Yesterday Barb and I hiked to Wallace Falls again. The trees are still extremely mossy, the falls are still beautiful (they had more water going over them this time), and I’m pretty sure the last quarter mile or so of the trail has some stairs where there were slippery rocks before. Also last time I said it took about two hours each way. But we were in and out in a little less than three hours this time. And although I was a little bit stiff for a while when we got back I was fine by the evening and today. Last time I was hurting bad enough to take ibuprofen for a few days.

Last June Barb had originally wanted to hike to Annette Lake for her birthday. But there was too much snow so she opted for her second choice, Cedar Butte.

Instead of 3.8 miles and 900 feet of elevation gain Annette Lake is 7.5 miles and 1400 feet of elevation gain. So they say. We discovered there was about 1600 feet of elevation gain and we reached an altitude of over 3700 feet. I’m not sure about the distance but 7.5 miles sounds about right.

It was easy trail to find and follow. Just follow the signs:

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See also day 1 and day 2.

On Sunday (July 24^th) we went to Third Beach.

There are lots of pictures below the fold.

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Barb decided she wanted to go on a hike for her birthday. She spent a lot of time trying to find just the right hike. Not too short, not too long, not too long of a drive, not too much elevation gain, and absolutely required was “a nice view”.

She settled on Cedar Butte. It was only 30 minutes away from home, 900 feet of elevation gain, and 3.8 miles round trip. It seemed pretty reasonable. But what about the view? I’ll let you decide.

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Barb and I went on a walk to Poo Poo Point via Chirico Trail yesterday.It was a little more elevation gain than we wanted (1760 ft.). But it was supposed to have a nice view at the top. The weather was nice so we decided to go for it. We figured we should leave the house before 9:00 AM to be able to get parking easily.

We arrived at the parking lot about 8:15 to find the lot full and the sides of the road filled with cars. “What’s going on?” [Grumble, grumble] We found a place a couple hundred yards away that let us park for $5.00. [Grumble, grumble]

We were at the trail head at 8:27 and saw people with radios who explained this was the landing zone for paragliders and to not dilly-dally around as we cross the zone. [Grumble, grumble]

The hike was more than I was really prepared for. I got winded easily and sweat profusely even though the temperature was in the low 60s. There were a lot of people on the trail. [Grumble, grumble.] It was a nice trail though:

We stopped to rest many times and it took us an hour and 45 minutes to make it to the top.

It was a nice view. It was a very nice view:

But there were all these people:

Oh. They were launching paragliders from here! Cool! No more grumbling.

This was an unexpected bonus. More pictures below the fold:

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After visiting Mesa Verde we spent the night in Cortez. The next morning we drove back to Arches and spent the day there. We probably hiked a total seven miles and saw stunning scenery almost everywhere we went.

I’ll let the pictures tell the story.

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Barb and I were on vacation for the last week. Friday (October 16^th) we left home about noon and drove to West Port, Washington (on the coast) to visit friends for the weekend.

I saw a couple stickers on a car that indicated I was near “my kind of people”:

On Sunday morning we drove to the Seattle-Tacoma airport and flew to Las Vegas, arriving about 7:00 PM. We then drove to Brian Head, Utah arriving about 2:00 AM local time.

It was an interesting drive from Las Vegas to Brian Head. Just getting the rental car was an adventure. We “got a good deal” on a Jeep (I need lots of headroom) via Fox Rent A Car. When we checked in they told us it was an extra $10/day for a second driver. So much for the “good deal”.

We loaded all our stuff into the Jeep and started to leave when I noticed the low tire pressure light was on. I reported it and they said to take a different Jeep. We loaded our stuff into and started the car and the “Oil Change” light came on. We reported it and checked out the only small SUV remaining, a Rav 4. By adjusting the seat to the lowest position I could sit in by tipping my head to the side just a bit. And it smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. We were discussing going to a different rental agency when another Jeep, freshly washed showed up. We inspected it, found nothing wrong, and moved all our stuff into it and drove away. It wasn’t until two days later that we discovered the right rear door would not lock. We won’t be renting from Fox Rent A Car again.

The weather apps on our phones warned of heavy rains and flash floods all the way to Cedar City. The speed limit was 80 MPH on much of the interstate freeway in Utah but with the heavy rains I seldom drove over 55 MPH.

We needed to get some groceries and according to our research prior to leaving home there was a 24-hour Wal-Mart Super store in town. We arrived about 12:40 AM to find the store was closed. We drove around a bit and found a grocery store which was open. Barb went in and started shopping while I parked the car. When I walked in I was told they were closing in seven minutes. Barb and I coordinated our searches and dashed all over the store picking up various items. It was a bit of a hodgepodge of stuff and few things that weren’t quite what we thought we had grabbed off the shelves but it was good enough and we laughed at ourselves as we went through checkout.

We continued on to our condo at Brian Head, climbing up to 9800 feet above sea level, with the last mile or so pushing slush and snow ahead of the Jeep. We got into bed about 2:00 AM.

The next morning, Monday, we felt ill. I recognized the symptoms. It was altitude sickness. I would get dizzy every time I changed from a sitting or bending over position to standing. I was sometimes gasping for breath. We considered just staying there and getting better before we continued on to the National Parks. Barb looked up the symptoms and treatments on the Internet. Symptoms are similar to having drank too much alcohol and a hangover. Hmmm… so that’s what a hangover feels like. I’ve never had a hangover before. The treatment is to go to a lower altitude. You can avoid it by acclimating more slowly. Gain about 3000 feet per day they said. Great. We exceeded the recommended altitude gain per day by a factor of 3.27. No wonder we were feeling messed up.

All the National Parks we were visiting were at a lower altitudes so we decided to continue on schedule in the hopes of feeling better when we got to lower ground. We went to Bryce Canyon, at an elevation of over 8000 feet, and went on a three mile hike down and then up out of the steep canyon.

We felt much better…

Details on our adventures with lots of pictures to follow in more blog posts.

Last Sunday Barb and I went for a hike on Bainbridge Island. We were meeting friends from the peninsula and as this is about halfway between our homes and them liking the outdoors as much as we did we decided to go on a short hike through the woods to Gazzam Lake.

We planned to leave at 8:30 AM to catch the 9:35 ferry but we were ready to go at 8:20 and left early. We arrived at the ferry dock, paid for our ticket, and were told we were going to be on the 8:45 ferry. Essentially we arrived just a few minutes before it was scheduled to leave and just had to drive onto the ferry and it took off. Excellent timing! The only problem was we were now 50 minutes early to meet our friends.

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Since his parents don’t really care for hiking in the woods Barb and I took it upon ourselves to take Bryce on his first hike. It was a short walk, about 1.1 miles round trip. He walked the entire way except for when I carried him about 100 feet at the place the trail was very narrow with a steep drop off to sharp rocks on one side.

He seemed pretty happy with the whole adventure. He did seem to think throwing rocks in the water was more interesting than looking at the waterfall though.

Photo by Barb

He switched things up a bit by throwing a stick too.

Photo by Barb

All indications are that he had a good time.

We weren’t in the mood for an all day adventure so we found a hike that was less than 10 miles away from home and less than three miles round trip with little elevation gain. We ended up selecting Around the Lake Trail.

Lakes are generally nice so there would be a view better than just the trail and the woods, right? Well… generally that is true. But this hiked ended up being, in the words of Barb, “notably non-memorable.”

It wasn’t bad in any way. It just wasn’t anything great.

One of the main attractions of this hike was a short branch of the trail called “Bus Trail”. This was the bus. I suspect its history is less interesting than all the bullet holes might suggest.

I’ve seen bigger and nicer ponds than this lake.

I’m sorry. This doesn’t qualify as a “lake”. This is a wet spot which should be drained and made into a meadow.

A fair amount of the trail was close to being a sidewalk.

Then there was the section of the trail that is fenced in.

This might be fun for kids of the appropriate age but we didn’t bother to check it out.

We did have fun with a short game of “Where’s Barb?”

There was some scenery that was pleasurable to look at and it was certainly better than a walk around the neighborhood.

It is very hot this weekend and Barb went looking for a hike that wasn’t too long and with very little elevation gain. Franklin Falls met our criteria.

It was crowded and it is easy to see why. The trail was mostly wide and smooth. The trail was shaded and while it was 90 F at home it was 72 F at the trail head. Only at the very end was it a little bit sketchy with a steep drop off on one side:

The actual falls were nice too:

The bridge you see in the upper left of the picture above is the west bound lanes of I-90 just west of Snoqualmie Pass. As Barb said, “I had no idea this was here.”

Yesterday Barb and I were riding a ferry at sea level.

Today (after driving to 6400 feet at Sunrise on Mount Rainier) we hiked to Dege Peak which is over 7000 feet above sea level:

This is the hike we attempted during Memorial Day Weekend.

The views were surreal.

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While on Lopez Island yesterday and today we went on some short hikes.

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After our unexpected adventure on Saturday we took it a lot easier on Sunday morning.

We hiked the Grove of the Patriarchs Loop in the Mount Rainier National Park. It’s less than 1.5 miles and has about 50 feet of elevation gain. And the trail is wide and flat:

The trees, while no match for Sequoias or Redwoods, were pretty cool. Some were 1000+ years old.

As is usual in much of Western Washington there was a lot of moss:

There was a cute little bridge to cross:

And much of the trail was what we considered “just about our level” after the previous day of exertion:

This was kind of interesting. A bunch of little trees growing out of an old fallen tree:

I’m 6’ 3” so this gives you a little bit of scale for some of the trees:

This is Barb pretending to be a starfish in the same tree:

It was a pleasant hike with nothing particularly dramatic to see and a low probability of another “unexpected adventure”.

It started out with a mistake on my part. I got a call from Bloodworks Northwest on Tuesday asking me to donate blood. I made an appointment for the following evening and a couple minutes after I got off the phone I remembered Barb and I were going to go hiking on Mount Rainer over the weekend. Rats! I’m going to be hiking up mountains at high altitudes while a pint low on blood. It figures. I did the same thing when we went to Yosemite a couple years ago. Continue reading →

Barb, Maddy (Barb’s daughter), and I went on a hike up to Rattlesnake Ridge yesterday. It was cloudy and there was some precipitation but not bad. It was about two miles each way with quite bit of elevation gain. Because of the dreary weather I hadn’t anticipated there being any great photo opportunities so I didn’t bring my SLR with me.

The view was nicer than I expected and we took a few photos with our phones:

Last weekend Barb and I went to California for Stanford’s Parents Weekend. It is Barb’s daughter, Maddy, who is attending there and I was mostly along for support such as carrying heavy objects, navigation, and donating excess heat to Barb as needed. It was colder than we expected and we even had rain. I’m not really complaining about it. Mostly just trying to rub it in a bit to others. While others were dealing with snow and cold we went for a walk on the beach.

When not performing my normal duties I took pictures. We drove to Venice Beach and hiked a little more than 1.5 miles south were some of the prettier ones were taken. Some other time I’ll post pictures of the two mile long particle accelerator we toured.

As shown by the unruly hair it was a little windy.

It was a little bit cold. We only saw three women in bikinis and I only saw one of them get into the water. While we were glad we brought coats and long sleeve shirts for a time it was comfortable with short sleeved shirts.

We saw a group of about 15 or 20 people on horseback. I’ve never ridden horse on a beach before. I might like to try it sometime. But it probably would have to be without Barb. She doesn’t care for riding horses.

This is probably a radar station but I preferred to think of it as a giant golf ball on a tee.

There were a fairly large number of seagulls and I was a bit concerned they were on “bombing runs” sometimes when they flew over but they were actually well behaved.

I took this one with my phone. I wish I had used my SLR. With a longer focal length Barb would not have been so distorted in size compared to Maddy and the higher resolution would have made it something I would have cropped a little bit, printed, framed, and hung on the wall.

This is probably my favorite. The dramatic clouds. The active ocean. The disappearing tire track. Even the seagulls in the distance really appeal to me.

For the 4th of July this year Barb, her daughter Maddy, and I decided to go hiking near Mount Saint Helens. I have been interested in going for years but it just never worked out. This year we made it happen.

Mount Saint Helens exploded on May 18, 1980 and created the largest debris avalanche in recorded history. I heard the boom from it over a 100 miles away in Kirkland Washington. The ash from it fell on our farm in Idaho 275 miles away. I still have a pound or so of the ash that was swept off of the patio from my parents house.

We went on an eight mile (round trip) hike through part of the area destroyed by the high speed avalanche and blast from the explosion. We walked to within five miles of the crater. You might think five miles is a long way away. But the eruption killed trees 17 miles away. The scale of the destruction is amazing.

Taking a picture of something five miles away with the wide angle lens in an ordinary cell phone usually results in the object being invisible. This is not the case with Mount Saint Helens:

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Barb and I finally found time to go on our first hike of the season. We went to Talapus Lake:

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