On Memorial Day weekend, Tyla and I headed over to Lake Chelan State Park with her family. It’s on the east side of the mountains, so if you remember your Washington geography, you’ll know that it’s in the desert.
The park is more focused on day use than overnight camping, but we probably had the best trailer camping spot in the park. We bordered the woods on one side so we had some privacy. And even better, there was a small stream running in the woods behind the site that the guys named Pee Creek.
The park does have some incredible tent sites. Each site has room for one car to park along the road and then you carry your gear about 50 feet down to the water. Your tent gets set up on the banks of the lake. There’s no immediate water access since there are about 10-15 feet of huge rocks heading down to the lake, but it’s still a great view. If you have a boat, you can even rent a dock right by your campsite!
The lake itself is gorgeous. It’s 55 miles long and is the largest natural lake in the state. At 1486 feet deep, it’s the third deepest lake in the US and the 25th deepest lake in the world. The bottom of the lake is 388 feet below sea level! I couldn’t find any stats about the cleanliness of the water but it was amazing how far down you could see.
We had beautiful weather all weekend which let us enjoy a lot of time playing with Oskar down by the lake, go for a couple short hikes, and check out the small dam just down stream from the lake.
It’s a very popular destination which means there can be big crowds, but since it’s such a big lake, the boat traffic didn’t look too crowded. When I make my millions, it will be tempting to buy a house somewhere on the lake. Maybe this one will still be for sale.
In a three hour drive home, we went from desert lake to snowy mountain pass to wet coastal region. I love the Pacific Northwest!
A few photos are included below and more are in the photo gallery.
The front tire on my 2009 Kawasaki Concours has been wearing out and after 9700 miles, I no longer had much confidence in it. The back tire still looked pretty good, but I shopped around and decided to pull the trigger on new tires. The tech at Waldron Kawasaki suggested that I take the old rear tire home as a spare in case something happens to this new one and I don’t feel like shelling out the money for another tire right away. 10,000 miles isn’t a lot, but it’s not too low for a sport bike or a “super sport touring” bike which is what the classification of this bike.
It’s been almost four years since I wrote a post called “
When I moved out on my own, my parents got me a 9V cordless Makita drill. It served me well through a ton of projects, but after 10 years, the batteries are worn out. It was either buy some new batteries or upgrade. After looking at the prices, I went with the latter and decided to keep the old drill around for smaller projects around the house.
They say when you buy a house, the three most important things are location, location and location. I have about a five minute drive to Home Depot so I’d say our location is pretty great! The people there are starting to recognize me, and well they should. Here’s a breakdown of my transactions at Home Depot since we moved got the house at the beginning of October.
We gave nephew David a kid sized Camelbak for his 6th birthday, and it reminded me of a post I’ve been meaning to do for a while on how to properly clean a hydration pack. Before I met Tyla, I don’t know if I cleaned mine more than once or twice. Turns out she doesn’t like drinking moldy water. Who knew? We now have quite a few of these bladders and I’ve gotten a lot better at keeping them sanitary.
Crystal Mountain recently installed a giant air bag. They put it underneath a jump so that people much younger than me can practice their jumps without much fear of injury. I just had to know what it felt like so last weekend Tyla and I went down to Crystal along with a couple friends from work, Andy and Aim.
It’s so nice to have contractors that you can trust. For any heating question, I call up Chelsea’s Dad who owns PMG Mechanical (206) 624-5040. When we bought the house, I asked him to come over and inspect our equipment. He recommended replacing the water heater immediately and said the furnace would last us through the winter but not much more. These recommendations lined up directly with what we heard from our inspector.
We ended up with a Carrier Infinity 80% efficient two stage furnace and a Carrier Infinity suitecase air conditioner. Brent recommended that we go with the 80% furnace over one of the high efficiency models because they just haven’t nailed the reliability of those models yet. The two stage furnace will give us a big boost because it only runs at partial power most of the time, but for the rare occasion when it gets really cold, the furnace kicks in full power. The fan is also incredibly efficient and costs almost nothing to run. The air conditioner is an extra small and quiet model that is normally installed in commercial locations where size and noise are a factor. In our case, it we only had about 5 feet to our property line and I wanted to still get yard waste bins and the lawn mower through. After it was installed, we still have 3 feet of clearance to the fence. It’s definitely a splurge but I’m betting we’ll think it was worth it as time goes on. Plus, we’ll be the party house when it’s hot outside! The final bit that we added to the bill was an electronic air cleaner. It increases air flow through the system, creates an allergy free environment, and is very easy to clean.
Kirkland 5k
Tyla’s company operates a booth every year at the Kirkland 5k and they encourage their employees to run. This year Tyla, Chelsea, Nancy and Megan all ran. Tim and I watched from the side of the road and snapped some photos.