Farewell Seattle

Our time in Seattle has come to an end. We will miss this city and its endless supply of beauty and adventure, and will always have fond memories of our time here. I made one last trip out tonight to take some parting shots:

Boston here we come!

(Technically Becky is already there; I'm just a little slow)

Sunset and Salmon

As Becky starts up with her new job in Boston (go Becky!), I am closing up things out here. Since the apartment is not the same without her around, I have found myself driving around town and taking pictures along the way.











You can find more here and here.

Best Present Ever!

Becky gave me a sea plane trip for my birthday, and I finally collected on it by flying with her up to Victoria, B.C.! Here is a video of our landing on Lake Union on the way home.

Rainier Pictures

Pictures from our trip to Rainier and St. Helens for the 4th of July can be found here

Lenticular Cloud!

I am working on getting some more updates on here, but in the meantime I thought I would share this with everyone. On our way from Rainier to Mount St. Helens, a spectacular cloud formation loomed over Rainier. Pretty neat, eh?

Taylor!

It's official!

So it's official, Travers and I got engaged this weekend! He surprised me while we were up at the Tulip Festival in Mount Vernon. Here's what happened:



I suspected nothing...



Travers kept up a good show of being very involved in his photographs while waiting to make his move...



Next thing I knew I had a ring on my hand!!



And we're both thrilled :)


Click here for some more pictures from our day

So I am a little slow...

But I finally managed to get our Maui pictures up on flickr!

Maui Pictures!

From there you should be able to browse the entire set and look at or download higher quality versions. I tried to add tags to most of the photos, which you can see to the right of photos that you click on. You can also navigate around my flickr site (here) and see other sets. I'm working on putting up a lot more of our pictures, so I'll be sure to post when there are more.

Turtles and rays and fish, oh my

A few pictures to get us started...

Here are a few pictures from our wonderful trip to Maui last month - more updates will be coming soon!!

Rainier

We had been meaning to make a trip to Rainier ever since we caught our first glimpse of it driving towards downtown, and after finally making it down there this August, I wish we had gone sooner. We were camping at a KOA in Ellensberg, WA after after seeing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the Gorge Amphitheatre, and decided to take a side trip to Rainier. After waking up and saying goodbye to our underpass campsite, we headed off through the bleak landscape of Western Washington and worked our way back into the dense forests of fir that surround the park. The first real view of the mountain from the approach we took was pretty spectacular, even with all of the cloud cover.


After driving along some fun and precarious roads on our way to the Sunrise section of the park, we stopped at a viewpoint for a windy photo opportunity.
We parked the car at the Sunrise visitor center (which at 6400' is the highest point in the park reachable by vehicle) and surveyed the nasty looking clouds that were battling it out with the blue sky West of the mountain, and weren't sure if we would be able to hike. Thankfully, following a quick drizzle, and short retreat by us into the center, things started to clear up and we decided to head out.

Even if there was not a giant glaciated volcano looming in the background, this still would have been one of my favorite hikes purely because of the wildflowers that blanketed the slopes.

Becky enjoying the view and the flowers.

Looking back North, the Cascades stretched out for as far as the eye could see.

There was a lovely lake along the way (we had passed it at this point) that still had a large chunk of ice in it that gave off a nice blue glow.


The trail kept going and going, but we had to turn back so we could make it back home at a reasonable hour, so we took a group shot (Becky, Rainier, and I) and hoofed it back to the car.
Some more fantastic wildflowers along the way back.

Lake 22

Towards the beginning of August we continued our hiking adventures by going to Lake 22, a research national area established in 1947. Since this area has been under preservation, there is still a good chunk of old growth forest to meander through, which always makes our inner-children happy (though I might be a little more enamored with them, as evidenced below).


The trail follows a river fed by the lake's drain-off, though it mainly stays far enough from the water so that you only hear hints of the water falls that are hiding off in woods. You do get to see a few of them from the trail, but we decided to take a short side trip to get a better view of one.



Again, Becky showed off her keen slug eye:
After passing through an exposed boulder field, the trail goes back into the woods as it approaches the lake. The snow this winter was quite heavy, and part of the trail had recently been re-carved out from the remnants of an avalanche.


The last part of the trail to the lake was still covered in snow (this was in August, and only at ~2500 feet!), and it was quite chilly as we ate our lunch on the shore. The almost 3000' cliffs that the lake sits at the base of were shrouded in clouds, so we were never able to see the top of Mt. Pilchuck above, but it was still beautiful.


For some reason I couldn't convince Becky to climb up any of these shrouded towers. . .

Wallace Falls

In the middle of July we decided to take a hike up to see Wallace Falls just north of us. The beginning of this hike was a little ominous since the trailhead parking lot and first bits of the hike were towered over by large power lines that emitted an unexpectedly loud humming and crackling noise. This is the type of thing that makes one pause for a second and question any faith that might be had in the government's ability to keep you out of harms way. Adopting the stance of "If this is not normal and possibly harmful, then I'm sure someone else would have reported it already" we hurried along under the lines until the trail took a turn into the protective woods.

You may not know this about Becky, but she has an extremely keen eye when it comes to spotting slugs along the trail. Proof in point:


The trail to the falls meanders alongside a lovely river with views of smaller falls and lush greenery along the way. Eventually you arrive at a nice viewing area of the upper falls where you can call it a short day or continue on up (and up) to the top viewing area. As you go up the switchbacks towards the top of the falls, you are afforded some pretty nice views along the way.
The top viewing platform allowed us to look back down at the upper falls and out at the valley below, and was a nice spot to end on. Overall a very nice hike, minus the power lines at the beginning.

Woohoo!

We're going to Maui tomorrow!! I really should be packing right now (we're in the middle of the last minute packing frenzy that we can never seem to avoid), but I needed a break so I decided it was a great time to update the blog :)

Sorry to have neglected putting up new posts, but it turns out that it's probably going to be raining for the next 8 or 9 months, straight so I'm guessing we'll have some time to catch up one of these days. Anyway, we'll be back next Sunday, hopefully with lots of great Hawaii pictures to show everyone!

Travers' Parents' Visit

Back in June I managed to convince my parents that it was warm enough for them to come out for a visit. Unfortunately they had a rough start with canceled flights and then poor weather for the first part of their trip, but the weekend ended up being fantastic. After a week of eating and seeing the sites around town (with my parents taking a nice side trip to Victoria), we decided to head out to the Olympic peninsula. We made it all the way to La Push and the Pacific coast on Saturday and picked a random beach trailhead to wander down. After hiking through the forest for a bit, we emerged onto a classic Northwest beach full of driftwood and devoid of crowds.

Here's my mom and Becky after they made the scramble over the giant driftwood pile that separates the beach from the forest.

At the North end of the beach there was a nice natural arch that made for some picturesque shots.



Becky and I have been in search of starfish for a long time (with disappointing results in Maine and at a couple beaches in Washington), and we were finally rewarded with some great big orange and purple ones scattered on the rocks.

Here we all are in front of one of the large sea stacks along the beach.

On the hike back we spotted some gross looking growths, so of course I had to take some pictures.

After a night spent in Port Angeles, we took the drive up Hurricane Ridge into Olympic National Park. Becky and I had been out here during the winter when then road was closed, so we had no idea what to expect when we reached the top. After winding our way up 15 miles of oh-so-close-to-the-edge road, we came to this beautiful view of Mt. Olympus and friends.


We also found the machine that was responsible for clearing the way up to the visitor's center. Thankfully it did not eat us.
Becky and I enjoyed my parents' visit immensely. Hopefully it didn't take them too long to recover from the trip. Thanks for coming out mom and dad! Love you guys.

Happy Birthday Lincoln!!

I'm a couple of days late with this post, but we just wanted to say Happy Birthday again to my nephew Lincoln! I can't believe he's already 2 years old. Even crazier is the fact that I had an actual conversation with him on the phone on his birthday - I got an actual "Hi Becky" and we had a little chat about Finding Nemo. Unbelievable!

This was back when he was only 12 days old

And 2 years later - thanks for the picture I stole from your blog Kati :)

Visitors!

It's funny how many more people want to visit Seattle in the summer than in the fall/winter/spring. A little rain never hurt anyone! But I guess it is much (MUCH) nicer here when the sun comes out :)

Anyway, we've been lucky to have several visits from friends and family in the past few months. Reese kicked it off back in May, followed by the Franckles in June and the Latkas at the end of July/beginning of August. We had a great time with all of you! And we'd love to have more folks out for any of you that are considering the trip.

Stay tuned for pictures of all of those visits soon...

Waaaay back in May...

We went to MA to visit my family and I never posted pictures! Ack! So here are a few. We had a fantastic time so thank you to everyone for humoring us and being such great hosts for our impromptu trip (and THANK YOU to Travers for such a wonderful birthday idea!)

Isn't Lincoln adorable?? I wanted to steal him but I figured that Kati and Mike might notice.

Learning to bowl

those are some big feet!

Travers is going to add some better pictures that he took with his camera soon (hint, hint)