on a trail that's only a 15 minute walk from my parents cabin! By the time I saw this, both days were full, but I put both myself and Andy on the wait list and crossed my fingers. If we managed to snag spots for either day, we could spend the remainder of the weekend at the cabin with my family - even better than spending the weekend at home. At the last minute, two spots opened up, but they'd moved the work party to the nearby Denny Creek trail. Instead of walking from the cabin to meet the group Saturday morning, we'd have to drive. Regardless of the location, the work was fantastic as always. Andy spent most of the day building rock steps, and I worked on drainage. Drainage maintenance is mucky, filthy work, but it's so satisfying to see clear water once again flowing down a drainage trench when you'd started with a debris filled mud pit and water running across the trail!
Read moreLife: Week 20
In a stressful and overwhelming spring, with many long days spent alone in my stuffy home office, Alpine Trails Book Club has twice provided exactly the escape I needed to maintain my sanity. This time around, it our weekend away as much closer to home, and it was my turn to host a few members of our group Saturday night at Andy's family cabin near Lake Wenatchee. We left home to a light spring rain and arrived to sunshine, wildflowers, and an unholy number of mosquitoes at the cabin. Being so early in the year, I hadn't expected the tiny bloodsuckers and we'd come completely unprepared! Thankfully there was some (probably very old, but still functional) bug spray in the cabin, and others had thought to bring some. The smoky fire we built seemed to help too, but after an hour or so, a group of us fled to the park at the south end of Lake Wenatchee for a peaceful walk that provided an escape from the swarm. By the time we returned to the cabin for dinner, it had started to rain, but we didn't let that stop us from roasting sausages over the fire! Some strategically placed bark kept both the fire an our dinner dry while we hid on the covered deck of the cabin. Sunday morning, we packed up and headed for Leavenworth for a pre-hike coffee (with a fantastic view!) before meeting the group for our hike on Icicle Ridge.
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