Juneau visit

I had a couple of school-related meetings in Juneau this week, so I went back for a week to visit. It was a fun, exhausting, and HOT week. It was sunny and warm every day except the day I landed...almost unprecedented.

The Maritime Festival was going on the day I flew in, and in typical Juneau fashion, I ran into about 10 people I knew while walking downtown.  Megan, Suzie, and Karson, enjoying the festival despite the rain:

Even the flowers are pretty in the rain.

I was fortunate to stay with friends who all have beautiful views...Indian Cove as the weather started to clear:

Then closer to campus, at Jane and Zach's house, we saw whales and sea lions from their deck:

My meetings went well, I got good feedback from my committee, and I was sad to leave. : (
The Juneau Airport has the best view...

Still looks like winter in the mountains as I headed back south.

Portland!

We met Mom and Jeff in Portland for a fun weekend. We spent Saturday driving around wine country and stopping to sample wines and local olive oil, then also stopped at a very busy Multnomah falls. My favorite place was Red Ridge Farms - it was scenic, good wines, and also good olive oil.

Sunday we dodged the rain and went to the Japanese Garden. Everything seemed to be blooming, it was gorgeous and peaceful.

Fishing in WA

I went out on a day trip with the hook and line survey for work...hook and line fishing for rockfish. We weigh, measure, and for some species, tag the fish that are caught by a bunch of volunteer anglers (myself included). We were fishing off the coast of WA, about two hours north (by boat) of Westport. It was a perfect day - not hot, and cloudy enough to not get sunburned, but also not cold. The only bummer was that I had to leave the house at 4 am to meet the boat.

Heading out from Westport

I'm a pretty poor fisherman compared to some of the volunteers that have been going out for a long time. My arms got really sore! I caught ~5 black rockfish, and a whole lot more got off the hook before I got them up.

Our in-house photographer was along for the day to try to get pictures of some of the fish for our website. She has a more elaborate photography set up for times when she's shooting on land.  Here she's trying to get a picture of a small lingcod.

 We also measured the lingcod and then sent it back to grow big.

 

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!