Each year, by the time spring rolls around, I find myself struggling against a desperation to break out my backpacking gear, stashed away since the previous fall. After the darkness and rain of winter, I'm itching to spend the night camped out on some wild and peaceful trail. There are always many problems with this desire; spring is a busy time for me at work, and I have several family birthdays to celebrate, so a free weekend before summer is in full swing is a rare thing indeed. The past few years, I've even had a particular trail in mind when dreaming of my early-season backpacking trips — Ingalls Creek. While many other trails in the area are still heaped with a mess of rapidly melting snow, this meandering trail in Teanaway is typically snow free for at least the first several miles. In the spring, like many other trails in the area, Ingalls Creek is decorated with a colorful blanket of wildflowers.
Read moreLife: Week 24
Summer has arrived, and with it the long days of sunshine and hot weather. Halfway through June and already there have been an intolerable number of sweaty, restless nights where the temperature in our apartment doesn't seem to drop below 75. There are many things I love about summer, but I could do without the heat! With a vacation to get ready for, Andy and I spent our weekend close to home, although we did make time for another day trip to Whidbey Island to pick up more of our favorite coffee from Useless Bay in Langley. It wasn't until we were on our way home that we realized while we'd eaten lunch on their patio, we'd completely forgotten to pick up more coffee! Of course that just means that we'll need to make another trip to Whidbey. How unfortunate...
Read moreLife: Week 23
Ah, Bellingham. Since some friends moved north, Andy and I have been making frequent trips to visit, and every time we do, I come home dreaming of making a permanent move to the city. Bellingham has all the things I love about Seattle (mountains, water, tons of nearby hiking) in a smaller, less crowded package. Recently, there's also been an explosion of fantastic new bars, coffee shops, and restaurants. It certainly didn't hurt that on the particular weekend we were in town, while rain was forecast from Portland up into Canada, we had nothing but sunshine in Bellingham! It was like a lovely little island of summer. Perhaps someday Andy and I will find ourselves moving north, but for now it's certainly lovely to have good friends who don't mind our frequent visits!
Read moreLife: Week 22
Now that Memorial Day has come and gone, work has slowed down, and I'm finally starting to have the time and energy to do more during the week than work, eat a quick dinner, then binge a few episodes of Veep (which I finally got around to watching) before bed. This week, that left me with the time and energy to tackle our mess of backpacking gear so we could hit the trail over the weekend and finally break in the new tent we bought last fall! It turned out to be the perfect weekend for our first trip of the year - the trail we'd picked was bursting with wildflowers and inexplicably uncrowded. We even had the campground where we set up camp to ourselves! Raging Ingalls Creek may have been loud enough to wake me up a few times over the course of the night, but the view from our campsite was well worth it. With such a short hike back to the car, we even made it back to civilization in time for a late lunch at the soft opening of a restaurant in Duvall that will certainly be a new favorite! My summer weekends are quickly filling up, but I'm hoping for at least a few more weekends like this one!
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!
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