Getting Outside – Page 34

February 17, 2009

A Birthday at the B

I have always loved by birthday. Perhaps it is selfish to love the day you were born, but I’ve always loved my birthday. I share it with Michael Jordan. When I was young(er) he would send me birthday cards. Interestingly enough, MJ has the same handwriting as my dad…..

I had read about Cave B months ago from a blog that I follow and told Barry about it in passing. Without my knowledge Barry booked us a weekend there for my 29th birthday. He’s so sneaky. I, on the other hand, am not….mental note: be more like Barry come September 14th.

It was gorgeous.

We went on a hike where Sydney was able to practice living life off-leash. This is a good thing, as we went to the dog park recently and became concerned that she chose to ignore all other four legged friends. Luckily, she started behaving like a dog: sniffing, digging, sprinting, ignoring. Phew.

The weather was cold, the trails were empty and it was a fantastic day to be outside. We decided that it wasn’t completely necessary to test the water; however, we did see a car with a surfboard on its rack.

After heading back to our super-fancy room and drinking hot chocolate, we hit up the winery tasting room sans camera. I had been day dreaming about the seafood bisque I had the night before, so we bought a bottle of wine and headed to the restaurateur. Since we had already experienced the restaurant we decided to utilize the fireplace and comfy couches. Delicious. Not only that, but we were given a hint to order the onion rings that were not on the menu. We ordered and they were surprisingly tasty and cheap.

Sadly, the Element had been giving us car troubles on our way to Cave B and we had to wake early on our last day to ensure a timely trip over the pass after (hopefully) getting it fixed in Wenatchee. We dropped The Green Machine off at the Honda dealer and bounced with our pug in hand. We found a state park nearby and again practiced off-leash time.

Before we got the call that our vehicle had been fixed (yay!) Sydney insisted on a photo shoot.

She’s so selfish. I would never ask someone to take my picture on their birthday. On second thought, I probably would.

February 8, 2009

Cougar Mountain

This week’s outing took us to the Red Town trailhead at Cougar Mountain. This was definitely our most trail like hike to date. I remember reading that there are 36 miles of trails to explore. Nevertheless, we were a little taken aback by the number of cars in the parking lot. I started having Alderwood Mall flashbacks when we actually had to wait for another car to pull out to find a place to park. I realized Hannah shared my concerns when she commented “Ah, enjoying nature with 50 other people walking right next to us. Great.”

Some of the parking lot crunch could have been attributed to a recent article in the Seattle Times about Cougar Mountain trails. After all, this is how we decided to go explore the area, but once underway there are many trail options to choose from. The trails weren’t very crowded as we moved a mile or so from the main trail head, and neither of us felt like we were walking along the trail equivalent of I-5. The people we did run into were very friendly and a little curious about our pug hiking companion.

Sydney kept up just fine and enjoyed playing around in the leaves along the side of the trail. However, we were reminded of her dislike of moving water. She pretty much does everything she can to avoid it. If she can’t find a route around a stream, eventually she’ll jump across, but there was no way we were going to coax her into drinking out of one of the streams.

The Cougar Mountain trail system was a great hike, and I’m sure we’ll be back to explore new routes in the future.

January 26, 2009

Sunday with Sydney

Hannah and I took the Dogpound out to Carkeek Park for a little change of scenery on Sunday. I think they liked it. I know I did. I pass the park all the time on my train commute, but I’ve never really spent any time down there. I came away quite impressed and I think I’ll be spending more time there. In fact, I think I’m going to try and make this Sunday excursion a more regular thing*. I probably won’t want to go to Carkeek all the time, but maybe I should do some exploring of the cool areas to get outside and play around here. I’ll call it “Sunday’s with Sydney”. Oh man, this kind of has the sound of a New Year’s resolution to it. Good thing I didn’t think of it until late January.

* Notice how I used the term “more regular” to avoid actually pinning down any sort of timeline for the trips and the posts that should come with them to prove I actually did the trip. I’m going to try and keep a schedule of a couple trips a month. Can I do it? We’ll see.