Mt. Roberts on a sunny day

Today is our last day off together for a bit. I start my new job on Monday, and Steve's schedule is always a bit weird...so we went for a hike up (partway up) Mt. Roberts. I don't know how much elevation we gained, but we went past where the tramway ends on top, and then a bit higher to a place you can see north and south along the Gastineau Channel. It was a gorgeous sunny day, but man are we tired now! It was about 6 miles round trip, and maybe 1200 feet or so of elevation gain. The summit of Mt. Roberts is another 3 miles (one way) and 1600 feet elevation up the trail, more than I wanted to hike today!

Looking north(ish). Douglas Island is across the bridge, downtown Juneau is on 'this' side of the bridge, in the upper right of the picture is the airport in that flat area. The mountains in the far distance (top right) are the Chilkats.

Looking south along Gastineau Channel. The mountain here is really steep and avalanches are common in winter. From Douglas Island you can see the waterfalls that run down the whole face of the mountain...pretty cool.

Steve, looking quite handsome. : )

 Me, looking a bit windblown : )

Soooo...we moved.

Oh hey there! Things have been a bit busy lately.  Soooo, we moved to Juneau. Again.  I got a new job, and Steve is back at his old job. Things are good. We're working on solidifying a place to live, but in the mean time we are house- and dog sitting. The trip up was beautiful, as always. We loaded all our stuff into a shipping container this time (including the motorcycle; Steve's building the frame for it in the pic below), and put it on the barge. Then we (and the truck) hopped the ferry for the 58-hour trip north.

The weather for the trip was pretty spectacular, especially the sunset on the first night as we left Bellingham.

I love  the way the sunset was lighting up the wake of the ferry. I kinda want to frame this and hang it on a wall.

The ferry was only ~1/3 to 1/2 full. There were a lot of retired people making the trip just as a sight-seeing trip, like we did when we went to Dutch Harbor and back on the Tustumena in 2014. We stopped in Ketchikan (below, that's our ferry, the Columbia), then in Wrangell and Petersburg.  If you ever take this trip, I recommend the other vessel, the Kennicott; it's bigger and nicer and has better food. It also has a forward facing outdoor deck (good for whale watching) and more variety in room options if that's your thing.

Wrangell, AK:

 Approaching Petersburg at sunset:

We have a friend living in Petersburg, so she met us at the ferry dock with her car then gave us a quick tour around town. It's a super cute little town (~3000 people), and fairly spread out.

There's a strong Norwegian heritage in the town too, this is the Sons of Norway building and replica Viking ship.

And really, we had such gorgeous weather almost every day, except for a bit of rain the first morning and some big rolling waves that made a lot of people on the boat sea sick while we crossed Queen Charlotte Sound (even Steve and I got a bit queasy!).

Sunshine and roses (and dahlias)

Point Defiance Park in Tacoma has an incredible rose garden. We've been exploring there before, we find something new every time we go. This time, we were particularly delighted with the dahlia experimental garden. I had no idea dahlias were so diverse and beautiful!

I only had my cell phone, but I took a bunch of pictures anyways. Here's some of my favorites...

Camping

Two weekends in a row we went camping in Oregon. The first weekend was a trip to the Bend area, where we camped with our neighbors Sarah and Scott and a group of their friends and family. We had a big group site next to a river, but without potable water and only a pit toilet. It was a great site, except for the extremely fine dust/dirt that was everywhere, and since there wasn't showers or water, the dust got all over us and the tent. But it was great company!

On Saturday we drove an hour and a half from the campsite to Crater Lake National Park. We figured that was as close as we'd ever get to the park, so we might as well visit! There was a forest fire burning just on the western rim of the crater, so as the day went on, it got more and more smokey.

The water in the lake is absolutely incredible.

The next weekend, we met my college friend Jeremy and his wife and kids down by Tillamook, OR. It was about 30 degrees cooler on the coast (as you can tell by our attire!). We got cheese at the cheese factory, played on the beach, and played Apples to Apples around the campfire.

Since we got back we've been having some fun in the kitchen. We tried a new recipe for whole wheat bread cooked in the cast iron dutch oven and it turned out great. Then we made homemade pasta for dinner one night, which was fun. After 14 years, we're getting pretty good at working together in the kitchen!

Rainier hiking day

We went on a day hike along a high lakes loop in Rainier National Park. It was a gorgeous day in Olympia, but foggy and drizzly up on the mountain. But, that's ok because it was cool enough to hike and just dry enough that we didn't really get wet from the cloud-fog.

There was still snow in a lot of places too! A couple weeks prior it might have been hard to find the trail, but now it's good, and as a bonus, the wildflowers are still blooming!

We stopped here for a snack.

This is right before the final push to back to the car. It was just starting to clear up and get warm, and the last half mile of trail was seriously steep uphill. Ugh! Made for a hot and sweaty return to the truck.

Yellowstone! (A bit late...)

I'm such a procrastinator sometimes. We went to Yellowstone National Park back in JUNE, and I'm just getting around to posting pictures now in August (though I'll back date it so it shows up in the right month). We met some family out there for a fun week of camping and exploring...and it was a great trip!  Yellowstone is such an incredible place - just so much natural oddity and wildlife in one place.

Steve and I arrived two days before the rest of the camping party, so we were able to set up camp and did an evening drive too.  This is the Midway Basin area at sunset:

And we also stopped to see the Old Faithful Lodge at night, along with sitting through an Old Faithful eruption.

Once Mark and Susan and the girls joined us, we hit a good rhythm - explore early, siesta and relax during the middle part of the day, and explore again in the evening. That way we were able to avoid some of the crowds and also some of the hotter part of the day.

Here are some of the places we explored:
Norris Basin

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone:
Long exposure in the late evening...

Mammoth Hot Springs:
The Mammoth area has really changed a lot since our last visit. Many of the springs are no longer active, but there were still a lot of elk handing around!

 And the Midway Geyser Basin:

 This is Sapphire Pool. Incredible.

 

This is Morning Glory Pool. It's awesome from the air, and still pretty cool from ground level.

And finally, a road bison. These guys (and gals) just don't care about cars. They walked wherever (and whenever) they wanted. We also saw coyotes, maybe a wolf, several black bears, deer, elk, hundreds upon hundreds of bison, and a bunch of smaller critters. What a great place!

Kodiak

Work trips don't usually take me places where I can see friends, but once in a while the stars align. Last week I had a meeting in Kodiak, AK, and got to spend time with friends Natura and Michael, whom Steve and I met while living in Juneau.

They have an beautiful, sun-filled house on a hillside above downtown Kodiak. I loved watching to ships come and go, and could usually be found sitting by the windows staring through the binoculars. I even saw a sea otter!

They have six egg-laying chickens in the yard, and four more young ones that are in the house (in a dog kennel) until they have enough feathers to live outside with the rest. We spent some time trying to get them used to being around people and being handled. For dinner we made fresh pasta using some of the eggs from the outside flock.

The sun came out so we sat in the yard, enjoying the newly-build burn barrel. As the fire really got roaring, Michael realized he'd built the structure over the top of their house's PVC sewage pipe...but further investigation revealed there was enough soil and rock between the fire and the pipe to keep it from melting. Whew!

This is the main harbor, as the sun started to peak through the clouds. Kodiak is a gorgeous town always, but on a sunny day it's spectacular.

The airport for Kodiak is out the road a bit, so as you depart you get a nice view of the town (and the plane's propeller!). In 6 days there, there were only 2.5 rainy days - that's pretty good! My flight out was only 1/3 full, and I asked the airline agent if that was normal. She said 'Not at all, it's nice out so people delay their flights...then complain when the weather's bad and we can't get out!'. Haha, so true!

Admittedly, photos from an airplane window are never good, but you see such interesting things from the air.  The sandy spit in the middle of this picture is the Homer spit. The end of the spit is the ferry terminal, which is where we departed from on our ferry trip from Homer to Dutch Harbor and back.

I can't resist one more. This is just before Homer, I love the swirly patterns of the sediments and the rivers.