Stacy and Oscar Hunt

Stacy and Oscar's Timeline - 2006

2012-01-24T21:56:00.000-08:00

Facebook has recently added a feature letting you make a timeline of all of your posts and uploads. I've been getting it all together and it looks pretty cool, but there's far too much stuff to go through. I don't think many people out there want to look at my entire life worth of uploads. But they might want to see the overall timeline of my life events, and possibly look more into something I've done that interests them. For that reason I'm making these timeline blogposts. Each post will be for 1 full year, starting in 2006 when we got married. Beneath each life event I will include a link to a separate blogpost where you can see more pics and find more details.

January 2006

Had engagement and bridal photos taken

February 17th 2006 - wedding at the Salt Lake Temple, Luncheon at the Empire Room of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, and Reception in the Sharon/Manchester rooms of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

February 18th-21st

Honeymoon in Disneyland

June 2006

Performed a Senior Recital in Dumke Hall at the University of Utah. Graduated with a Bachelor's of Music and an emphasis in Vocal Performance.

August 2006

Moved to the Seattle area in Renton, Washington. I started working as a server at Maggiano's Little Italy. Oscar went to school at ITT tech and searched for a job.

October 2006

Adopted kittens. Fry and Leela were about 2 months old when they began the newest members of our family.

And we finished the year off by taking a flight back to Utah on December 25th to visit our families for Christmas.

Poo Poo Point Hike

2012-01-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

The Seattle area had a pretty terrible Spring and Summer. We had very few clear days and a LOT of rain. This was made up for by our incredible Fall! September and October were clear and beautiful. When we saw that an October Monday (Oscar's day off) was predicted to be clear and warm, we decided to hike up to Poo Poo Point in Issaquah. I'd failed to find this trail twice on my own already, so I took Oscar with me (who's great at reading topographical maps), and we started the hike from a point where the maps were more clear and the trails better marked.

Oscar and I love the show Futurama (hence the names of our cats Fry, Leela, and Nibbler), and this bunch of mushrooms reminded us of the character "Hypnotoad."

The viewpoint is much prettier than its name would have you believe.

Paragliders commonly hike up here to start their descent. One glider told us there was another trail this direction that only took him an hour to ascend. And that's with all of his heavy gear. Our hike was killer steep and took us 2 hours, so next time I'm looking for the other one.

There was a nice view of Mount Baker.

And gorgeous views of Lake Sammamish.

The glider also told us that if we started down the other trail, we'd find a lovely view of Mt Ranier.

We came back up to the point to see a glider take off.

Paragliding is now on our bucket list. These guys were mostly retired, had their own gear, and did it about once a week.

It was really captivating to watch him glide down through the valley.

About a week later I decided to hike Mt Si. It's said to be the ultimate Washington hike with a great view and an elevation gain of 3,100 feet over 4 miles. Though the day started off clear, the clouds came in just as I reached the summit, and I didn't have the time to wait for them to clear. I'll have to come back again sometime to see a better view. I was proud of myself, though, for reaching the summit in only 2 hours. Whew! That was exhausting.

Snake River Falls in October

2012-01-06T22:39:00.000-08:00

On our way back from our October Utah trip, I couldn't resist seeing Shoshone Falls again. The flow wasn't quite as intense as it was during our May trip, but it was still really strong. You could actually see more of the waterfall because there was much less spray.

I liked this side falls you see on the road winding down to the main lookout.

It's not the greatest picture, but this is Bridal Veil Falls coming off the side of the canyon. You can see it from the main Shoshone lookout.

I wanted to check out Perrine Coulee Falls, and the route there took us past the Twin Falls LDS Temple. The pic's a bit crooked since we took it while driving.

This wasn't Perrine Coulee Falls, but it was a pretty area you can view from the parking lot of a strip mall.

We also discovered these little falls on our search for the elusive Perrine Coulee Falls.

And after carefully rereading the directions, we finally found it. This was actually the 2nd lookout, and we almost drove past it. We hiked up a bit of a hill to take this shot.

This distant but pretty falls could be seen from Perrine Coulee. There's a golf course nearby. You probably have to golf on the course to see it from close up.

On our way back up the hill we saw the first lookout, and didn't know how we'd missed it on our way down. This one is prettier and doesn't require any climbing.

I also wanted to take the scenic route home to see the Falls of a Thousand Springs.

We tried following directions to Upper Salmon Falls, but we couldn't see any waterfalls. Fortunately this area of the river was still very scenic.

There's a mini golf course you can see from the freeway as you drive through Boise. We decided to actually golf there this time since we love mini golf. I liked their imitation of the Arches structure.

There's a pretty pullout on the freeway where you can see the flat plains of Eastern Washington. This time we caught a nice sunset on the way back and pulled off there just in time to get some beautiful pictures.

Marcus and Martha Hunt Family Pictures

2012-01-01T20:01:00.000-08:00

Oscar's family decided to take non professional family pictures while we were down visiting this past October. These were my favorites.

Ryan with the corn patch.

Camilliam (William and Camille) and their puppies.

Emily and Ryan with our nephews Dillan and Justin.

Cute family pic!

And a few goofy shots

Here's a cute one of Oscar and I with the corn patch.

Grandma and Grandpa Hatch.

William giving Julia a piggyback ride.

Oscar giving me a piggyback ride.

I love this one of Oscar sneaking us into the background of Melissa and Karl's picture!

Oscar's mom and dad.

Julia Gulia

And one last pic of Justin wearing Grandpa Hunt's glasses.

Anacortes and Oak Harbour

2012-01-01T18:16:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, my friend Cari and I drove up to do some sightseeing and a little hiking on Whidbey Island. Oscar and I had visited Whidbey Island in July, but hadn't had time to make it up to the Cap Sante lookout on Anacortes. It looks over Fidalgo Bay with Mount Baker in the background.

I tried to get a picture of Cari's little boy Liam with the pretty background, but this was the best I got. He was having too much fun climbing on the rocks.

We continued south and drove over beautiful Deception Pass.

Then we took a short hike along the coast of Cornet Bay.

And finished off our day riding the ferry from Clinton to Mukilteo.

Rattlesnake Ledge and West Tiger 3

2011-12-21T21:01:00.000-08:00

Rattlesnake Ledge is one of my favorite Washington hikes. It's not easy, but it's not crazy steep like hiking Mt Si (which is in the same area, just the opposite side of the freeway). I'd heard that Mt Si was the ultimate Washington hike, but I didn't think the view was nearly as pretty as the view here. If you're going to come all the way out to North Bend, do Rattlesnake Ledge. If you want it to be longer, hike to the east end as well (I couldn't do it due to time constraints, but I hear it's just as pretty). It's much easier on the knees than Mt Si, and the views are 360 degrees.

Here's Rattlesnake Lake from the Parking lot.

And after a decent hike up, I was welcomed to a nice, open view of the valley.

And here's the fantastic view from the ledge on a clear, sunny day!

I loved how there was something beautiful to see no matter which direction you turned. This was the view north and west of the ridge.

Looking down you can see the lake. The color looks even prettier from up high.

It was just stunning straight out east!

And the view south is beautiful too! This is definitely my 1st recommendation for a great Washington hike (unless you want to see a waterfall, in which case I'd recommend Wallace Falls).

My hiking book gave West Tiger 3 in Issaquah the same rating for scenic beauty as Rattlesnake Ledge, so I decided to go hiking there a week later. It did have a scenic view, but I was a bit disappointed because it was very distant and considerably obscured by the surrounding trees. It was very steep and a killer hard hike, so I wouldn't recommend it as great payoff for the amount of work you put into getting there.

Though it wasn't my favorite view, I still enjoyed seeing the multiple Sammamish area lakes all in one place.

Heybrook Lookout

2011-11-30T22:06:00.000-08:00

The Heybrook lookout near Index Washington is a good place to go for a short (but fairly steep) hike. There's not much to see besides a lot of trees until you make it up to the lookout tower. But the views from the top are very pretty.

This is the view from the southern end of the tower.

Looking at this mountain almost made me think I had double vision!

North Cascades National Park

2011-11-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

After visiting Winthrop and Rainy Creek Falls, Oscar and I came into North Cascades National Park from the east side. We were in for a treat!

The first beautiful site that beheld our eyes was Ruby's Arm on Ross Lake. Ross lake is 23 miles long and even extends a little bit into Canada. Ruby's Arm is a small, thin portion at the southern end. It was really beautiful! I liked the deep, midnight blue color. This was late August, so the mountains were mostly free of snow, but we could still see a glacier off in the distance.

But the real highlight of the trip was Lake Diablo. It was stunning! The turquoise color was absolutely mesmerizing.

I would have stared at it all day if it hadn't been so windy.

There are several roadside waterfalls as you travel along Highway 20. I'll have to come back in the spring to see Ketchum Creek Falls (top left) and Gorge Creek Falls (bottom left and right) when the water flow is stronger. Highway 20 crosses an enormous gorge as you pass Gorge Creek Falls, and looking down the bridge into the gorge even gave me a little vertigo, though I have zero fear of heights.

Oscar and I stopped off at this power plant to take a short hike up to Ladder Creek Falls.

For some reason, they'd taken the area information out of their windows, but they left the frames behind. We shot this picture of Oscar standing behind the frame, and it totally looks like a framed picture.

Ladder Creek Falls was pretty, but the upper drops were a bit obscured.

I love the unique way the water has shaped the gorge it falls into! Fortunately this waterfall has a medium watershed, which means it doesn't dry up later in the year unless there's a drought. It's one of the few we saw this trip that wouldn't be significantly bigger in the spring.

Big Devil Falls can be seen from the highway, though it's fairly distant and wasn't very big in late August. But if you came in the spring and were somehow able to get closer to it, it would be a pretty impressive waterfall.

We drove a little bit out of our way to see Teepee Falls. It was a nifty waterfall, but you view it from a road that crosses it from very high up and smack in the middle of the falls. The result is that you can't see the entire falls, and that your pictures make it look more like a river than a waterfall.

And the best waterfall of all was the last one we saw - North Fork Falls. It's hard to believe that we took this picture during the driest time of year for waterfalls. It was roaring! We're glad we found it too, since it ended up being harder to get to than we were expecting. It was significantly out of our way (30 miles round trip), and then we found out that the road leading to it was closed for construction. It was after 7:00pm, so there wasn't anybody working on it, but they'd left monstrously heavy rocks to prevent cars from taking the road. I really didn't want to turn around, though, after coming so far on terrible roads that made me feel a bit carsick. The GPS said it was only about a mile away so we knew we could hike it, but for all we knew it was 1 mile straight uphill. Fortunately it didn't end up being too bad, though it was somewhat steep and we did get a little winded. But the beautiful waterfall made it well worth it. After seeing mostly dry waterfalls all day, it was good to see a powerful, large watershed falls.

And we caught a nice sunset over the valley on our way back home.

Winthrop, Falls Creek Falls, and Rainy Lake Falls

2011-11-20T15:37:00.000-08:00

I've lived in Washington for over 5 years now, and only recently did I learn we have our very own Wild West town. It's a cute little town called Winthrop, and the drive to it is beautiful, regardless of which direction you're coming from. Either you drive east through beautiful North Cascades National Park, or you drive north through the city of Chelan. We decided to visit Winthrop on the way home from Leavenworth, WA since we'd heard so much about the cute town and the gorgeous views in North Cascades National Park.

Before stopping to eat in the town, we drove north about 10 miles to visit Falls Creek Falls. It's a pretty falls in Falls Creek Campground.

We had to do a bit of meandering through the rocks and trees to get the best pictures of the falls, but otherwise there's no hiking required. We took this beautiful picture below from the south side.,

After seeing the waterfall, we explored the cute little town.
We ate a delicious lunch at Captain Jack's Saloon, we played mini golf in the main square, and we sat on saddle seats while we feasted on yummy homemade ice cream. I loved the first hole on the mini golf course! It reminded me of the game Plinko on The Price is Right. For being a cheaply made golf course, it was still pretty fun and had a lot of cool obstacles.

After filling our bellies and playing mini golf, we continued our trip on into North Cascades National Park.

What a gorgeous drive!

Before driving to beautiful Ross Lake (see next post), we stopped for a small hike to Rainy lake falls. It's a pretty waterfall flowing into a lake with a mountain backdrop. What scenery could be better than mountains with a waterfall and a lake?!

Unfortunately this was low flow time for a very small watershed falls like this one. We'll have to come back in the spring (and maybe get an inflatable raft) if we really want to see this waterfall at its best.

I liked this mist we could see along the rock walls as we hiked back to our car. Stay tuned for more waterfalls and beautiful lakes in my next post!

Lake Colchuck Hike

2011-10-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

While hiking up to Eight Mile Lake, I met a man named Steve on my way back down the mountain. He told me that his favorite local hike was Lake Colchuck. I later looked it up in my hiking book and saw that it was a long, fairly steep hike. I realized I'd need most or all of a day for hiking it and recovering from it. I also learned from my friend Manda, who'd taken the hike in July, that the trail is exposed to a lot of sun. I figured I'd wait for an overcast day so I wouldn't boil in the sun while climbing uphill. Little did I know that Leavenworth gets very few cloudy days...

Since we only had 1 cloudy day during all of my time in Leavenworth, and I had too much going on to hike it that day, I ended up having to take this hike on a sunny day. I waited for another cloudy day until one of my last days out there, but finally gave up and figured I should start the hike in the morning before the sun could do too much damage. I woke up early and hit the trail at about 7:30am.

This view greeted me a bit before I reached the lake. These beautiful granite slabs reminded me of our trip to Yosemite National Park. After seeing this view, I was glad I ended up coming on a nice day

The views wouldn't have been as beautiful without the blue sky, and hitting the trail early ended up working out really well for me. The sun didn't have a chance to shine on me until around 10:30am, and I was already on my way back down the mountain by then. I would have been dying if I'd been trying to do those brutal uphill stretches with little to no shade to protect me from the heat.

The views at the lake were gorgeous, but the problem I had was that I was too close to get a good shot. I would have needed a much nicer camera to fully capture the view I had in front of me. You'll have to use your imagination to put these two shots together. It was a lovely view to look at, but not from the lens of a cheap camera.

This was the best pic I could get of both the lake and the mountains. The lake was a rich, shimmering turquoise color. I wish I'd had an inflatable raft to take out on it.

I hadn't known there would be a waterfall here. That was a nice surprise! The waterfall book I use doesn't mention this falls, but I found a reference to it when I looked at the computer companion website (http://www.mymaps.com/nwfalls/nc/nc6.htm). He says access to Colchuck Falls is uncertain. I found it quite easily. It can be seen from the trail and only requires a short bushwack.

I also saw this small falls from the trail. Overall this is a great hike with a stunning lake, beautiful mountains, impressive granite slabs, and even a couple of pretty waterfalls. I highly recommend it!

The Many Stunning Waterfalls of Eagle Creek in the Columbia River Gorge

2011-10-04T20:10:00.000-07:00

Multnomah Falls on the Columbia River Gorge is an extremely beautiful, well known waterfall that gets flooded with visitors year round. The parking lot has been packed every time I've visited, and the vast majority of the visitors are driving 30 miles east of Portland merely to marvel at one famous waterfall.

Personally, I think they're crazy! Now I don't dispute the idea that seeing Multnomah Falls is worth an extra 60 miles of driving, but there are so many beautiful things to see out this direction that I'm surprised people don't take the opportunity to see as much as they can. The gorge itself is stunning, and there are literally hundreds of waterfalls, some of which are every bit as beautiful and unique as Multnomah Falls.

I've mentioned a few of the other Columbia River Gorge waterfalls in some of my previous posts, but on our most recent trip to the area, I wanted to take the ultimate waterfall lovers hike - the Eagle Creek trail. Gregory Plumb, the author of my "Waterfall Lover's Guide" book, says this is his favorite hike.

This waterfall featured above, Metlako Falls, is actually on the cover of the 2010 edition of his book, featured below (though his photo is noticeably better since it's professionally done. He probably also visited the falls at an earlier time of year when the water flow was higher).

When we first arrived and set up camp the previous day, we visited a few waterfalls and found they weren't terribly impressive. August is the driest time of year for waterfalls in Oregon. I'd been concerned that we'd driven all the way down here to see nothing but dried up waterfalls.

So I was delightfully surprised to find that this waterfall was still quite impressive! Technically this should be the 2nd falls you see while hiking, but we missed the spur trail leading to it on our way up, so it ended up being the last one we saw. The spur trail is a bit more obvious on the descent. We looked for Wauna Falls, which should have been about 1/2 mile before this one, but we never found it.

I later learned on a closer reading of my book that many waterfalls are still worth seeing in dry periods as long as they have a medium to large watershed. This particular waterfall has a large watershed. Though you can see from the book cover photo that it does get bigger during the rainy months, it's not so much smaller in August that you'd regret having gone out of your way to see a waterfall that wasn't at its peak.

The next waterfall along the route is Lower Punch Bowl Falls, assuming you take the larger spur trail down to it. It was impressive that this much water was still coming over the falls, even though it's clear that the river it falls from was very dry.

We liked this little grotto.

From here it's a short walk up to Punch Bowl Falls. If it looks familiar, it's because it's an extremely popular waterfall among photographers.

We also enjoyed taking multiple pictures of this falls. It's beautiful the way it drops into this large amphitheater.

And there are so many different angles to experiment with.

If you don't veer off to Lower Punch Bowl Falls, you can still see Upper Punch Bowl Falls from the viewpoint featured below.

I did prefer this viewpoint, but it was nice to have both options, and to see Lower Punch Bowl Falls.

Our next falls was Loowit Falls, which was very dry at this time of year. I've seen pictures of it in spring, though, and even then it's not all that impressive.

It was cool, but scary, to peer down into the gorge channel.

Skoonichuk Falls seemed like it'd be pretty impressive, but the trees make the view pretty obscured. We saw a guy standing at the bottom of it, so there must be a way to scramble down to a better vantage. I saw a path that might have been the way to get there, but Oscar didn't want to take it.

If you don't stray from the regular hiking trail, this is the best view you can get of the falls.

Oscar liked this little lizard.

And finally we reached the crowning jewel of the Eagle Creek Hike - Tunnel Falls.

I insisted on scrambling down to take pictures from the base of this falls. It's extremely steep and you slide for most of it, but as far as I'm concerned, it's not dangerous if it's not going to kill me. Sure I might break a leg if I lost my footing and tumbled down the hill, but it's not like I'm going to die from falling off a cliff.

This falls is really nifty since there's a tunnel built behind it. You actually have to come through it in order to continue the hike.

This part, though, is quite dangerous. The entire hike hugs a lot of cliffs, so I would not recommend bringing little ones with you, or anyone who suffers from vertigo.

And the final hike before turning around is Eagle Creek Falls.

What I liked about this falls was how the water drops into it.

Waterfalls have several distinct forms, and this falls actually has four forms by itself - punchbowl, cascade, plunge, and horsetail.

The cliffs were pretty scary, but this part of the hike is not for the feint of heart. I have zero fear of heights, and even I felt a little dizzy here.

Tunnel Falls really is beautiful. It's also the front page of our book before the title page. His shot looks just like this one. I wonder if he scrambled down like we did to see the waterfall from its base.

Here's Oscar about to enter the tunnel in the gorge wall

Blue Grouse Falls can be seen from the trail, but the nearby vegetation greatly obscures the view.

These rocks we walked on to cross a stream looked like chocolate chip cookies!

After finishing our hike we took a few pics of the beautiful Columbia River Gorge from Vancouver Point.

Though our legs were tired from hiking, we really wanted to go mini golfing at an outdoor course in Happy Valley, OR. It's called Eagle Landing, and they have regular golf as well as 2 fun 18 hole minigolf courses. We'd come here the first time we visited Portland in 2007, and we enjoyed it so much that it stuck out in our memories, and we've been wanting to return since then.

We had a great time mini golfing, and the price was reasonable too. I also loved this centipede bench!

Gorsh! What a Gorgeous Gorge!

2011-10-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

Oscar and I have visited Portland and the Columbia River Gorge several times, but only recently did we discover the Scenic Byway that runs parallel to the freeway.

Unfortunately we discovered it on an ugly, rainy, very cloudy, very foggy day, so our views of the gorge were extremely limited (fortunately we still saw lots of awesome waterfalls that day, which the rain only made better.) I insisted that we return to the Columbia River Gorge on a sunny day sometime.

We ended up coming down to go camping here on August 21st, and what stunning views beheld our eyes. Wow!!!

The above shots were taken here at Chanticleer Point,

though the Vista House at Crown Point featured above is the more popular lookout. This building also goes underground too, so it's a lot bigger than it looks.

The views from here were beautiful as well, but I actually preferred the view from Chanticleer Point where you can see the Vista House in the distance.

What's interesting is that we had not actually intended to come here. We wanted to spend a weekend hiking to the Enchanted Valley of 10,000 waterfalls in Olympic National Park.

We'd planned to go backpacking into the forest, 13 miles each way, to visit the beautiful Enchanted Valley. But when I looked it up online, I learned that a rock slide had blocked the road leading to the trailhead. If we still wanted to go there, we would need to walk an extra 6 miles of road each way. This would have required an extra day for us, which we didn't have since I needed to go back to Leavenworth on Tuesday.

Oscar and I had been looking forward to taking that trip for several weeks, so when we found out we couldn't do the one we wanted, we still wanted to go somewhere beautiful. Since it would have taken us about 4 hours to drive into the area of Olympic National Park where we'd wanted to go, I suggested we drive 4 hours to the Columbia River Gorge. It was further in distance but we could get there faster since we'd be taking freeway the entire way, and there were several first come, first serve campgrounds.

When we went into Oregon and were driving east, I enjoyed the views of the gorge on this delightfully sunny day (highs near 90 that day and lows in the 60's that night), and remembered that we should take the Columbia Gorge Scenic Byway.

It's just stunning! I have no regrets about coming here instead of Olympic National Park.

After we finished taking pictures of the gorge, we drove by Latourall Falls. Though we'd been there before, it was a bit foggy, and we thought it'd be nice to get a picture of the falls on a clear day. This falls was barely a trickle of the stunning waterfall we'd seen before (click this link and scroll down to the bottom pictures to see what it's like in Spring). This discouraged me a bit. Though I'm a waterfall lover, I didn't realize that they dried up so much in August. I'd assumed they were strongest in Spring and were weakest in early winter. I'd seen good waterfalls in the summer, so I figured that's when they'd be at about middle flow. But late summer is actually the lowest time of the year for water flow.

We'd planned on taking a hike to many waterfalls in Eagle Creek, and after the first waterfall, I was afraid all of the falls would be very weak. I didn't realize, though, that not all waterfalls have the same watershed. In my waterfall reference book (Waterfalls of the Pacific Northwest by Gregory Plumb), he ranks the watersheds of all of his waterfalls from vsm(very small), sm(small), med(medium), and lg(large). Very small watershed falls are really only worth seeing in the spring when they're at their strongest, while large watersheds are great anytime of year unless there's been a long drought. The first falls we saw on this trip, Latourall falls, has a small watershed, which is why it didn't even seem like the falls we'd seen in the spring. The above falls, Starvation Creek Falls, is a pretty falls near Eagle Creek where we set up camp, but it is also has a small watershed, so I'd like to see it again in the Spring.

The above 2 waterfalls could also be found in this area. They are Cabin Creek Falls and Hole in the Wall Falls. Hole in the Wall falls is really nifty since you can see that it gets its name through the hole in the gorge wall that the falls come through. Cabin Creek Falls has a very small watershed and Hole in the Wall Falls has a small watershed.

We had some nice views of the gorge as we climbed through this hike.

Our last falls was Lancaster Falls, which wasn't bad considering it also had a very small watershed.

Supposedly there was another falls called Watson (or Wilson) Falls, but we never found it. It wasn't listed in our book, but there was a sign leading to it.

We drove a bit further down the gorge to the Columbia River Gorge hotel. Wah Gwin Gwin Falls is on the hotel property. It has a medium watershed, so it was still pretty cool to see even in dry time.

And before turning in we drove to Yeon State Park to see Elowah Falls. Though it has a small watershed, and I'd like to see it with greater water flow in the spring, it was still really beautiful.

It almost looked like an extremely tall shower. I loved the fingertip-like way it splashed down on these rocks.

Sailing to Stehekin and Rainbow Falls on Lake Chelan

2011-09-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks before leaving Leavenworth, my sister and my niece took the tour to Stehekin with me on the Lady of the Lake II.

Here are Lia and Hana on the boat.

Lake Chelan is 55 miles long, and on the Stehekin tour you go all the way across it round trip.

It's about 4 hours each way, but you're surrounded by gorgeous views on all sides.

Stehekin isn't an island, but you can't get to it by vehicle. You either have to cross the lake like we did, or you can backpack for about 20 miles through North Cascades National Park.

It was really nice to just sit on the boat, read a book, and periodically go out to the viewing deck to take pictures.

We picked a beautiful day to go (they're pretty easy to come by in the summer in this part of Washington).

Though my picture looks a little crooked, Lia said this would be her dream house right on the lake.

And Hana said she wouldn't object to living here.

We passed Domke Falls as we got closer to Stehekin. My book actually told me I'd get a better view on the return trip, but I'm glad I took this pic on the trip up the lake since I didn't even see it on the way back.

I liked seeing this peak peaking through (no pun intended :))

You could camp for weeks here and still find lots of new things to see.

Though the color of the lake looks midnight blue at first

It's actually a pretty turquoise color up close.

Isn't it so pretty?

One of the biggest reasons I wanted to do this tour was to see fabulous Rainbow Falls. Here's a pic from our small hike to the newly built upper viewing area.

And a pic of Hana and me from the lower viewing area where you can see both drops.

My camera couldn't quite get the entire falls. You could either get all of the bottom falls and cut off some of the top in this shot,

Or all of the top falls and cut off some of the lower falls.

A rare pic of all 3 of us.

Since Stehekin is a small community that can't be accessed by vehicle, they have a small school for grades K-8 all together. This is the old school where the same teacher taught all 9 grades for something like 50 years.

Hana had fun pretending to be a student there.

And the return trip brought us equally beautiful pictures as the way out.

I loved watching the boat's wake. And some jetskiiers in near Chelan loved riding it.

On our way back to Leavenworth as we passed the town of Entiat, we drove by this hill that's decorated with famous street signs (like route 66) sprayed onto it. It's called "Numeral Rock." The senior classes of Entiat High School have been painting their year on it for about 80 years now.

Leavenworth Summer Theater during the First Week of August

2011-09-26T16:08:00.000-07:00

This summer I had the fun opportunity to play Mother Abbess in "The Sound of Music" and Mrs Pearce in "My Fair Lady with Leavenworth Summer Theater. LST first performed "The Sound of Music" in 1995, and it was such a popular success that they've included it in their summer season every year since then.

The musical is presented in this amphitheater with a lovely mountain backdrop. It's hard to imagine a better venue for it unless it was actually in Austria.

Though the cast members often change each year, a lovely local lady named Susan Gubsch has been playing the Mother Abbess since the very first show. She actually hit her 250th performance of the role during this year's season.

When I called up to audition for the role, I was told that Susan had already been precast. However, she was planning on missing a performance on August 5th to attend her son's wedding rehearsal dinner, and whoever was cast as her understudy would perform the role then as well as in a separate understudy performance.

I figured I'd typically only had 1 or 2 performances of all of the roles I'd played previously, so I decided it'd still be worth it to audition for the role and have those 2 performances.

Fortunately I did get the role and had a great time playing it.

I'd performed the role as a senior in high school (see "Senior Year Echos the Sound of Music"), but it was still nice to play it again.

I had almost 12 additional years of personal and dramatic maturity to add to my character this time. I've seen the tape of my old performance, and I'm a noticeably better actress now than I was then.

Plus it can now be added to my resume as having performed the role in a professional theater, which is much more impressive than a high school musical.

I randomly took this pic of our Rolph and Liesl just to reset my camera, and it actually turned out pretty cute!

Before seeing the show, I took mom and dad to the Aplets and Cotlets factory in Cashmere.

This same factory also makes health bars. You can see them pouring out the mix for them in this picture above. I tried a free sample of this particular fruity flavor. It was yummy! In a lot of health bars you can taste "filler" ingredients that don't actually add much nutritional value, but this was chock full of nuts, seeds, and fruit.

Aplets and Cotlets are essentially "turkish delight" with nuts (or without for those who can't/won't eat nuts). Those of you who have read "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," will recognize turkish delight as the dish Edward receives from the Witch in return for leading her to his brothers and sisters.

I also took mom and dad around to the little shops in the Bavarian village. This one sells "Butt Rub."

And here's a flying pig made out of an empty propane tank!

My parents decided to come up for the August 5th performance rather than the understudy performance on June 29th. They wanted to see "My Fair Lady" as well, and that show didn't begin it's run until the end of July. By coming when they did, they were able to see me as Mother Abbess on Friday night and as Mrs Pearce on Saturday afternoon.

Here's Liz our lovely "Eliza Doolittle." Her fiance, Henry, played the Henry Higgens understudy. I thought it was hilarious that "Liz" and "Henry" were cast as "Eliza" and "Henry."

This is when Eliza first enters and Higgens says he's not interested since "I already have all the records I need of the Lissen Grove lingo."

Here's me demanding to know on what terms Eliza is to stay here.

Me irritated at Higgens for exhausting Eliza with endless drilling.

The maids (and me in the corner) chasing Eliza because she's running wild in "I Could Have Danced All Night."

The maids catching Eliza as she falls off the chair. I'm wearing a very hideous bathrobe with equally awful nightgown and cap. My husband insists I'm never able to own an outfit similar to that one!

Here we are singing the Servant's Lament. Mrs Pearce isn't scripted to sing this in the score, but our director listed me as singing it in ours.

At the doorstop when Freddy comes to call on Eliza.

Eliza back from the ball while Higgens tells us what happened.

Here's Colonel Pickering telling us what an exciting evening it was.

I also got to be a part of the Ascot scene where Eliza is first taken out in public dressed as a lady. This is at the horse race where Eliza makes the ghastly mistake of yelling at the horse to "Come on Dover! Move your bloomin' arse!"

In order to keep me from being recognized as Mrs Pearce, they disguised me well with this beekeeper hat. It worked! My own sister didn't even notice me until she heard my voice and found me by process of elimination.

During dress rehearsal, this costume actually fell down! Since I had a quick change from the "I Could Have Danced All Night" scene into the Ascot scene, I was given velcro instead of buttons. But someone accidentally stepped on my skirt during the first dress rehearsal which undid the velcro. When I tried to pull the velcro back together, the velcro on my blouse also came undone and my skirt fell down. Thank goodness for dress rehearsals! That would have been awful to have happen in a regular performance. They gave me a few buttons after that to make sure it didn't happen again.

After the show we took mom and dad to see Deception Falls. It wasn't as big as when we'd seen it before, but even in dry periods it still has a pretty large watershed.

And the next day we drove down to Medina to watch the Blue Angels fly.

Comet Falls and other Mt Ranier Waterfalls on a Crystal Clear Day

2011-09-23T20:53:00.000-07:00

On August 1st, Oscar and I decided to drive down to Mt Ranier so we could hike to Comet Falls.

Since we had already seen beautiful mountain views the last time we came, we didn't need to wait for a clear day. But we got lucky and had by far the clearest day I've ever seen at Mt Ranier. There are a few clouds around the base of the mountain in this pic, but there was nary a cloud in the sky by the time we got there.

I tried finding Christine Falls both times I visited Ranier before. This time I had the help of GPS coordinates.

It turns out we drove over it without even realizing it was there on our previous visits.

As we began our hike to Comet Falls, we could see several more drops leading down to Christine Falls.

We had a few glimpses of the mountain on this brilliantly clear day.

There was water coming out from everywhere. Summer is like Spring in Mt Ranier since it takes so long for the snow to melt.

This is Middle Van Trump Falls.

My guidebook says there are 3 falls - Upper, Middle, and Lower Van Trump Falls, but the latter can't be seen due to the shape of the canyon. So I'm not sure what this other falls qualifies as if not one of the Van Trumps.

Upper Van Trump Falls is quite impressive! I'd told Oscar we were hiking to a 5 star falls (the highest rating my waterfall book gives), and he actually started hiking back down the trail after taking pictures of this one. He assumed this was the one we hiked up to see.

But fortunately I knew that less than 1/4 mile later was beautiful, 5 star Comet Falls.

It's very obvious from the "shooting star" way the water falls why it would be called "Comet" Falls.

After hiking back down, we continued our drive around the park to search for more waterfalls.

Though we'd taken pictures from this viewpoint before, Oscar couldn't resist doing it again on such an incredibly clear day.

The mountain almost looks photo-shopped in.

We went on to find Ruby Falls. There's an upper falls you can see from the highway, but without our guidebook we wouldn't have known to hike down to the lower falls.

We'd seen Narada Falls before, but it was cool to see it from this viewpoint.

This viewpoint was one of our favorites from our last trip, but it was even better this time around. The picture is much less hazy.

This is Martha Falls, and our book told us we could join up with a trail that would take us up close to one of its main drops. But no matter how hard we looked we could not find it, even with GPS coordinates. We didn't have any more success trying to bushwack. It was several more miles before we saw the "Wonderland Trail," and we weren't up for hiking several miles back just to get a closer view.

Here's a mountain viewpoint we saw on our way out of the park.

And here's Skookum Falls, which was dried up considerably. Fortunately we'd taken a much better picture the first time we drove down this way when the waterfall was much bigger.

Riverside State Park and Green Bluff Growers

2011-09-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

After visiting Manito Park and Spokane Falls, I still had a little bit of time left before meeting up with Brie. Manito Park hadn't been far from this area where I could see some nice views, so I drove as far up the hill as I could get to take a few pictures.

I don't remember the name of the area, but it was pretty obvious from the nice houses that here were where the rich people live.

These are the beautiful views they had from their windows.

I personally don't care whether my home has a great view or not. As long as I can drive or walk to one, I'm not going to pay $1,000's more just to be able to get one from my home.

Next I drove down to Riverside State Park where I saw some monstrous rocks.

The river was nice too.

If I ever come here again I want to walk across this bridge and take a hike.

Usually I'm not a big fan of waterfalls created by dams, but this one actually looked pretty decent.

The next day I met up with Nikki and went raspberry and strawberry picking at Green Bluff growers.

It was really pretty to drive through, and the berries were perfect!

Here's Nikki and her kids Owen, Gavin, and Charity.

The strawberries were a lot harder to pick than the raspberries since they were all the way on the ground and required a lot of kneeling and bending over. But they were all juicy and perfectly red.

What a fun trip!

Manito Park in Spokane

2011-09-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

After exploring Riverfront Park, I drove down to Manito Park to see the rose gardens in bloom.

It took me awhile to find the roses, but there was a pretty pond when I first drove in.

I also found a very nice Japanese garden.

I caught a pic of this fish in the pond.

Ah...serenity...

I had almost left when I finally found the rose garden.

So many pretty flowers.

Some had interesting names. This one was called Cinderella.

Giggles

Trickster

Liberty Bell

Magic Show

Incognito

Rainbow's End

Cupcake

These were some of my favorites, so I was a bit disappointed they were just named after a person I've never heard of - "Dee Bennett." I liked the size of the blossoms and the variety of colors.

First Kiss

I got a few pretty close up shots of some of the roses.

I love this duo!

Pretty!

These are the kind of flowers I first encountered in Italy that remind me of long, colorful broccoli.

Bloomin Onion. Onions are generally the bane of my existence, but I can handle these onions!

Lamb's Ear.

Next I wandered into the conservatory area.

I'm sure this would be a lovely place to take wedding pictures.

Spokane Falls and Riverfront Park

2011-09-13T21:51:00.000-07:00

Towards the end of July, I decided to take a trip to Spokane to see some friends when I had a day off of rehearsals. My friend Nikki had moved there for her husband to attend law school; my former mission companion, Emily, had moved there to attend the same law school (and, coincidentally, is a study buddy of Nikki's husband, Seth); and my friend Brie from High School just moved there for her residency.

I had lunch with Emily at 1:00pm, dinner with Brie at 7:00pm, and spent the night at Nikki's house. No one was available between 2:00pm and 7:00pm, so I gave myself a self-guided tour of Spokane. First stop - taking the gondola over Spokane Falls.

It's not a terribly long gondola ride, but it does offer some pretty views.

The view from this bridge is pretty cool, but I never got more than a glimpse as I drove across.

It's a nifty falls, and you do get the best view from here (the top picture of this post was taken from the gondola). The top part of the fall is a man-made dam, but the rest is natural waterfall. It's the 2nd largest urban waterfall in the US (the largest, of course, being Niagara).

The view coming back into Riverfront park.

And the view of Spokane looking out the other way.

You can walk around the park to see a few of its smaller tributaries.

Upper falls was the most impressive of the additional falls.

I think this one is Canada Island Falls.

And I believe this is Diversion Dam Falls.

These were its drops from below the bridge.

My favorite shot of it was the most distant one.

I had this duck looking at the camera for awhile, but it turned away at the wrong moment.

I liked the fountain on the other side of the park.

Since I had a bit of extra time, I wandered down to view the falls on the walkway.

Though the gondola will give you the best views, I took this shot from the walkway, which is still pretty good.

Plus you can see these smaller tributaries better from here.

Peshastin Pinnacles State Park

2011-09-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

One of the coolest hikes I've ever been on was short, sweet, a wee bit steep, and surrounded by beautiful views.

Peshastin Pinnacles State Park is just a few miles outside of Leavenworth, and is an easy 1.5 mile loop hike. Since it's nearly always sunny out this direction, it's pretty much always a good time to take this hike.

The huge pinnacles are really cool, and you can climb to the top of a few of them, even without climbing gear.

The views improved as I climbed higher.

I really liked walking around this pinnacle.

I could see a teepee across the valley.

The shots above and below were from climbing to the top of the pinnacles. It was a bit scary, and I would have hurt myself pretty badly if I'd slipped, but I was thrilled once I made it up there.

Gorgeous!

Waterfalls near Snoqualmie Pass

2011-09-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

Near Snoqualmie Pass, about 60 miles east of Seattle, are 3 pretty waterfalls that were worth driving out of my way to see. I took the long way home from Leavenworth one day (US 97 to I 90) to visit them, and I'm glad I did, though I got a little lost trying to find them. The one above is called Roaring Creek Falls. It seems to be on private property, but there were signs directing you to the falls, and I didn't see any "no trespassing" signs.

This area is where my "Waterfalls of the Pacific Northwest" book told me I could view the falls. I thought that was kind of silly considering all I had to do was scramble down the hill a bit (in a very safe area) to get a much better, unobscured view as seen in the top picture.

Next I punched in my GPS coordinates for Snowshed Falls. I should have followed my book's directions instead. The problem with using GPS coordinates to find waterfalls is that it will take you as far as it can on real roads, and then will make up a non-existent road for you to turn on out into the middle of nowhere. It could literally tell you to drive off a cliff if you're not paying attention.

These directions tried to get me to come down on the waterfall from above, which led me up into this beautiful area near Stampede Pass.

I saw a little trail that I began hiking down, but I eventually figured out it wasn't taking me to the falls and backtracked. Unfortunately it delayed me for quite some time.

At least I was able to get several pretty pictures because of this lengthy detour.

Once I made it back to the car, I decided to actually follow my book's directions this time. They weren't terribly clear since I had to hike blindly for awhile before I found the train tracks I was supposed to follow, but I did make it to the falls. This snowshed was built to protect trains from the spray of this waterfall - hence the name "Snowshed Falls." It really wasn't that big of a falls, so I was surprised that they would spend a lot of money for a lot of concrete just to avoid a bit of spray. But I guess they know their business better than I do.

My last stop took me to Franklin Falls, which according to my book I could drive or hike to. We'd actually tried to take my niece, Hana, to this falls after taking her to Twin Falls in May, but the road was blocked by too much snow.

I could not for the life of me find where I was supposed to turn off to view the falls, but I did find the easy 1 mile hike that would take me there.

It was a very pleasant hike with some pretty views of the river.

And Franklin Falls was gorgeous! It was only given a 3 out of 5 star rating in my book, but I would have given it a 5. Beautiful!

Bridal Veil Falls, Alpine Falls, Deception Falls, and Drury Falls on US 2

2011-09-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

Commuting back between Lynnwood and Leavenworth this summer was not easy, but I loved being able to see waterfalls while driving along US 2 and hiking to them when I had the time. The first falls you encounter on your way east is Wallace Falls - a stunning waterfall that has already been given its own post.

Though you'll get much better views if you take the 5.5 mile hike, you can still get a pretty decent view from US 2 if you know where you look.

About 8 miles later you'll see Bridal Veil Falls. The shot above shows the falls tumbling down Mt Index in multiple strands. It was taken from US 2, and I actually prefer the view from here to the view from the hike since you can see all the different threads of water. I wouldn't advise looking for it when you're traveling east since you can only see it in your rearview mirror or by looking directly behind you. But this view is very easily seen when you're traveling west.

It's about 4.5 miles roundtrip to hike to the falls, and there were several pretty views of the valley before I got there.

In this pic you can see US 2 on the far left.

The falls were beautiful when I made it there, and I was surprised that my "Waterfalls of the Pacific Northwest" book only gave them a 2 out of 5 star rating.

It's easily understood why it's called "bridal veil" by the pretty way the water drops off the mountain. The pool created by the falls isn't particularly deep and technically you could cross it if you were willing to get your feet wet, but I wouldn't advise it. There's another trail that will take you up to Lake Serene - the lake that feeds the falls, but I didn't have time for an additional 3 miles.

It was cool to get this up close and personal to the waterfall, but I was dissapointed at only being able to see two threads. I prefered the view from the highway.

The next falls along the highway is called Alpine Falls.

Unfortunately the viewpoint only takes you to the top of the falls, which isn't terribly picturesque. But you could at least see from here how powerful the waterfall was crashing.

I scrambled down the hill to try and get a better shot.

But this was the best I could do since I wasn't willing to go out into the water and get my shoes soaking wet.

The next waterfall, Deception Falls, has its own little park to walk through. Again I was floored that my book only gave it a 2 star rating. It was powerful and beautiful. This is the upper viewpoint of the falls.

And this is a shot of lower falls taken from the bridge above.

This shot of lower falls is taken from a bit further back.

We tried taking the trail around the falls, but we weren't up to crossing these wet rocks when the water was flowing so rapidly.

We even tried going around the loop in the other direction, but the entire trail was soaked!

We came back a few weeks later to finish the hike.

The water was still strong, but not quite as intense as it was earlier.

We liked this funky tree stump.

There were several moderate falls and rapids to see as we hiked around.

This is an area where you can see that the river actually changed its course in response to a landslide.

The next viewpoint held a fairly decent and powerful cascade, but it was difficult to get a great picture.

We ended up braving the wet rocks this time since the water wasn't nearly as intense Our shoes still got soaked, but at least we didn't have to hike all the way back around the way we'd come.

I like this cute pic of me with lower falls in the background.

And the last falls you see (if you're looking for it) before entering Leavenworth is Drury Falls. It's quite a waterfall, but since the view is very distant, I actually understood why it only has a two star rating. It's all the way up the mountain about 6 miles north of Leavenworth and is extremely easy to miss if you're not trying to find it. This was the best shot we could get from the highway.

My frind Gary, however, was able to get a fantastic shot of it with his camera. It's much less blurry than ours even though it's zoomed in much further. One of these days we'll get a fancy camera that can take shots like this one!

Iron Goat Loop Trail

2011-09-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago on my way home from Leavenworth I decided to hike the Mountain Goat Loop - a former rail line that's been converted into a pretty hiking trail.

Several snow sheds were built to protect the trains from snow melt during the Spring.

Some were safe enough to go into, while others were far too dangerous. I actually began my hike behind a large group going into the snow sheds wearing hard hats, but I passed them quickly since they lingered in the tunnels much longer than I did.

There was a lot of beautiful foliage to see.

These large leaves reminded me of being in Hawaii.

Fortunately the path is mostly paved and easy to follow, but it seemed longer than the 5.7 miles it claimed to be.

I could see a couple of waterfalls, but they were too difficult to view from the surrounding trees.

These two were a bit easier to see, but they're more of what I call "vertical streams," rather than waterfalls.

This little tunnel feels nice and cool when you get close to it.

This snowshed was open, but you couldn't enter in more than a few feet.

There were some nice views of Steven's Pass as I climbed up to the upper loop.

Quite a bit of water was dripping down the snow sheds on the upper loop portion of the hike.

I hiked up to an overlook with these two vertical streams.

And found a few more tunnels

Along with this hole in the wall.

I saw an extremely large tunnel as I was finishing the upper loop.

But I continued for a 1/4 mile off the loop hike to go see Windy Point.

The views of Steven's Pass and Surprise Creek Valley were beautiful.

I could see a pretty impressive waterfall in the distance, but I can't seem to find its name if it has one. Surprise Creek Falls?

Hiking near Leavenworth

2011-09-02T21:00:00.000-07:00

One wonderful thing about living in Leavenworth for the summer was the opportunity to do a lot of hiking. Here in Lynnwood I have to drive at least an hour to get to any real hiking opportunities, so it was nice to be surrounded by many nearby hiking trails.

The closest hike to Leavenworth is the Tumwater Pipeline trail which follows the Icicle river along an abandoned pipeline.

It's very easy to miss (I passed it twice before I saw the turnoff), but you'll know you're there when you see the big iron bridge. I could actually see it from another hike I took up the mountains, which at least confirmed to me that there really was a way to cross the river.

The views of the river are very pretty from the bridge and the trail.

But don't get in it! It's very strong. Two teenagers drowned recently from attempting to swim in it.

Further up the river are two trails called the "Icicle Gorge Trail" and the "Icicle Gorge View Trail." Both are loop trails, and the Icicle Gorge View trail takes the bottom section of its loop from the top section of the Gorge trail loop.

There was a small waterfall from the bridge I crossed to start taking the loop clockwise.

It was quite intense! A local hiker told me it's typically clear enough by this time of year to see the fish. But additional snow this year has kept it churning.

Here were a couple of small waterfalls I could see across the river, but they were blocked a bit by the trees.

There was a lookout rock that I stood on to take pictures of the pretty gorge.

A few years ago this trail was extremely popular and very crowded, but a landslide actually diverted the river so it now flows through what used to be the road.

You can't drive to the trail head anymore, but you can still walk to it if you're willing to add an extra four miles round trip to an already 4.5 mile hike.

This was actually the first hike I wanted to do, but the road was closed 8 miles further back the first time I tried to get there. I hadn't realized it was still accessible until the lady I was staying with told me about it a few weeks later. It was apparently closed those additional miles for a separate landslide in June, but they had that cleared up by the time I came back in late July.

I veered off of my original loop to see the views from the view trail. It's pretty, but there's a ton of brush to walk through.

This is a bridge crossing into a wetlands preserve in Wenatchee where I took a hike after getting an oil change.

The views of the Wenatchee river were pretty, but the phone lines blocked my pictures.

It wasn't the prettiest hike, but I got a few nice shots.

I like the mountain view in this one.

A hiking problem I had was that most of the hikes in Leavenworth are long, and I refuse to hike a long trail alone. 9 miles round trip is where I draw the line, but I also needed shorter hiking options for days when I had early rehearsals. The other "Sound of Music" nuns recommended I take the trail to Hidden Lake in Lake Wenatchee.

It was a nice little trail, but Hidden Lake isn't nearly as pretty as Lake Wenatchee.

Ebey's Landing and Erie Mountain on Whidbey Island

2011-08-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

After seeing Deception Pass, Oscar and I decided we wanted to see a bit more of Whidbey Island by taking a hike at Ebey's Landing.

It's rare to see Mount Ranier in this kind of clarity, but we had perfect views of it our entire drive south.

The hike starts near a beautiful prairie where you find a trail leading you to the coast.

It's amazing how far we could see along the coast.

If you click to enlarge this picture, you can see that the area just right of Mount Ranier is Seattle. How impressive that we could see the city of Seattle when we were 60 miles away from it!

Those of you who follow my blog know how much I like seeing water in all of its forms. This was definitely the perfect hike for me.

I loved our perfect views of the Olympic mountains behind the water.

The trail was a tad steep at the beginning

But I'm glad for it, since the height gave us better views. The hiking book I learned about this trail from gives this hike a maximum rating for scenic beauty.

Here's me hiking up the steepest parts. Oscar always hikes quickly the parts that are most difficult. I take my time.

We also had a perfect view of Mount Baker rising up behind the prairie.

There were a lot of pretty wildflowers along the trail.

The tide forms this small lake, Parego's Lagoon, that we hiked over and around.

This is my absolute favorite shot of the day! Oscar got this pretty pic of Mount Ranier, the coast, a boat, and a seaplane all in one.

At this point the trail leads you downhill and you walk back along the beach.

Here's my sweet husband on the beach, who was unfortunately having a difficult time with his eyes due to his allergies that day. Ideal weather often makes for horrible sinuses.

We passed this garden on our way back. I think it was cabbage they were growing.

And to finish off our day on Whidbey Island, we drove back up north to Erie Mountain lookout. We were a bit disappointed with the view at the end of the road because it was so obscured by trees.

But fortunately the other lookouts on the way back down the mountain did not disappoint.

Here's a pic of me at the middle lookout.

And this is the final lookout (or first depending on when you stop at it). We enjoyed some lovely views of the San Juan islands to finish off our beautiful day before we drove back to Edmonds for some 4th of July fireworks.

Deception Pass

2011-08-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

Oscar and I have been meaning to go up to Deception Pass for several months, and we finally got around to it on July 4th. Deception Pass is a bridge that allows cars to travel onto Whidbey Island.

Seattle did July 4th right this year! After a very gloomy spring and even a gloomy start of summer, July 4th was sunny and crystal clear. It's best to visit Whidbey Island when there are as few clouds as possible since that increases you're chances of being able to see the nearby San Juan islands as well as distant Mount Ranier and Mount Baker. This was the gorgeous view that beheld our eyes when we first walked out onto the bridge.

And the beauty just kept on coming at us from all sides.

I love this adorable picture of me with my windblown hair wrapped around my face.

There are some short trails that will take you down to the beach area, but we didn't take those. Maybe we will next time.

I'd actually bought a groupon to ride a catamaran around the area, so we were in a bit of a hurry to take some pics from the bridge before we drove down to the dock.

Even the views looking east (away from the San Juans) were beautiful.

This shot just blows my mind! Stunning!

We had a clear view of Mount Baker that day. That can be hard to come by here in Seattle.

This was our view of Deception Pass from down on the catamaran.

You'll have to click on this picture to enlarge it in order to see them, but this area is home to a small breed of seals.

Here's me enjoying the catamaran cruise.

This area in the hill used to be a prison! You can see the bars if you look really, really closely.

Here's my sweet husband taking a break from picture taking to enjoy the cruise.

Whenever I go out on a boat ride I love watching the wake it forms.

Here we've cruised over to the west side.

If you click to enlarge this picture you can see a seal sticking its head out of the water.

We had wonderful views of the Olympic Mountains.

I really like this shot Oscar got of the boat nearby us cruising across the water.

You might not recognize it from this picture.

But this mountain clearly looks like King Kong's profile. Though it's not quite as good as the one we saw in Kauai.

We even saw a couple bald eagles on our way back to the dock. This was a tiny one that actually stayed in the tree long enough for us to get a picture.

Stay tuned for our next Whidbey Island post - Hiking to Ebay Landing and going to Erie Mountain Lookout. We almost lost our camera that night when we watched fireworks, but we found it several days later (once we realized it was missing) on the lawn where we'd set down our blankets. Thank goodness or we would have lost all of these beautiful pictures!

Lake Chelan Butte

2011-08-26T15:31:00.000-07:00

Lake Chelan is about an hour northeast of Leavenworth, and it's definitely worth a trip up there. The lake sparkles on a sunny day.

Several people were up here hang-gliding. It was cool to watch them take off.

Originally we'd intended to go hiking up Chelan Butte Road, but it turned out our car was able to make it up all but about 1/5th of a mile. Our guidebook had told us you would need 4 wheel drive to go the last two miles, but our Prius seemed to be doing okay, so we kept driving. We're glad we did too, since there ended up being another Prius parked next to us at the top. We would have felt stupid if we'd hiked the last couple miles only to find out our car could have made it just fine.

I loved how there were different views from all sides. On the southeast side we could see Entiat Lake and the river that flows into it.

Oscar and I both climbed up on this monstrous rock to get the full 360 degree effect.

These were the pretty hills we could see when we looked north.

And, of course, there's a lovely view of Lake Chelan to the west. Lake Chelan is a LONG lake. It's 55 miles long, actually. Chelan actually means "deep water" in the Salish language, and even though it's only the 24th deepest lake in the world, what's impressive is that it's only a mile wide at its deepest point (1,486 ft). Other deeper lakes are much wider before they reach that depth.

Oscar thought he'd pose for a Vitamin water advertisement! I think he looks HOT!!! But maybe I'm biased...

Since we hadn't actually done much hiking we decided to take the Echo Ridge loop trail. It was nifty to be able to see our car for the entire 2.25 mile loop.

There were a lot of pretty wildflowers,

But unfortunately our views of the lake were limited. Good thing we'd already gotten some fabulous pics on Chelan Butte Road.

Icicle Ridge Trail and the Wenatchee River

2011-08-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

If you like mountains and you like rivers, Leavenworth is a good place to be.

These top two pictures are shots I took from Enchanted Park in downtown Leavenworth. We went tubing on the Icicle/Wenatchee rivers a couple of weeks ago, which is something I would definitely recommend doing. It's relaxing and beautiful!

And this is the view I see everyday when I cross the bridge over the Wenatchee River.

The first time Oscar and I came to Leavenworth was for Christmas a couple of years ago. We could tell that it must be beautiful in the summer, and said we'd like to return someday to go on a hike.

We came back in July of the following year, and we found a pretty hike called the Icicle Ridge Trail that gave us an excellent bird's eye view of the village and surrounding mountains. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring water with us, which was killer for such a steep hike exposed to so much sun, and even worse, we forgot our camera.

Once I moved out to Leavenworth for 2011's summer theater program, I resolved to do the same hike again but to have water and to bring my camera this time.

What I love about this hike is that there are beautiful views during the entire trip up, not just when you reach the top. This is the view of the meeting of Icicle and the Wenatchee rivers from about halfway along the trail.

One of the first things you see when you reach the top of this trail is Leavenworth's waterfall - Drury Falls. It's quite a beautiful waterfall that you can see while driving in and out of Leavenworth on US 2. But it's high up the mountain and very easy to miss if you don't know where to look for it. It was still quite distant even from here, but I enjoyed being able to look at it at my leisure, instead of getting merely a few glimpses of it while I drove.

The shots below are all taken from the end point of the trail. You can continue on for about 10 more miles if you wish, but I chose to stop at the same end point we'd stopped at last time.

A few days earlier I'd tried to find a trail called "Tumwater Pipeline Trail," but had been unsuccessful. I kept looking to my left while I drove on the highway but I couldn't find a bridge to cross the river. From this trial I could see it easily. I ended up taking that trail a few weeks later now that I knew where to look for it.

The mountain views are gorgeous from here!

In this shot you can see the village of Leavenworth on the left, the Wenatchee river in the middle, the pretty valley on the right, and the surrounding mountains behind them.

These two incredibly ugly trees blocked my view of some of the area further north.

This is definitely the best trail to take if you want to see the village of Leavenworth from above.

You'll know you've made it to the end when you come upon these flower bushes that bar you from continuing further. I must warn you, however, that these bushes, as well as a lot of the trail, are full of bees. They didn't bother me in the slightest, though. They all seemed perfectly content to pollinate flowers and let me enjoy my hike in peace.

Dry Falls, Steamboat Rock, and the Grand Coulee Dam

2011-08-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

About 90 minutes away from Leavenworth is an area of huge geological significance - Dry Falls.

This is the lookout you see from the highway, but you have to know where to turn in to get a really good view.

This board tells the story of Dry Falls. Click to enlarge it if you want to read it in its entirety. As glaciers were melting at the end of the ice age, it created a huge waterfall - bigger than any that has ever existed.

It looks like this now - totally dried up after thousands of years.

And you can see from the shape of the canyon that it would have looked something like this. According to Greg Plumb in "Waterfalls of the Pacific Northwest," the waterfall plunged 400 feet over cliffs and totaled 3.5 miles in width. The discharge was 40 times mightier than Niagara Falls (for comparison's sake, Niagara Falls plunges 173 feet and is 2500 feet wide).

Though the waterfall lover in me wishes I could see what it looked like then,

It's still pretty awesome to see it now, and stand out on this overlook.

I loved these rolling ridges formed by crashing water,

and it was hard to tear myself away from the beautiful canyon the falls created.

Inside the visitor's center they have a fossilized skull of a saber toothed tiger.

Oh how I wish I could go back in time and see the waterfall when it was flowing!

We had a little bit extra time after we left Dry Falls, so we decided to drive up to the Grand Coulee Dam. We thought these curved parking spaces were a bit funky.

Apparently there's enough concrete in this dam to build a freeway from LA to New York!

The surrounding area is pretty, and at night in the summer they do a laser show across the dam. I want to come back for that sometime, but we couldn't stay since we were on a tight time frame. I actually had rehearsal at 12:45pm that day, and we left Leavenworth at around 7am. We went here and back really quick.

This pretty reservoir is called Franklin Delano Roosevelt Lake.

We drove by Steamboat Rock on our way back to Leavenworth.

It really does look like a steamboat!

And many more pretty sights of the lake impressed us on our way home.

What's especially impressive is that I took these pictures from the car while Oscar was driving! I'm surprised they turned out so well.

Eight Mile Lake

2011-08-20T06:54:00.000-07:00

One of my first hikes in Leavenworth took me to Eight Mile Lake.

I'd actually intended to do a different hike that day, but the road was closed when I got there, so I did this one instead.

I could see waterfall potential here.

But the views were never clear enough to get a good picture.

There were a lot of pretty wildflowers on this trail.

I even got to see a few mountain goats. But they were too distant and moved too quickly for me to get a picture of them.

I knew I was close when I made it to Little Eightmile Lake.

But there were still lots of rocks to climb over before I reached my destination.

Fortunately the trail remains well marked even as you meander through the rocks.

And the payoff at the end is stunning! I love how you can see the mountains reflected in the lake. I was also grateful to meet another lone hiker on my way down. We talked about different places we'd traveled and hiked to. It made the hike back much more pleasant and the time went by much quicker.

Lake Wenatchee

2011-08-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

Leavenworth is about 25 miles west of the city of Wenatchee. However, Lake Wenatchee is actually about 20 miles west of Leavenworth. I'd always assumed Lake Wenatchee and the city of Wenatchee would be close, concluding that the lake must be named after the nearest city. But now that I know they're so distant, I'd guess they're both named after the long Wenatchee river which flows through each of them.

We first went to Lake Wenatchee to take a short hike to White River Falls.

There was too much snow and pothole-filled roads to get to the trailhead, but fortunately there's a decent view from White River Falls Campground.

The hike would have taken us to its base where the water was forcefully churning.

But I didn't feel like we'd missed out on anything by not doing the hike. The view we had was still pretty good.

We tried finding a good spot to take a picture of the lake, but every view we found was still blocked by foliage. The picture at the top of this post was the best we got.

On a return trip I entered the park and was able to take this picture from just in front of the freezing lake.

And on my most recent trip, I found this beautiful overlook of the entire lake. I'd actually been searching for a small waterfall (which ended up being completely dry), but I saw a sign going 4 miles up to an overlook, and I'm so glad I found it. This was the prettiest of all the sights I'd seen in Lake Wenatchee.

Entiat Silver Falls

2011-08-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

The day after I moved out to Leavenworth, I thought it would be fun to take a nice pretty drive to somewhere that I could do a nice pretty hike. My rehearsals were over by 10am, and since this would be one of only a few days where I had lots of time, I intentionally picked a hike that was far away going the opposite direction of home. I figured I'd have lots of opportunity to do closer hikes or to do hikes that were along my drive to and from Leavenworth, so this would be a good day to go somewhere new and far away.

I looked in my waterfall book and found a hike to a waterfall at Foggy Dew Creek near the city of Twisp. It was longer than I'd originally intended to drive (closer to 100 miles when I was looking for closer to 50), but the length of the hike was precisely what I wanted.

There was still quite a bit of snow, and the trail wasn't in the best shape.

You can see this big patch of snow covering the trail. It was kind of scary to walk across it. Though it was hard packed, I was worried I was going to fall right through it.

Unfortunately I was extremely disappointed with the waterfall. It wasn't that impressive, and it was very difficult to photograph due to a lot of foliage.

I even soaked my feet crossing the falls to see if the pictures were better from the other side, or to see if there were more waterfalls along the trail. But, alas, it really wasn't any better. I soaked my shoes for nothing.

It was getting fairly late at this point and I still had a long drive to do, but I couldn't believe I'd traveled so far and done a long hike for such a lame waterfall. I looked in my waterfall book and decided to detour into the city of Entiat to see 3 more waterfalls.

I'm really glad I drove the extra 60 miles (about 30 each way) to see the falls in this area. They were a LOT better than Foggy Dew Falls! I was unable to get a picture of the first (Preston Falls) since it was a roadside falls, but I ended up doing another hike at Silver Falls. It's a good thing this was June when there was a lot of sunshine since I started this hike at around 8:00pm.

The trail takes you up and around the waterfall in a nice loop.

The views only got better as you got higher.

Seeing this beautiful cascade made me very happy!

I found it difficult to photograph going up the right side of the loop.

But the views were much better as I came down the other side. It's very pretty!

You also get a lovely view of the Entiat Valley from this short hike. It was a much more scenic and rewarding hike than the one I'd done earlier in the day.

Further along the road I found Entiat Falls, an interesting cascade crashing over a rock ledge onto the boulders below.

The Crazy Trail to Malachite Falls

2011-08-19T15:34:00.000-07:00

Before I moved out to Leavenworth to be a part of their summer theater, we came out a few days early to check out the house I'd be living in. As long as we were going all that way, we decided to check out the waterfalls close to US-2. The first took us on a hard hike to Malachite Falls. This wasn't as difficult physically as the hikes we'd done in Yosemite, but the terrain was awful, the trail was difficult to follow, and there was still quite a bit of snow to slide on. But Malachite Falls, pictured above, was beautiful. It's unfortunate, though, that there's no place to get a good view of it. All they'd need to do is cut down a few trees in order to give hikers a better view of a stunning falls.

Our first stop on our way out took us to Eagle Falls. This is just off the side of US 2 getting close to Skykomish. It's more of a rapid than a falls, but it was still enjoyable to see.

The river it flows through is very pretty. I love that turquoise color!

It's nice to have Oscar with me when I go waterfall searching. He's better at finding them than I did. I almost missed this one.

But I can spot them pretty well too. We'd begun the trail to Malachite Falls and Oscar completely missed the lookout to this pretty falls. It'd be gorgeous if you could get close to it, but it's very high up the mountain without a closer trail. It's called Shoestring Falls.

Further along the trail we saw a couple more distant falls.

Our guidebook names another distant falls as "Sunray Falls," but I don't know if it's referring to the falls in this pic or the previous pic.

Oscar saw this log and told me he wasn't interested in doing this hike since we obviously couldn't cross this river without getting our shoes soaked. The first several feet of the log bridge were already underwater. I, however, said I didn't care, got my feet wet, and walked right across it. Fortunately he loves me enough to follow :)

We also saw some mighty big trees. This was the area where we nearly got lost since it's poorly marked and there's a lot of brush to push through. We climbed over several fallen trees while following a series of colored tags. There were too many tags in areas where the trail was obvious and they weren't really needed, and there weren't nearly enough in the areas where it's difficult to follow. Fortunately they're doing some work on the area so hopefully it will be better in the future.

After a steady climb we made it up to pretty Trout Lake.

There were some pretty mountain views as we began our ascent up Copper Creek.

The creek itself had several small cascades to enjoy as we climbed up several switchbacks.

And finally we made it to beautiful Malachite Falls.

By hiking up several switchbacks we were able to see the entire falls, but never could you get a great photograph. The first had too much tree blocking the largest drop, but when we'd move to a place that blocked the largest drop left, some tree would be in our way blocking another part of the falls.

This was probably the best view we had. It's similar, but it's not quite as good as the picture in my guidebook. I couldn't figure out where he would have taken his picture. Maybe he climbed a tree. But even he complains about the visibility of this falls, giving almost an entire page up to saying that this would be one of the northwest's best waterfalls and improve safety if only they would cut down a few more trees.

We enjoyed the pretty mountain views as we began our descent.

Oscar liked these pretty flowers.

We bushwacked a bit to a place where you could see the top of Malachite Falls along with the creek it flows into. Oh if only those trees on the right weren't there this would be an excellent view!

On our way back we found an even better view of Shoestring Falls than we'd seen the first time.

We pratically had to drive through a waterfall just to get to and from this trail. The pics above and below were taken from our car as we drove through water tumbling down the road.

California's Old Faithful Geyser, Touring around Napa, and Checking Out Central Oregon Waterfalls

2011-08-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

After spending a night in Napa at my relatives' house, Oscar and I took off early to see the Napa Valley before we began our drive home. I was surprised to learn from the nearby roadsigns that there is an Old Faithful Geyser in northern California. I'd only heard of the famous Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park, so I thought it'd be cool to stop by and see this one.

The price they charge is a bit steep just to see a geyser ($16 a person), so they try to make up for it by having a small zoo of unique animals.

This was the most impressive one. Look at those enormous horns!

They also had a small bamboo maze to walk through.

The geyser goes off about every 15 minutes.

Which means it's not quite as big as those that go off less often. But it was still enjoyable to see.

Here's a pretty lookout we stopped at on our way back to the main freeway

And a few more shots of the northern California scenery.

We saw some gorgeous views of Mt Shasta, but the view from the only lookout we found wasn't nearly as good as the views we were getting as we drove.

We ended up spending the night at my dad's cousin's house in Medford, OR.

They have a lovely view from their ranch.

Rather than staying on I-5 to go home, Oscar and I detoured a bit to the east so that we could see several waterfalls in central Oregon. This first one is Koosah Falls.

There's no hike required to get here or to see it from the top of the falls, but the walk out to the falls overlook is VERY muddy.

And nearby is beautiful Sahalie Falls.

We had to scramble down some funny rock formations to see Sevenmile Creek falls.

Then took a short but muddy walk out to Salmon Falls.

And we finished up our waterfall searching by taking a 3 mile round trip hike to pretty Henline Falls.

At first this little falls was all we saw as we reached the end of our hike. We were a little disappointed that we'd done a hike just for this little falls.

But then we were satisfied when we saw this much larger falls just around the corner.

Hetch Hetchy

2011-08-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

The last day of our Yosemite trip took us up into the northwest park of the park - Hetch Hetchy reservoir. The city of San Francisco actually gets its water from the dam in this beautiful area.

But before we drove up there from Wawona, we wanted to take a brief hike up to Chilnualna Falls.

This is a forceful, beautiful waterfall that is made up of 5 tiers. We'd almost stopped hiking at the lowest tier, but we're glad we continued onward to this, the largest tier.

Unfortunately there's nowhere you can photograph all 5 tiers at once, and we weren't up for hiking all the way to the top.

We started hiking along a meadow loop trail where we found this pretty flower, but we turned around quickly. My feet were killing me from our Vernal and Nevada Falls hike the day before. I'd started the hike off with my shoes still soaked from visiting Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite Valley, which then became further soaked on the Mist Trail to Vernal Falls. Unfortunately hiking a steep trail in wet shoes makes for some blistery feet, and I was struggling just to walk along this flat, easy trail around the meadow. Our plans that night were to go backpacking to a campsite 7 miles into the Hetch Hetchy area, so I figured I should save my feet as best I could until then.

It may be in the same park, but the drive from Wawona to Hetch Hetchy was not short. It took a couple of hours to get all the way up there, especially as we drove close to Yosemite Valley on the Saturday before Memorial Day. At least the drive was scenic.

The Hetch Hetchy reservoir was gorgeous!

Previous to this day we'd been hiking at nice campsites within Yosemite Park, and we'd been sleeping fairly well with temperatures no lower than 42 degrees farenheit. Unfortunately we learned that the low in Hetch Hetchy would be 31 degrees with a decent chance of snow. I was terrified of sleeping at this temperature since we'd be backpacking 7 miles and wouldn't be able to bring extra blankets with us, and my feet were still really hurting from the day before. Once we made it to Hetch Hetchy and I saw that predicted temperature, I turned to Oscar and said "I can't do this honey. I can't."

Oscar still wanted to do the backpacking trip, though he admitted that it was more to say he'd done it than because he'd actually enjoy it. But he was kind enough to back out of the trip since I wasn't feeling up to it.

We still decided to go into the area and see the gorgeous views, but we didn't do any hiking.

It might not be a natural waterfall, but I really enjoyed the powerful cascades shooting out of the dam.

We knew we'd have a killer hard time trying to find a hotel or campsite at last minute without internet access on Memorial Day weekend. So instead I called some of my relatives in Napa, CA and asked if we'd be able to stay a night with them.

It was a bit cloudy, but there was some beautiful scenery along our way.

And we made it into Napa just after watching a pretty sunset from the highway.

Glacier Point Road and the Mariposa Grove

2011-08-13T00:26:00.000-07:00

Glacier Point Road in Yosemite National Park takes you to some gorgeous, panoramic views of Yosemite Valley and its largest waterfalls. I was highly disappointed that it was still closed when we got there.

However, as we were leaving Yosemite Valley and driving down south towards Wawona, I was delighted to learn that Glacier Point Road had been opened for the holiday weekend (Memorial Day). The view was mind blowing. Here is one of the few places where you can actually see all of Yosemite Falls.

You can also see many other tall waterfalls descending through the valley.

And you can get some fantastic shots of half dome from here.

You can still see the snow on top of it in this shot.

Yosemite Falls really is amazing. I kept being led back to it.

But that wasn't the only beautiful thing to see.

Earlier that morning we'd actually hiked the Mist Trail/John Muir Trail up and around Vernal and Nevada Falls. It was really awesome to be able to see it from a bird's eye view afterwards. It made me feel really proud of myself!

So many beautiful shots of the valley!

Half dome is really quite impressive.

I love this cute shot of me with Yosemite Falls in the background

And this Yosemite Falls closeup.

I still can't believe we hiked that whole thing.

This view is stunning, but not for those who are afraid of heights.

This is one of the very few places where you can see Vernal and Nevada Falls together, and see the whole hike going around it.

Vernal Falls closeup.

And a zoomed in view of several other waterfalls we could see in the distance.

Just a few last shots before we took off for Mariposa Grove in Wawona.

This was some of the scenery we saw along our way.

It's not a long distance, but it's a decent drive on winding roads. Good thing there were pretty things to look at along the way.

And finally we made it to the Mariposa Grove - a grove of large, ancient Sequoia trees near the south entrance of the park.

The first tree we saw along the trail was the "Fallen Giant."

A few had been charred from fire.

Lots of tree rings.

The three cousins.

This one had had a hole carved out of it to make way for a carriage.

Here's Oscar in the carriage hole.

And this last one was the tallest tree in the park.

And for the final section of our trip, click here to see pics of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir.

Hiking to Vernal and Nevada Falls Along the Famous Mist Trail and John Muir Trail

2011-08-11T16:21:00.000-07:00

Vernal Falls (above) and Nevada Falls (below) are two of Yosemite National Parks best waterfalls. However, they're not easy to get to. The hike to the Vernal Falls bridge isn't long, but it's very steep. We saw several people turn around and decide it wasn't worth it.

We, however, absolutely loved this hike. Yes, it was one of the more difficult hikes I've done, but the views were absolutely spectacular! We actually had to get up very early so we could finish the hike before we had to checkout of our campsite at noon. Our guidebook told us to expect 4-7 hours to complete the hike up and back to both falls. Since we took a lot of pictures and took a few rest breaks during some of the steepest parts, I was impressed that we made it in only 4 hours and 6 minutes. I'm glad to know that my hiking pace is considered fast by some standards!

The hike to the Vernal Falls bridge is less than a mile long, well paved, and easy to follow, but it is also very, very steep. There weren't many people on the trail when we started at around 6:30AM, but on our way back we had several people asking us how much further it was since they weren't in the best shape and were already exhausted. Most Yosemite hikes are pretty long and intense, so I could understand why a lot of people would assume that such a short hike would also be easy. It's not easy at all. That short distance is pretty much straight uphill. Fortunately the views are really lovely. The first thing you see is Illilouette Falls (pictured above) all the way across the valley. This falls is every bit as beautiful and intense as the more famous falls we saw on this hike, but we weren't ever able to get a view of it. The only hike that passes close to Illilouette Falls is the Panorama trail, and that was still closed for the season due to lingering snow.

After our first significant climb we made it to the Vernal Falls bridge. But there was no way we were stopping there! This is where you have to join the Mist Trail if you want to hike up to the top of Vernal Falls.

It's a tough hike up a ton of stairs (we actually said it should be called "Stairmaster Falls), but it's definitely worth it since the view of the falls is so much better as you get closer to it. But it's not called the Mist Trail without good reason. We had to make garbage bag ponchos in order to stay dry while we hiked, and even then we still got pretty wet. Fortunately the sun came out soon after we'd finished and we had the rest of our hike to Nevada Falls to dry us off.

Before we came to the park, I'd looked up these waterfalls and learned that many people have died from being swept over the falls. This scared me a bit that the trail might not be very safe, but the truth is that you'll be perfectly alright as long as you stick to the trail. You can see me climbing the stairs on the right of this pic above, and it's obvious that I'm nowhere near falling down into the water. It may be wet, but you're unlikely to slip since it's well paved and there's a fence put up to protect you whenever you get near the edge. I can't promise as much for those foolish enough to stray off the trail just to get a slightly better picture.

And after our second grueling climb we made it to the top!

The river flowing from Nevada Falls to Vernal Falls is pretty awesome! It almost looks like a series of natural water slides. It reminded us of our hike to Marten, Otter, and Big Creek Falls that we'd done a few weeks earlier. It may look fun, but it's not even close to safe. No swimming signs are marked everywhere along with "warning" and "danger" signs. Unfortunately, that's not enough to deter some people. Several people this year alone have died from being swept over the falls.

I can definitely see the temptation, but rivers are often much stronger than they appear.

This river could almost be classified as a series of smaller rock slide waterfalls.

You can certainly see that potential in the picture above. If I'd just randomly posted that on facebook, you'd think it was a waterfall, not a river.

We still had another difficult climb up several switchbacks, but the views were getting more and more beautiful as we climbed higher.

We detoured down a side path to see Nevada Falls before we'd reached the top.

I loved the constant rainbow created by the crashing water. This year was particularly good for waterfalls thanks to a hard winter creating extra snow melt.

I thought it was pretty here, but the views were even better once we'd cross the bridge at the top and came down the other side.

This is the view from the bridge at the top of the falls.

The rock behind Oscar is what we would have had to continue hiking to get to Half Dome. We weren't able to do that hike since the cables weren't up yet, but we'd like to come back and do it someday.

It was wonderful to finally be able to reach the descending part of our hike. 3 grueling climbs made this park of the hike especially pleasant.

And the beautiful views didn't hurt either!

Finally we got a view of Nevada Falls in all of its glory! There are even several smaller falls coming down off the side of the mountain.

I loved this shot of Nevada Falls with the mountain in the background.

We finally met an additional person on our hike. It'd been pretty deserted up to this point. The lady who was kind enough to take this picture for us had started about the time that we did but chose to make the loop from Vernal Falls bridge going in the opposite direction. I guess she didn't want to get wet on the Mist Trail until after it was sunny. I personally had opted to do the stairs first and the switchbacks later since downhill stairs take a harder toll on my knees than uphill stairs or downhill switchbacks.

It's pretty distant, but you could even see Yosemite Falls from this hike.

We kept taking picture after picture while we descended the mountain. I didn't want to stop looking at the waterfall.

But luckily the scenery that surrounded us was also very pretty. All in all this hike was exhausting but worth every minute and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Haven't had enough pretty pictures of Yosemite? Click on next post to see our stunning views from Glacier Point Road.

Yosemite Valley

2011-08-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

I'll admit it. Up until a few months ago I had no idea there were two national parks that started with a Y. Somehow I always pictured "Yellowstone" whenever I heard of "Yosemite," and for whatever reason I never processed that there were two separate parks. I'd never been to either of them, and I always pictured them both as being the one that's in Montana.

Then last year Oscar took me on a surprise trip to Sacramento, and he planned out our itinerary for our visit. He'd read that there were several waterfalls near the city of Stockton, but after we checked into our hotel in Sacramento and he got on the internet, he couldn't find them. So we ended up visiting San Francisco instead. Since I am a huge waterfall lover, I absolutely had to find out where all these falls were, and after our trip I looked up online "waterfalls near Stockton, CA."

I found a bunch. And not only were there a lot, they were nearly all in Yosemite National Park. That was the first time I processed that Yosemite National Park was different from Yellowstone and was actually in central California. After looking through all of the online images I knew we absolutely had to visit this place. The waterfalls I was seeing were absolutely spectacular. The most famous, of course, being "Yosemite Falls" in Yosemite Valley - the main area of the park. Yosemite Falls is the tallest waterfall in North America if you add all of its drops together (and if you don't, another Yosemite waterfall called Ribbon Falls can take the claim for tallest single drop falls). The pic above is the gorgeous lower Yosemite Falls, the most easily accessible of all the waterfalls in the park.

Upper Yosemite Falls is the falls you see jumping right out at you when you enter Yosemite Valley. There's also the middle cascades which are extremely difficult to see, and the lower falls. There aren't many viewpoints where you can see both the upper and the lower falls. This is the only place where we could see both from the ground. Anywhere else required a hike or a drive up to Glacier Point Road.

Oscar and I decided to hike up to the base of Upper Falls. This was an extremely difficult hike with lots of switchbacks. You can continue on to the top of the falls, but it's just as hard again and we had lots else we wanted to see and do that day. As we walked to the trail head we saw several rock climbers.

Across the valley we could see beautiful "Sentinel Falls" flowing along Sentinel Rock.

We saw some gorgeous views of the valley as we hiked.

Above you can see the looming rock formation "El Capitan." It's so named because it looks like the profile of a man.

A small waterfall was coming down it as well. Water pours out from everywhere in Yosemite Valley, especially in the Spring!

Behind me you can see Half Dome, the rock formation that we wanted to hike. Unfortunately they have to have cables up in order to do it, and there hadn't been enough snow melt to put them up yet.

And after a grueling hike we made it to the bass of Upper Falls. It was beautiful!

Look at the amazing view we had from this height! I did not feel that we were missing out on anything by not going to the very top.

We took a few small side trails that gave us closer views of the Upper Falls pool.

We even got to see a few of the middle cascades. Apparently there are 5, but we could only see 3.

We could see yet another waterfall from across the valley.

After we finished our hike we drove up to the Wawona lookout. Gorgeous!

This is the main shot you see on Yosemite postcards. Oscar had to tear me away. I didn't want to stop looking.

Oscar always insists I look at the sun when he takes my picture so the lighting on me is good, but it makes me squint and have a really cheesy smile.

The falls you can see from this lookout is gorgeous Bridal Veil Falls. This was a beautiful falls, but I have no idea why it's called bridal veil. I've been to several Bridal Veil falls, and you can tell they were so named because of the smooth way they fall. This, however, was not falling in a veil-like way. It was roaring!

I believe this is "Staircase Falls." It was a waterfall we could see in the distance from the Wawona lookout. This pic is from our camera zoomed in at 12X.

Next we decided to take the short hike to Bridal Veil Falls. The river was practically flooding.

The falls themselves were amazing. They were in such force that it felt like being in a rainstorm as you got nearer. It formed a constant rainbow around its base, and because of that we kept unintentionally calling it "Rainbow Falls." In my opinion, that would be a much more appropriate name for this falls.

I thoroughly enjoyed getting soaked by this mind blowing waterfall. You'd think from this picture that it was raining, but there wasn't a drop in the sky. All of the water you see was coming from the falls. I'd never seen a waterfall flow with so much force!

We hiked around the area to see it from a few other viewpoints.

And ultimately it led us out to a view of Ribbon Fall - the waterfall mentioned above that is the tallest single drop falls in North America. I think waterfalls with drops and pools are better. When it's simply tall like this one, a lot of the water evaporates before it hits the ground, so it's not quite as impressive to look at.

Stay tuned for the next blogpost where we take another exhausting hike to Vernal and Nevada Falls along the Mist Trail.

Driving to California...the long way

2011-08-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

After our brief visit in Utah, Oscar and I took off for Yosemite National Park in California. We forgot to check if the east entrance was open since it depends seasonably upon the weather, but we figured we'd just drive to it first, and that if it was closed, we'd just go to the next entrance. It couldn't be more than an hour away, right?....

Oh how wrong we were. It was an additional 4 hours for us to go around the park to the west entrance (The south entrance would have taken us even longer). It's been a hard weather year for the west coast, and there was too much snow to cross the pass. We had to drive up to a pass further north (almost as far as Reno) before there was a pass that was open.

Fortunately we saw some pretty sights along the way.

Lake Mead was really pretty

Though a little windy!

These were the views we had as we started along the pass.

And then we hit a huge blizzard! We drove about 40 miles through blizzard. It was scary! We couldn't believe we were driving through snow in sunny California.

We braved the freezing temperatures to take pics at this pretty lookout.

I kept trying to tell Oscar that northern California really had a lot better weather in late May than what he was seeing.

And finally we crossed the pass and made it to real California.

Oscar was quite happy with what he saw.

We caught some pretty sunset shots and then went out to grab some Thai food.

We didn't arrive in the park until about 12:30am. I was impressed that Oscar was able to set up our tent in the dark. That very night Oscar said he didn't know if coming to the park was going to be worth all the trouble we went through. Fortunately, he changed his mind very quickly the next day.

Fun in Utah

2011-08-03T17:02:00.000-07:00

We decided to take a trip home to Salt Lake City for a few days before we took off for Yosemite National Park. The first thing we did was visit grandma and grandpa Hatch.

Our nephew Dillan gets cuter everyday!

And we got to meet our new nephew Justin.

We hoped for some sunny weather coming from rainy Seattle, but no such luck. These clouds were particularly ominous.

We had a big Hunt family party at Emily and Ryan's house that night.

And we got to go see The Fray and U2 concert at Rice Eccles Stadium.