Rob and I headed to Mount Rainier confident that we’d be able break out above the clouds into the glorious sunshine. Well, at least I was confident. I kept telling him, “In all my hikes up to Camp Muir, I’ve never not broken out!” We hit the trail just before 11:00 am, and soon had [...]

We were fortunate to get another sunny Saturday, so Laurie and I made the most of it and tagged two summits: Mount Si and its neighbor, Teneriffe. The traverse from Si to Teneriffe was new to me. We broke trail through the undisturbed snow, following old logging roads, until we joined the main route to [...]

It takes forever to drive out to the Washington coast, arrange cars at two trailheads, organize the backpacks, and eventually set foot on the beach. The logistics were daunting, but, with the help of cell phones, 8 people in 4 cars departing from disparate locations managed to do just that, even though Phil and Jackie [...]

On this side of the mountains, I seem to be slogging through snow and rain at least until June. In fact, I usually encounter patches of snow year round. It gets tiresome. I find myself daydreaming about a warm dry trail… Laurie and I decided to do something about it on Saturday, and we headed [...]

The scruffy high school kid was shaking his head back and forth, as he stood at the gate and polished off his hamburger. “Nope, you can’t take your bikes in the tulip fields.” “Well, we don’t have a lock to lock them up, so we have to take them with us.” “Nope, not allowed.” “C’mon, [...]

Eatonville, Washington, 11:30 PM I handed the officer my driver’s license. “Did you know you were doing 42 in a 25?” “No, I guess didn’t realize that.” He shone his flashlight in the car. We looked back at him meekly. He glanced at me with my sun scorched face and bloodshot eyes, at Rob with [...]

I left my front door shortly after 3:00 A.M. Saturday morning to get a really early start on the weekend. We arrived at the boat dock in Chelan in plenty of time to catch the 8:30 sailing. The boat took us two thirds of the way up the lake and dropped us off at Prince [...]

Laurie and I checked off another hike in the 100 Classic Hikes book. Hike number 12, to be exact. Thunder Creek is way up in the North Cascades by Diablo Lake, and the trail stays at a low elevation, which means we didn’t have to deal with any snow. We went out and back for [...]

I was keeping one eye on the the plastic wine glasses (filled with apple cider, not wine). They seemed reasonably safe, resting on a flat spot in front of us. The dainty stemware is fun to use on our hikes, but very easy to spill. In fact, Laurie discharged the contents of her glass two [...]

Things look easy on paper. On paper, it’s not that much trouble to hike 10 or 12 or 14 miles per day up this peak, down that valley, and over that pass. On paper, a 50 pound pack doesn’t seen overly burdensome. No problem. Well, the paper got rapidly revised as we sluggishly trudged our [...]