The early summer weather continued into another week, with midweek temperatures climbing over 90° - unheard of for June in the PNW. With plans for backpacking over the weekend, I spent the week carefully monitoring the forecast for Saturday and Sunday, worrying about hot dry weather. To my relief, by Friday we had some relief in the form of rain and the weekend forecast had dropped from the mid nineties down to the low seventies, with some cloudy skies thrown in for good measure. Much better hiking weather! After our foraging last weekend, Andy and I had morels to enjoy, and while I had plans to try several new recipes - including a morel risotto I still want to try out - we liked them sautéed in an excessive amount of butter and tossed into a bowl of ramen so much that we ate it for dinner twice, even with the heat!

Unfortunately early in the week, both Andy and I came down with a bad cold, which may have had some influence on our desire to eat soup in the midst of a heat wave, but I wasn’t going to let a stuffy nose keep me from a weekend camping with my Alpine Trails Book Club friends! Thankfully the hike I’d picked out was an easy one, and after only a few hours of hiking our group stopped for the day to set up camp and spend the afternoon relaxing! Andy napped in his hammock while I sat by the creek soaking my feet in the icy creek and reading. Even with a cold putting a slight damper on the weekend, it was a wonderfully restorative trip - one that I’ll be sharing more about soon!