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.