Kayaking in the Puget Sound

In the first part of August, I went to Seattle to visit my second-cousin, Ruth Ann. She took me to her cabin/beach house on Marrowstone Island. We immediately went to Port Townsend and had lunch by this little marina and then bought my shellfish license so we could go crabbing and clamming. Unfortunately, there was a red tide and so we couldn't go clamming, but still attempted to try crabbing. One night we went kayaking in Discovery Bay after dark so we could see the bioluminescence in the water. Bioluminescence is a micro-organism that illuminates when you the stir the water. It was unreal to see this sparkly glitter stuff in the water whenever I moved my paddle or swished my hand through the water. The conditions have to be just right in order to see them--it has to be dark and the water has to be warmer than it usually is. Fascinating!

The next day we took the crab pot (trap) out to Mystery Bay on our kayaks and dropped it down in the bay. Then we went kayaking around the bay. We came back to our pot and found that we had caught a huge sea star. So we threw the pot back in the bay in a different spot and crossed our fingers. We had to return my kayak (since it was rented) and then we came back to the bay to try to retrieve the crab pot, but we were trying to get to it in a row boat and in the dark. We decided that it was a lost cause and would come back first thing in the morning. We had to come back first thing in the morning because it is illegal to hunt for shellfish on Sundays so we were hoping we would beat the game warden to our crab pot. But alas we didn't make it in time. The crab pot was confiscated. I felt terrible. Ruth Ann had that crab pot especially made so it would be small enough to put on her kayak. But it was a wonderful weekend and I could really get into kayaking.

Soul2Soul II: The Tim McGraw & Faith Hill concert

Back in the summer of 2000 Tim McGraw and Faith Hill did their first Soul2Soul concert tour and I missed it! But I was just barely beginning to get into country music, so I didn't know how much I would like them. But I wouldn't miss it this time around!! I bought the tickets for the concert the day they went on sale.

I took Jason to the concert and he treated me to a yummy dinner at Thaifoon. The concert was fabulous. It was so fun to sing along at the top of my lungs to all the songs I now know. Tim McGraw is a bit better of a performer, but Faith Hill wasn't bad.

Independence Day

My dad has a phrase that is appropriate for my 4th of July weekend camping trip with my friend Lindsey: "Come he** or high water!" The reason? Well, we had many people bail on us, Lindsey had a search and rescue call that she bailed on, we got a flat tire on the dirt road to our camping spot and then it rained on us. And we still went! It was actually quite the adventure. We got the flat tire on this awesome dirt road, but neither of us felt it go flat--a car behind us flagged us down. So we had to change her tire on this narrow dirt road. The guy that flagged us down offered to help change the tire so he commenced to try to figure out how to get the spare tire down from underneath Lindsey's XTerra. After an hour or so, I asked to try it and I got it within 10 minutes. I was pretty proud of myself. So we got the tire changed and commenced our journey to our second choice camping ground. Lindsey had spotted a really cool one earlier in the summer, but it had a big rock in the road that we would have had to climb over in the car in order to reach it and we didn't feel comfortable taking that risk with a spare tire on the car.

We arrived at our campground and started to collect firewood, but it started to rain. After trying to wait the thunderstorm out for an hour we decided that we couldn't wait for dinner anymore--after all it was 11 o'clock at night!! So we rigged up a couple of ponchos from the back of Lindsey's car and the tent and cooked our salmon dinner on my little BBQ and then also made an Amish Pudding cake in my Dutch oven. We ate well, didn't we?!

Well, the camping trip was short lived as we left first thing in the morning so we could go buy a new tire.

The fun and rain continued on Independence Day! We went to Sugar House Park in Salt Lake and enjoyed another BBQ in the rain. Sugar House Park always has fun fireworks set to music and other fun activities. We enjoyed some illegal sparklers and some ice cream as we celebrated the nation's independence. (The sparklers were illegal because we couldn't have personal fireworks in the park.)

Catching up: Glacier National Park July 2006

Yes! I finally made it to Glacier National Park. For the past couple of years, I have been begging my sister, Teri, to take the family vacation to Glacier National Park in Montana. And we did it! And...it was worth the 12 hour drive.

This trip became the trip of 3s....we were there for 3 full days, hiked 3 hikes for a total of 30 miles and gained 3,000 feet in elevation. Do you see what I mean?

This picture is of the whole gang (me, Jeremy, Teri and Kelly) on our second hike to Grinnell Glacier. You can see the lake below and the beautiful waterfall over Kelly's left shoulder. The glacier is up over the ridge there. That was a pretty grueling hike: many switchbacks, walking through waterfalls, etc. But it was worth it. Not only did we see the glacier but we also saw some mountain sheep. My wanna-be Camelback exploded all over my backside on this hike and thus I became a believer in the value of buying something worth it's cost. But I needed to determine if I liked hydration packs...and I do! (I have since bought a Camelback.)

Here we are basking in the sun with Grinnell Glacier in the background. Teri and I tend to do this at the end of a long hike--collapse on the rock!

Before we actually arrived at the glacier, we came upon a little campground area with a sign saying it was Grinnell Glacier. But it was just a snow field. Unacceptable! I wanted to see a glacier with crevasses and blue snow. I wanted to practice my sword fighting in front of a snow cave and over a crevasse just like Christian Bale in "Batman Begins" did! Thankfully, the snow field was not the end of the hike.

We started our hiking with what we thought would be a "warm up" hike. The hike went from Logan Pass to a chalet and was going to be 15 miles round trip. The map said it was only a 200 foot elevation gain....but it wasn't! The map did not take into account the ups and downs in between the starting and finish points. But on this hike we did see a majority of the animals: mountain goats and a deer. We followed the goats for a while and the deer followed us for a while. When we got to the chalet, someone had a monocular all set up and focused on something on a ridge just beyond the trail we had just hiked. We asked someone what it was and they said it was a grizzly bear and her cub! The grizzly and her cub had been at the chalet earlier that morning and had wandered down the very trail we just hiked down to that ridge. How wild is that?We were seriously the Glacier National Park nomads because we moved campgrounds every night! Needless to say I got really good at taking down my tent and putting it up by myself. But we wanted to move each night so we could be closer to the trails we wanted to hike. This is a picture of Teri and me on the side of the famous "Going to the Sun" road (one of our many times of driving it).

Our last hike was going to Avalanche Lake. It was by far our shortest and easies hike, but we did on the perfect day. Every other day had been cooler and windy, but the day we hiked to Avalanche Lake was warmer. The trail was shady the entire way up. In fact so shady that it made me feel like I was in the Pacific Northwest. Check out the picture!!