Mount Rainier

The roads are open in the mountains and the snows have mostly cleared. So, in our 2nd National Park visit in as many weekends, we took Anya's parents and aunt to Mount Rainier.

We started the day at Grove of the Patriarchs, a stand of huge old trees (Douglas Firs, Western Red Cedar, and Western Hemlock). The grove contains some of the largest trees on Earth outside of California, and they tend to inspire an emotional response in people. America doesn't have grand palaces or cathedrals like Europe, but in my opinion places like Patriarchs represent our cultural heritage - and are a reminder of why we need to protect our natural wonders. It's always reassuring to see so many kids there, and to see that they're even more impressed by the giant trees than adults are.

Next we drove to a place called Sunrise at 6400' on a mountain ridge that flanks Rainier itself. Our group wasn't up for a grueling hike, and the trails around Sunrise offer a big payoff for a small effort.

Like with the Olympic Coast, I edited down our pictures to a more manageable "best of" set for you to look at. If you want the whole thing, they're here.

Olympic Coast

Our next visitor's were Anya's parents and aunt. They were here for almost two weeks, but it flew by because we stayed so busy. First of all, the weather was typical Seattle summer: nearly perfect. We were able to do tons of stuff outside; perhaps the most memorable being a trip to the Olympic Coast.

Despite being a coastal city (there is saltwater here), Seattle is actually several hours from the Pacific Ocean. We spent one long day going to the coast on the Olympic Peninsula. You take a ferry across Puget Sound, drive around the north edge of the Olympic Mountains, and end up at a wild, barely-populated stretch of coastline that's part of Olympic National Park.

The beaches there - we went to one called Second Beach - are incredible. It's the Pacific Northwest as it must have appeared to early explorers: rugged, unforgiving, and extremely beautiful. Sea stacks line the coast, evidence of North America slowly losing the battle to the waves that pound the coast year-round. Giant salt-soaked logs line the beach, which is nice as they're the only shelter from the constant, fierce winds. And although it looks inviting, the water, fresh from Alaska, causes an immediate, pounding cold-headache in your legs. The whole experience is primeval - and humbling.

But enough writing. The pictures show it pretty well. Here's the edited "best of" album, or if you have a lot of time on your hands, the full thing.

Carly & Ross' visit

Sorry for going silent there for a while. We had visitors for most of July, and I'm just now finding time to catch up with pictures & blogging.

Our first guests were my cousin Carly and her boyfriend Ross, which was really fun. They'd never been to Seattle before, and I think we did a good job of showing them both the tourist highlights and also the locals' perspective. We did city stuff (museums, neighborhoods, food, etc.) and also got outside with a hike in the mountains and a ferry ride across the sound.

I only took a few random pictures with my new phone; they're here. Carly took a ton more; they're here.

More Camping Pics

Anya uploaded her pics from the aforementioned camping trip. Not surprisingly, Puget Sound and Oliver are the stars of the show...

Camping

I was in Chicago for the last week at a conference and then having a great time with my friends Jason & Emma. I don't have any pictures to show, or any particularly fun stories (we ate, drank, went to the Art Institute, and then ate & drank some more).

While I was gone, however, Anya went camping with some of our friends at a State Park over on the Olympic Peninsula. They had a beautiful weekend, and our friend Pavel took some nice pictures.

June

I apologize for the lack of recent updates. We've had a very busy June, and it's pretty hard to write anything interesting after posting pictures from Hawaii. I decided to refresh the blog with a new look & feel - let me know what you think. Update: I discovered that the first design I chose looked nice on my computer but terrible on my iPad. I changed it again, this time to something clean and simple.

Kauai

We just got back from a fantastic trip to Hawaii, ostensibly to celebrate our Anniversary (but really just to relax). We went again to Kauai, which we both loved when we visited last year. It's lush, peaceful, very laid-back, and simply gorgeous. Plus, it's not over-developed, which is the scourge of so many tropical beach destinations. The law about not allowing any building taller than a coconut tree is a good one.

This time we dispensed with any real tourist activities save one: going to the beach. I'll mostly let the pictures speak for themselves. If you're interested in sharing a rental house on Kauai sometime, just let me know - we're willing to go back any time.

Arboretum

One of our favorite places to go on walks with Oliver is the Arboretum (officially called the "Washington Park Arboretum"). It's only a couple miles from our house and although it's technically part of the University of Washington, it feels like a really nice city park.

It's large enough that you feel like you're not in the city at all, but small enough that you can see the whole park in a couple hours. It's great year-round but really shines in the spring when most of the azaleas and rhododendrons bloom, which is why we decided to bring our camera along yesterday.

It also happened to be opening day for the boating season, which explains some of the pictures you'll see in the album.

The new Elliott Bay

Every city should have at least one great, independent bookstore. Ironically, Seattle, the home of amazon.com (which has done more harm to indy bookstores than any other company) has a large collection of fantastic little book sellers catering to every possible niche. But the undisputed crown jewel of Seattle's literary scene is the Elliott Bay Book Company. It's the place to go to get recommendations from well-informed staff, get a feel for what's going on in the world of books, and see lectures & readings from every major (and many not-so-major) author.

Despite being much loved, Elliott Bay has been going through financial troubles - mostly because of its location in a tired, out-of-the-way neighborhood called Pioneer Square. Earlier this year they announced that they were moving in an attempt to regain firmer footing. Everyone was weary, because the old building was an integral part of the Elliott Bay experience: a cozy but labyrinthine maze of small rooms connected by half flights of stairs, blind corners, and dead-end hallways. It was easy to get a little bit lost, which was definitely part of the charm.

We spent this afternoon browsing at the new location on Capitol Hill, a much more vibrant neighborhood that will undoubtedly produce more traffic for the store. I'm happy to report that the new store is excellent - a fitting replacement that doesn't disappoint. Although the layout is much more open (high ceilings with thick wooden beams and even skylights) the overall feel of the place is familiar. I think that's because they brought all the old bookshelves with them: thick, sturdy wooden shelves that, combined with the books, make the place smell gloriously like a lumber yard. The cafe (obviously an essential part of the experience) doesn't open for a couple more weeks, but once it's there the transition will be complete - and with the soul of the place still very much intact.

Closing Day

Okay, one more ski day this season.

Today was the last day of skiing at Crystal Mountain, our "home" ski area. Closing day has more to do with economics and wildlife than snow conditions - there's still more than 100" sitting on the ground. Add in a warm, sunny day and you get great spring skiing conditions: soft & mushy.

Although the annual bikini downhill race - competitors allowed to wear nothing but bikinis and ski goggles - was more boring than it sounded like it would be, it was still a great day up in the mountains.

I took some pictures with Anya's BlackBerry.

Okay, I'm done now: you won't have to read any more blog posts about skiing for at least 6 months.

Whistler

We just got back from our yearly spring pilgrimage to Whistler, the largest and best ski resort on the continent.

This year's trip was fantastic - even compared to other times we've been there. Contrary to the uninformed hyperbole you might have heard on coverage of the Winter Olympics (it's always slushy down by the village - get over it) Whistler is having a spectacular year. In fact, it's now the 2nd snowiest year on record there; more than 560" have fallen (about 47 feet of snow). Of course it compacts down; at mid-mountain there's a very respectable settled base of ~12 feet of snow. Trails that I've known in the past to be dotted with shoulder-high pine trees are wide open this year with nary an obstacle in sight.

We didn't bother with our large camera, but Anya took tons of pictures with her BlackBerry.

Although Whistler will be open through the end of May (at least), this trip might have marked the close of our skiing season. It's been a good one, though; we were able to ski from November - April (basically half the year). I like summer - don't get me wrong - but I'm already looking forward to next winter.

UW Cherry Blossoms

The beautiful campus of the University of Washington is a nice destination for a walk from our house, especially on a warm, sunny spring evening. This photo set is from us visiting campus to admire the cherry blossoms and get Oliver some exercise.

Home

This picture appeared in the Seattle Times. We live in one the colorful townhouses; the Olympic Mountains are in the background.

The real picture is here.

Utah

After my deep powder day at Snowbird, Anya joined me in Utah for the weekend. We spent one day skiing at Snowbasin, a posh, beautiful, and underutilized resort about an hour's drive from Salt Lake City. I'd go back to Snowbasin again if I was in Utah; the skiing was good and there were no lift lines even on a Saturday.

We stayed in Park City, an Old West mining town turned ski destination. The cute architecture and pedestrian-friendliness made Park City by far the most inviting urban environment I saw during my stay in Utah.

We skied another day at a resort near Park City called The Canyons. Although we were able to find some nice runs, the Canyons has a weird layout. The way the lifts are placed necessitates lots of long, flat runouts after skiing the good stuff. Utah has so many skiing options that I'd probably try one of them before going back to The Canyons.

After only a few days (during a mediocre snow year, no less) and having seen only 3 out of 10 resorts in the Salt Lake area, I'm not really qualified to pass judgment on skiing in Utah. My superdeep day at Snowbird was great but was an anomaly - you can't count on too many days like that. Still, my overall impression of Utah is that there is some great skiing to be had there. Traffic notwithstanding, the resorts are easy to access and very close to the city & airport. The snow is definitely light and dry, but that means that coverage is sometimes a problem.

In the end I don't think I'll fly to Utah on my own to ski again in the foreseeable future - I'm not convinced the skiing was that much better than what's available within a day's drive of Seattle. Of course, if my company decides to send me there again next year, that's a different story.

Pictures (taken with Anya's BlackBerry) are here.

Snowbird

I've been in Salt Lake City this week for a business conference. While the actual conference itself was worthwhile, one of the ways they lure people here is by giving them a free day of skiing on the last day (Friday) of the event.

There's a lot of hype around the quality of Utah's snow. Because of its setting in the high desert, the powder here is said to be drier and fluffier - and, therefore, better. The motto "Best Snow on Earth" appears not only in hubris-laden marketing materials but even on Utah license plates.

Now, after experiencing it firsthand, I can tell you that the hype is entirely justified. We went to Snowbird today, a ski resort about 45 minutes' drive from Salt Lake City. Officially they'd received 21" of new snow overnight. But thanks to blind luck and befriending some locals, my coworker and I found untracked lines where the snow was waist deep.

Skiing in that much Utah snow is extremely fun but incredibly tiring - it's so soft and fluffy that you have to struggle to keep your skis floating through the snow rather than sinking to the bottom of it. You have to be a good skier because only the steepest runs are even skiable in conditions like that.

It was one of the best skiing days I've had in my life. I'm exhausted.

Skiing

In case my previous post about flowers & early spring in Seattle made you jealous, I wanted to show you how we, of our own free will, chose to leave all of that behind and go back to winter.

Crystal Mountain is our "home" ski area; whenever I mention that we went skiing, there's about a 95% chance that's where we went. Saturday was a brilliantly sunny day - something pretty rare for winter around here - and made for some great pictures. From the top you can see a long ways, including all the way to Mt Baker 130 miles away.

Spring?

Although we've had a couple of great days of skiing in the past couple weeks, down in the city it's starting to feel distinctly like spring. Flowers are blooming everywhere, temps have been pushing 60 degrees the last few days, and it's been unseasonably sunny. At least El Niño is good for something (it certainly hasn't made for a great ski season across much of the west).

Just to make all you snowed-in Midwesterners jealous, I posted a few pictures I took while walking around my neighborhood today.

Anya's brother Neil came to visit us last weekend; he was in the States anyway and stopped by for a few days. It's always great to see him - I think we showed him a good time in Seattle.

We've been watching quite a bit of the Winter Olympics coverage since it's practically in our back yard. While event tickets are a complete ripoff, we have been contemplating trying to go to some of the myriad of free cultural festivities going on in Vancouver. While it's hard to argue with the spirit of the Olympic games, the prospect of snarled traffic at the boarder, the long series of organizational gaffes, and, most of all, the overt commercialization of it all makes me question the whole thing. Maybe we'll just go skiing instead.

Suncadia

Saturday was Anya's birthday. We did a little weekend getaway to Suncadia, a resort over on the eastern slope of the Cascade mountains. It's apparently a popular golf resort in the summer, but it's pretty slow in the winter. There are activities like cross-country skiing & snowshoeing available, but - this being Anya's weekend - we didn't do any of that.

Suncadia's other claim to fame is having one of the best spas in Washington. I'm not in a position to judge that claim, but it was very, very nice. There are three outdoor salt pools - cold, warm, and hot, to lounge around in. There's a cedar sauna reminiscent of the one Anya's parents have in Belarus, and a eucalyptus steam room that felt a little like stepping into a hot bottle of Vick's Vapo-Rub.

You pick which type of heat you want: dry, steamy, or hot bath. You stay there until you can't take in any more, go jump into the cold plunge pool, then relax in the calm lounge area for a while, and repeat. Add a massage into the mix and, after two straight days of this you basically have no stress or tension left in your body. It was great.

It would be more than a little creepy to take pictures at a place like that, so you'll have to trust me when I say that it was really nice. It's less than 90 minutes' drive from Seattle, so I have a feeling we'll be going back there.

Olya's visit

Anya's childhood friend Olya - who lives in Maryland now - came to visit Seattle a couple weeks ago. We did a ton of stuff with her, trying to give her a good feel for what living in Seattle is like.

The only thing that we have pictures of is our hike to Twin Falls - something we've posted many pictures of before. It's a very accessible hike that's good year-round and allows dogs; hence it's a common place for us to take visitors. The pictures are here.

San Francisco

Anya and I both get MLK Day off from work, and this year we spent the long weekend in California with my two closest friends, Matt and Jason. As I've written before, Matt lives in Palo Alto on campus at Stanford. We all stayed at his place, but having been there before, drove to more interesting locales each day. I don't get to see those guys nearly as often as I'd like, so it was great to have a long weekend together.

We spent two days in San Francisco, mostly just wandering around different parts of the city. The weather wasn't perfect - it was rather Seattle-like, in fact - but that didn't slow us down. There are many interesting neighborhoods in San Francisco; you could spend a lot more than two days exploring.

One day we drove about an hour to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. We took a rainy but magnificent hike amongst massive, old (1,500 - 2,000 years) redwood trees. It was California's first state park, and it's known for having the largest collection of tall redwoods south of San Francisco. Like similar big-tree locales near Seattle, Big Basin is at it's best when it's raining: it was serene, fragrant, and virtually deserted.

The weekend's pictures are here.

Carkeek Park

It hasn't snowed in the mountains for a while, so skiing conditions aren't good. This weekend we stayed in town instead and visited a park in north Seattle that we've never been to before, called Carkeek Park. As you'll see in the picture album, there's a scenic beach and some nice forests (although not old-growth). Nice way to spend a Sunday morning.

A Spoiled Dog

Ever since we got Oliver almost a year ago, my parents have been more interested in hearing about (and visiting) him than Anya and I. It's like he's a grandchild. It's especially weird since they never let me have a dog when I was growing up - who knew they were dog people?

Anyway, I wanted to post the picture above - a picture my parents took - as an example of the terrible amount of spoiling they do to him. Oliver got that blanket and toy for Christmas, not to mention a bunch of other stuff. There can't be any question about dogs' intelligence - Oliver has very cunningly manipulated my parents and can now bend them to his will.

Happy New Year.