Last weekend I headed down to Kelso for some hiking with Dad and Jenny. On Saturday Dad and I (Jenny was on call to help her mother-in-law deliver a horse) headed for the Mt. St. Helens Silver Lake Visitor's Center. We spent quite a bit of time inside looking at the displays, and it turns out we should have done that afterward. We barely started the walk around the lake when it started sprinkling, and in a a few more minutes it started pouring. After waiting under the trees and sipping our coffees for a while, we decided to make a break for it, and ran the rest of the way around the lake.

That night I got to see Jenny show off her riding skills, and had a nice visit with Loki, who seems to have this farm life thing figured out ok. He and Chris still have some disagreements over bedtime (he doesn't think he should have one, she doesn't want him to get eaten by coyotes), but other than that he seems to be having a good time catching mice in the woodpile and ignoring the rabbits.

On Sunday we had a nice walk down at the refuge. The head-high grass made it pretty impossible to spot any deer, but we did see lots of red-tailed hawks, vultures, and ospreys. And Jenny showed off her skills as a butterfly-whisperer.

Labels: hiking

41 Garfield High students + 7 chaperones + one 8-yr-old makes for a pretty hectic 2 weeks in Maui! Each of the chaperones drove a minivan, and we left no corner of the island unexplored, logging 752 miles on the vans. We had fantastic snorkeling, saw the sun rise over Haleakala and hiked down into the crater, took night tidepool walks, drove to Hana and around the east side of the island, swam in waterfalls, caught a luau, learned to surf, had a boat ride to Lanai, and bagged plenty of beach time.

Life at Camp Pecusa (where we stayed) held geckos, cockroaches, a resident mad scientist, orchids, one dance-interrupting centipede, spiders, plumeria, whales, and a cranky cuddly calico cat. The kids took turns cooking all the meals (with quite a bit of direction) and came up with crazy contests to establish which groups would get to eat first. We saw cross-dressing, strength contests, no-hands whipped cream eating races (with surprises), sun-burn whipping endurance (ouch), and more. Overall, and amazing 2 weeks of learning and living.

We just had our reunion/slideshow last week. It was great to see some of the kids again, and Darrin (one of the chaperones) gathered up pictures from everyone and put together a great slideshow. His website has a pretty thorough documentation of the trip - he takes some great pictures.

Labels: snorkeling

Back in April, Dad and I had a really nice hike up to the top of Dog Mountain, down on the Columbia River. We caught a lot of the spring wildflowers at their peak, and took a lot of great pictures. The trail takes you up about 3000 feet from the river, and the flowers keep changing as you make your way up. Unfortunately, we didn't notice the big "look out for poison ivy" signs until we were leaving, and Dad ended up with a nasty rash.

Labels: hiking, Washington, wildflowers

Finishing our volunteer portion of the week (diligently chaperoning marine science students from Garfield High School while sea kayaking just outside of Deception Pass, swimming in Bowman Bay and checking out tidepools), we walked on the ferry at Anacortes to meet my parents on their boat in Deer Harbor.

It didn't take long to figure out what sort of boating this crew was up to. Five minutes after getting to Dennis & Sally's boat for dinner, I felt like I was three hours late to the party. Dennis & Tom had their "3 amigos" shirts unbuttoned most of the way and were bumping butts on the dance floor almost as much as they were dropping the lid of the BBQ. Impressive performance all the way around.

Knowing we needed to prepare for retirement, Em and I quickly melted into the scene. Wake up whenever, drink some coffee, walk the dock, spit shine Rondo's watermarks off the hull, crack a beer, do some reading, poor a cocktail, eat great food, repeat.

Missing my younger days of bombing around in a smaller boat, I was stoked when Dennis took us for a ride and then let us "kids" take the boat out ourselves. Muchos gracias senior amigo.

After a couple hot days in Deer Harbor, we motored to Fisherman's Bay on Lopez for Sunday night.

More R&R topped off with the breakfast finale...ranging from fruit to scrambles to berry pie complimented with your choice of bloody mary or coffee & brandy. Yes, this required a nap before we hitched a ride to the ferry. That boating thing is hard work we look forward to doing again soon.

Sunshine in spring 2005? Fortunately for Em & I, we were unemployed the week before Memorial Day...yes, that one week of sunshine!

This was a week we'll think about whenever living outside of the PNW and recall just how amazing a place this nook of the planet is. Our week took us from blowing rain on the Long Beach Peninsula to calm sunshine on Mt. Rainier to hot sunsets over Deception Pass and the San Juans. OK, focusing on the Mt. Rainier part of the week...

Knowing the park opened the road to Mowich Lake just the day before (May 22) and with a forecast that finally looked promising, we left Monday to camp above Spray Park. This was my first time to this part of the mountain any time of year, so I was stoked. Monday's hike in consisted of overall blah weather with little visibility and some light snow. But to my happy hopes, I awoke in the middle of the night to brightness as the full moon was rising just south of the summit.

With the hot weather predictions and recent snowfall (and I really wanted to recon as much as I could of this side of the mountain!), we were up and skinning by 6:30. The morning was magnificent. My goal was to get up between Echo & Observation Rocks. Fortunately, Em was loving the conditions and felt like pushing further up. We made our high point a couple hundred feet above Observation Rock looking down onto the Russell Glacier. The Russell looked pristine and beckoned us to lay marks on its virgin slopes. Rather than gambling on the fun/work ratio for the team, I decided to save the Russell for another day and keep the focus on all positives for this ski experience. We descended the east flank of the Flett and it was smooth sweetness.



With a cloud level at ~5000' and moving up the west side of the mountain, I traversed to a ridge to determine if we had time to grab a quick lap before clouds might affect our final descent to camp. Giving Em the go ahead to grab more fall line, she jumped all over it with ecstatic "yahoos." I knew she was feeling it when I descended next and my turn ratio wasn't any larger than hers!



Just beating the clouds to camp, we finished the skiing with this tasty shot...



We were stoked to see this area and grateful that we had the opportunity to ski in such pristine conditions that have been so scarce this spring.

Labels: ski touring