Three Mornings

Monday morning:

Yesterday morning:

This morning:

Farewell Houston, I am moving to Seattle.

Sigh. We had a wonderful weekend traipsing around Seattle, Mt. Rainier, and Olympic National Park, despite the fact that we seemed to experience two of the small handful of rainy days they have out there this time of year. It was gorgeous in Seattle on Thursday for the baseball game and hanging out — you could see Mt. Rainier clearly in the distance. But as luck would have it, it was cloudy and misty such that I could only see glimpses of the mountain the next day when we were actually hiking on it. (To be fair, the sun was out in spurts earlier — we just arrived at the top of Skyline Trail moments too late.)

Saturday was pleasant as we drove to Olympic, met Jen, and hiked into the backcountry. Sunday was again cloudy, cold, and rainy but we hiked to the top of a pass anyway and had a decent view of the valley and some glaciers. Monday dawned clear and cold (I was not fully prepared for waking up to frost on Monday morning!) and it was sunny again for our hike out. In a departure from our norm, this backpacking trip was easy going in (descending) and hard going out. To get back to the car we had to climb more than 1500 feet over about 5 miles, which doesn’t sound like all that much until you learn that the first 2+ miles are downhill, leaving only a little more than 2 miles for the climbing. These weren’t just switchbacks — there are steep switchbacks. We hiked out on some of the steepest trail I’ve ever climbed, and made it back to the car in about four hours.

Here’s the route we did at Olympic. Yellow is the dirt road we drove along to get to the trailhead (~6100 ft). Blue is the hike in and down to the valley and Moose Lake (~4500 ft), red is the dayhike up to Grand Pass (~6300 ft) and back, and green is the hike back out.

We said farewell to Jen at Hurricane Ridge and headed out to the coast — from glaciated mountains to the Pacific Ocean in two short hours! We watched sunset before heading to a hotel for the night (a change of plans once we realized it’d be very nice, for us and for other travelers, if we showered before having to fly home). Yesterday morning we hiked along the beach to Hole-In-The-Wall before piling back in the car for the lazy drive back to Seattle. We’d hoped to catch the ferry across Puget Sound, but ended up driving back around through Tacoma because of worries that taking the ferry would be cutting it close on arriving at the airport in time for our flight.

(If you need proof of how much of a dork I am, just know that crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge — twice! — was one of the highlights of my trip. If you don’t know why, then be relieved because you are either 1) not as much of a dork as me or 2) never took high school physics. If you want to be a dork, here’s why I love the bridge.)

We got back late last night, tired and not wanting to return to the humidity. I got home to find that my air conditioning, which had been running when I walked in the door, stopped running when I turned the temperature down from 80 degrees. I couldn’t make it go, so I slept in a warm apartment all night. Booo. This morning, it suddenly turned on again without any input from me. I am mystified.

Anyway, I’m back and have a zillion pictures and a full trip report to come soon.