Washington has a state waterfall

...And we went to see it for a quick overnight camping trip.

The eastern side of Washington (over the Cascade mountains) looks and feels completely different from the western side. It's dry and hot in the summer, much colder over there in the winter too. There's a lot of agriculture - apples, pears, cherries, hay and some beef cows, with some other things mixed in too (like wine grapes). And it's a lot of big, wide open space.

I'd heard about Palouse Falls (Washington's state waterfall!) last summer on a work trip to Spokane. Someone mentioned that it was close-ish...but I couldn't take a side trip in a state vehicle and by then it was too hot to visit there anyways. But we headed there this weekend; the highs in Olympia are only in the mid 50s to mid 60s, the temperatures over there are in the mid 80s during the day (and 40-50 at night).  It's about 4 hours from Olympia, so it's not exactly close.

We took I90 there then looped home via a southern route. This (above) is the Columbia River/Wanapum Lake where the interstate crosses. We stopped an Ginko Petrified Forest State Park, which is right off the interstate on the river. Did you know that petrified wood is Washington's state gem?  Me neither.

At the park there's a lot of petroglyphs that were saved from the rising water when the river was dammed and relocated to the park.

Palouse Falls is spectacular. It's in the middle of nowhere, yet there were a lot of people there. There's ~10 rustic campsites all crammed on a grassy spot next to the parking lot, but this is the view just a few steps down from the parking lot:

That's 180 feet of gushing rive plummeting over a cliff face.

An cliff face is where this family of marmots liked to hang out.

There's a bunch of informal (unauthorized?) hiking trails all over the area. We walked to an overlook of the top of the falls. If you're nuts you can follow a tiny footpath along a narrow ledge to the pool at the bottom of the falls (nope, not for me!).

This 'mohawk' of rock was pretty cool. The view of top of the waterfall is from below the far end of the mohawk, so the big hole to the lower right in the picture is where the pool of the waterfall is located.

 Looking downstream from one of the rims.

 Not much of a colorful sunset, but the pattern of the clouds was interesting.

Finally, two more pictures of the falls...Steve with the mohawk in the background.

And technically this is a selfie since our (intentional) shadows are seen on the cliff!

So the verdict: really cool place, worth the drive!

Hiking Olympic National Park

I turned in a draft of my spatial model methods and results yesterday, so today we went for a hike in Olympic National Park because it's 70 and sunny and perfect outside. Tomorrow, I leave for a work trip to Anchorage where it's in the 30s-50s, with a chance of snow. Got to enjoy some sun while I can!

We headed around towards Hood Canal, then up the valley around Cushman Lake to a trailhead that was pretty empty when we left, but really full of people and cars when we got back. It was also pretty cool and cloudy at the trailhead, and about 20 degrees cooler than the sunny day we had in Olympia when we left.  But the forecast said the clouds over the Olympic peninsula would burn off, and boy did they! This was the view of the upper end of Lake Cushman when we left for the drive back home:

We hiked along the Skookum river, or a fork of it, at least. We also crossed the river or small tributaries a couple of times too.

We've had some terrible wind storms here over the past six months, and the trail was littered with downed trees. We had to crawl up and over and shimmy under about four big ones that were too long to walk around (with all the undergrowth in the way).

I think the white trees are dead from a fire a long time ago.  I though they looked pretty with the clouds around. On the sand bar in the foreground there was a lot of elk poop, but we didn't see any elk.

On our way back out the sun started to peek out. The water color of the river was a beautiful blue, with incredibly clear water.

We stopped for a snack in the sun.

Happy April!

Bargain hunter

Steve has the best luck when it comes to incredible finds at the local Goodwill. He regularly finds name-brand, expensive merino wool shirts (in his size!), Patagonia and Pendelton button down shirts, Marmot t-shirts, and other good deals, all in near-new condition. Well, the other day he found this cookbook!

 

It's the Ovens of Brittany Cookbook - from the Ovens of Brittany restaurant in Madison, WI. The restaurant closed years ago - either while I was a student there or shortly after. It's funny that he found their cookbook all the way out here. I haven't made anything from it yet, but there's a few recipes I'd like to try...they were known for their pastries and baked goods, and there's several in the book that sound good.

Feels like spring!

Sorry for the lack of pictures lately. I'm coming up against a deadline for school so it's been hard to do anything else. This weekend, though, the weather is gorgeous and we've been busy!

Friday night we picked up some herb starters and lettuce and basil seeds, then Saturday afternoon I took a break from writing to plant them. It was in the 60s outside, and fabulously sunny.  We now have pots of thai basil, italian basil, rosemary, lavender, dill, oregano, thyme, mint, mixed lettuce, and our California buckeye tree that we planted this winter from a seed and is now almost 3 feet tall.  Here's what some of them look like on our front porch, which is pretty much the only place we get sun that's 'our' space at the condo:

A friend recently gave us some of their sourdough stater that they've had going for more than 10 years. I've never worked with sourdough before, but was excited to try. We had friends over last weekend for dinner, so I made two loaves of sourdough bread (rustic rounds) to go with dinner and followed a recipe from a good baking book...and they turned out great! We sent the leftovers home with out guests. Then this weekend I had to feed the starter again, and it turns out I hate throwing away the extra, so I made sourdough-cornmeal waffles on Friday morning (I don't work Fridays, I do school work, so I can do crazy things like make waffles). Then Saturday I had a second container of starter left over from last weekend, so I improvised a foccacia-like bread, with garlic and rosemary inside and asiago and smoked sea salt on top. It was the best bread I've ever made!  We dunked it in good balsamic vinegar mixed with olive oil. I think I'll use some today to make us a ham and cheese panini.

Happy Easter everyone!

A fishy conference

Last week I was at a great, but exhausting, fisheries conference in Newport, OR. It was really fun to catch up with friends from all over the west coast, and to get to know my current coworkers better.

While I was at the conference, Steve was volunteering for a Puget Sound trawl survey with some of the people I work with! It sounds like they had spectacular weather and great food on the boat. But unfortunately, he started getting sick on the boat and is now vegging on the couch, trying to get better quickly since we have a date night tomorrow to see Pretty in Pink in the movie theater. : )

I didn't bring my camera to the conference, so I had only my phone for pictures. The conference hotel was on the beach and we also had great weather for a couple of days. The final social event was held at the aquarium in Newport, which was SO MUCH FUN. I took a gazillion pictures of fish.

Here's a few...the rest will go on facebook.

 This guy looks like he's smiling for the camera!

 Touch tank!!

 This is my happy place:

 Acting our age...

 Me and a bunch of my awesome coworkers:

 Selfie with friend and fellow Juneau student, Jane.

 Random pair of shoes on the beach...

 Agate beach, right in front of our hotel.

 Ah, sunset on another fabulous day.

 Trying to get a beach fire going...it took forever, but finally it took off.

Aaaaand now it's February

I would say that I don't know where time goes, but I do. School. Work. Work travel. Last minute trip back to ND-MN. January flew by. Now it's the weekend between two work trips for me - both to Oregon - and we're packing and cleaning. Steve came down to Portland for a day to see me last week since it's so close. That was only the second time he's joined me for a work trip and it was fun.

One of the women at the meeting with me brought her new service-dog-in-training. The dog is Edie, a small, 9 mo. old black lab who will be her gluten-sniffing dog. She (the owner) is severely sensitive to gluten, and due to work she travels a lot, including field work at sea. Edie will eventually be able to identify minute traces of gluten in food and since she's small she can fly on big planes and tiny puddle jumpers, and since she's a water dog, she'll still be able to swim for exercise when out in the field for days at a time on the water.  But the best part is that she'll be at our 5x per year meetings and when the service vest comes off, she's just a dog who I can play with! She was incredible at the meeting - I can't believe that at 9 months old she was so quiet and unobtrusive under the table. It was really interesting to learn about the amount of training scent dogs like these need; Edie is just barely started on her training, but training started at ~9 weeks old! She came from a breeder-trainer in West Virginia who specializes in drug, bomb, and mine-sniffing dogs.  Since Steve came down to the meeting in Portland, he got to meet Edie too, and we all went for a walk together. We're going to need another dog again, someday. The picture is of Edie sitting at a meeting chair (which is not how things were during the meeting - we were just having fun after the meeting wrapped up for the week).

While in Portland we stopped at Powell's Books, which is the bestest, most amazing book store in the whole world. Steve bought a mug. it's black with eyeballs all over it, then when you fill it with something hot the black disappears are reveals an underwater scene with angler fish and squid and other critters...he's pretty delighted with it.  : ) I tried to post a video of it, but it's not loading properly.

Finally, we took the TRAIN to/from Portland. It was great, I wish I could just take the train everywhere. It was quiet, on time, inexpensive, and so much space inside. When have you ever been on a plane and been able to stretch your legs fully out in front of you?  It was great!  Sorry for the poor quality of pictures - I have only had my phone with me lately.

Belated happy holidays!

We are back from a warm(-ish) trip to central California for the holidays where we met Dad and Barb in the Santa Cruz area, with a pit stop in Yosemite for Christmas day then Sequioa & Kings Canyon National Parks for New Years.

Scroll down to see the pictures from the start.

We timed our trip home just right - yesterday is was clear and sunny and perfect driving weather. Today much of the route is snow and rain!

XO