Cider pressing with Andy’s family at their property on Vashon Island is my absolute favorite fall tradition. While it’s only a short ferry ride from Seattle, Vashon feels like a peaceful and remote retreat, far from the noise and bright lights of the city. After talking about it for years, this year Andy and I finally managed to spend the weekend in the Birdhouse - a tiny off-the-grid cabin nestled amid the old-growth maples. We got a late start Saturday morning, but still arrived on Vashon with plenty of time to wander around town, exploring main street and stocking up on pastries, tea, coffee, and cider. After all our drinking and window shopping, we loaded all our goodies into our packs for the short hike down to our home for the night. It was surprisingly cold in the Birdhouse, but our toasty sleeping bags kept us plenty warm!
Read moreLife: Week 36
This was a short but stressful week at work, with Monday off for the Labor Day holiday and Friday off for a short anniversary vacation. Happily, the long weekend more than made up for the stress of the short work week! After much debate, Andy and I decided to spend the weekend at my parents cabin near Snoqualmie Pass. This was definitely a good choice, even if it was made mostly because we’d recently purchased a new mattress, and the old one had been siting in our living room until we could take it up to the cabin to swap it out for one of the horrendously uncomfortable ones there. Since it’s such a short drive, we decided to bring our cat with us, and it didn’t take long for him to get settled in. When I mentioned our plan to my dad, he was dubious, and bringing our cat did turn out to be a bit of a mistake, but only because now I’ll feel terrible any time we go to the cabin without bringing him along!
Read moreLife: Week 31
After yet another week of hot temps at home, I was happy for another weekend escape - this time up into the mountains. Friday night after work, I headed east to join my parents at their cabin, and after a short drive I was greeted with a mai tai and a dinner of homemade tamales. Since Sunday was my dad's birthday, I baked my all-time favorite cake for dessert. Growing up, my dad's birthdays were always celebrated at the family cabin, and his birthday cakes - baked in a wood burning oven - always managed to be both burnt and undercooked. This cake, baked with an intentionally jiggly middle, seemed like the perfect homage to the cakes my grandmother baked in that old oven. In place of a birthday candle, my mom lit a match to stick in the cake, and amusing and convenient substitution - perhaps a new cabin birthday tradition?
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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