I forgot to add photos into yesterday's post about the ride, so here we go. Head to the Motorcycle gallery and look at the newest 10 photos there for a glimpse of what we were up to. There were so many great photo opportunities along the way, but we were having too much fun riding to stop!
The longest ride I've made in one day was around 400 miles. I didn't break my single day record this weekend, but it was the longest overall trip I've ever done and my first overnight trip.
As I mentioned previously, the ride started yesterday with Tyla and I taking a trip through Stevens Pass to Leavenworth and ending at The Gorge in George, WA. I was a bit nervous about taking her on a 220 mile ride, but she did great and was even comfortable enough to fall asleep for a bit. (Don't worry, it's not as unsafe as it sounds. Ask Laura. She does it all the time with Matt.)
On Saturday, I met BenH (from work), MattM and Dustin (one of Matt's friends) in Ellensburg. I was a bit nervous about our 270 mile day since I had zero sleep the night before. I grabbed a one hour nap while the three of them ate breakfast in Ellensburg. You know you're tired when you can pass out in laying on blacktop in an Arby's parking lot. That nap refreshed me and we took off on a gorgeous ride down Canyon Road to Yakima. The scenery on the east side of the mountains is so different from over here. I wish I had more pictures but I really felt like I was in a miniature Grand Canyon. If I dropped you there, you'd swear you were in the southwest somewhere.
When we hit Yakima, we headed west on Highway 12 which provided some amazing views of both Rainier and Mt. St. Helens at the same time. I also spotted Mt. Adams and what I believe was Mt. Shushkan. If you look at those on a map you'll realize what an incredibly clear day it was. Those mountains stretch from almost Canada down to southern Washington.
The highlight of the trip was definitely NF-25 and NF-90. They are national forestry roads and they were a complete blast to ride. I wish I had some device that measured how often my bike was upright (traveling in a straight line.) I bet we were in corners 90% of the time and those roads stretched for about 60 miles. It's highly recommended. Keep your speed in check though. Those roads are not well maintained and contain many many bumps and dips in awkward spots. When you're on those roads, it's easily two thirds motorcycle traffic.
The three other riders took a trip up and back to view Mt. St. Helens. This was about 1pm in the afternoon and I was feeling tired again. I let them take that little spur and I caught a great nap on the side of the road.
We stayed overnight in Vancouver, WA and had dinner at Red Robin (where else?) I was anti-social and went to bed early to catch up on some sleep. 11 hours later I was finally feeling refreshed and ready for the drive home.
We took much the same route home except we came up the east side of Rainier instead of going back through Yakima. Unfortunately we got a bit split up, but we all made it home safely. It was raining pretty hard by the time we got home, but if it has to rain, it's nice to have it happen when you're an hour from home.
All in all it was an incredible trip. I wish I had more pictures, but I was having so much fun driving down those roads that I didn't want to stop. A motorcycle was the perfect way to experience this trip. It made me even more sure that it's time to upgrade my bike. I even got to chat with someone at a gas station who owned the bike I want (2008 Concours 14.) We'll have to see what happens in my bank account but this might be in my future. That 720 mile trip would have been much more comfortable (and fast) on the Concours. My bike held up well though so I can't complain.
Thanks to all the guys for letting me come along and thanks to Matt for planning everything. I only have one question: where are we going next?!
When we were walking along the beach at low tide, we were startled when streams of water started shooting up around us. Most were only about a foot high but some shot four feet up in the air. We couldn't see what was causing it, but after some research, I think I have figured it out.
The mystery animal is a Pacific gaper clam, also called a horse clam. They live 6-12 inches under the surface and have a long "neck" that sticks up to the surface as a siphon. When they are startled, they quickly retract the siphon which shoots water up into the air.
It was hard to get a photo since each shot happened so quickly. I took a bit of video which is embedded below. I don't know if you can pick out the streams of water. There's one at 0:03 seconds in the lower right quadrant, one at 0:08 on the right middle, and one at 0:14 on the left side.
What a weekend! As I mentioned in the last post, the whole crew headed to Fort Flagler State Park on the northeast part of the Olympic Peninsula. Tim, Chelsea and I got there on Thursday night. We set up the tents, had a quick fire and then headed for bed.
On Friday we explored the beach area a bit and played a lot of cornhole. Throughout the evening, Tyla, Andy, Stephanie, Matt and Laura arrived. For dinner on Friday, we took our Mexican aluminum foil food packets down to the beach and ate in front of a gorgeous sunset.
Saturday was the day for the big hike through many of the old fort installations. It's hard to imagine the amount of firepower that was aimed out into the Puget Sound. I would not have wanted to be on the receiving end. It's no wonder that the bunkers are all still in tact. I don't know how you would have gotten close enough to take them out. We followed that hike up with cornhole, another gorgeous sunset, and some great dinner courtesy of Laura.
On Sunday we packed up the campsite, spent a few more hours walking along the beach at low tide and finally headed home. We had to wait over an hour for the ferry back, but it was a smooth trip. I'm sure ferry rides get boring after a while, but it's still pretty new to me and you can usually find me out on the observation decks.
With eight people at the site, it was the biggest camping trip I've had out here. From early morning walks on the beach to late night chats around the campfire, it looked like everyone was having a great time. There were well over 1000 photos snapped on various cameras throughout the trip. I've picked through the ones that Chelsea and I took and posted some in the gallery. A few of my favorites are shown below.
This weekend is our second camping trip of the year, and it's a big one! Our campsite is packed as full as they allow. Campers include Laura, Matt, Andy, Stephanie, Tyla, Chelsea, Tim, and me. Chelsea, Tim and I are getting a heard start on everyone else. We actually arrived at the campsite last night and everyone else is coming this evening.
The popular state parks fill up very quickly. We find the more popular parks by looking far ahead and seeing which ones are booking up. Washington has a great online booking system which makes this easy. On the last day of 2007, we hopped online and reserved a campsite at Fort Flagler. It's over on the Olympic Peninsula so we'll be hopping on a ferry to get there.
The website lists some interesting history for the park:
Fort Flagler, along with the heavy batteries of Fort Worden and Fort Casey, once guarded nautical entrance to Puget Sound. These posts, established in the late 1890's, became the first line of a fortification system designed to prevent a hostile fleet from reaching such targets as the Bremerton Naval Yard and the cities of Seattle, Tacoma and Everett. Construction began in 1897 and continued in one form or another until the fort was closed in 1953. The property was purchased as a state park in 1955. Fort Flagler is named after Brigadier General Daniel Webster Flagler.
As you probably guessed, our weekend will be full of good food, good times, and plenty of cornhole! Pictures will be abundant next week. Have a great weekend!
The Mt. Baker ski area isn't actually on Mt. Baker itself. There's a road that continues a few miles past the ski area to take you to a nice viewing area of the mountain in the summer. I've never been all the way up there and was thinking about taking a ride there this weekend. After looking at their website, I quickly realized that's not an option.
They're still trying to get the road cleared and are having to plow through snow that up to 20 feet deep. In the four day work week before the Fourth, crews cleared a total of 1/3 of a mile. There are lots of rocks in the snow which bust the snowblower and cause downtime for repairs.
You can see more information about the effort on the WSDOT site and their Flickr gallery.
The Snoqualmie Tunnel is at the top of the trail. It's 2.3 miles long, and even though you can see a tiny point of light in the distance, it's absolutely pitch black when you shut off your headlamps. We couldn't see our hands in front of our faces. Bring a powerful headlamp. You'll need it. Even with the headlamps, if we looked up from the ground in front of us and focused on the light in the distance, we'd quickly start wobbling and running off the trail toward the walls. It's crazy, but really fun.
After the tunnel, we made good time down the rest of the 22 mile trail. We hit some rain along the way, but we were prepared with rain jackets and it wasn't too bad. All in all, it was a pretty cool trip, although it wasn't nearly the workout I had expected. The road is extremely well maintained and it's very smooth and flat since it was a railroad grade. We finished the ride in well under three hours.
While we used two cars to avoid riding both ways, we found out there is a shuttle that runs back and forth so look into that if you want to follow in our tracks.
A few more pictures are available in the photo gallery under Outdoors > Iron Horse Trail.
Tim and I met at the main Tiger Mountain trailhead after work yesterday for a quick climb up the mountain. I decided to make the trip a bit tougher on myself and added two gallons of water to my backpack. (If you watch Good Eats you'll know that "a pint is a pound the world around" so it's easy to figure out that a gallon of water weighs 8 pounds.)
We were on a personal record setting pace. We stopped three times for about 5 minutes total and were on pace to make the summit in just over an hour. When we got about a half mile from the top, a storm started to roll in. That's right, a thunderstorm in Seattle. We've been having a bunch of them the past couple days. We sat out on the deck the other night watching the lightning. It's a very rare site around here, but it's not one that I really wanted to see on top of a mountain. We made it to about 0.3 miles from the summit when I finally caved and told Tim I wanted to turn around. Everyone coming down from the top said it was getting nasty up there and I really didn't want to be standing on top of a mountain in a lightning storm. As it turns out, we might have been ok since the storm didn't go directly over head. We got a little wet on the way down but nothing serious thanks to the thick canopy overhead.
I concluded carrying an extra 16 pounds is a great incentive to lose weight. I kept thinking "I should just pour out one of them. Eight pounds less would feel so good. Wait, I could just lose 8 pounds. Then I would feel this much better all the time." I'm happy to say I made it through the entire hike without reducing my load, but it was a big challenge.
As we sat around the fire on Friday night, somebody thought they heard something. Flashlights flipped on and a pair of glowing eyes stared back from the edge of our campsite. It was a full grown raccoon. We scared it away, but it reappeared three more times that night in different parts of the campsite. On Saturday, we peed a perimeter around the campsite. Did it work? I don't know but we only saw the raccoon once on Saturday night and it didn't get as close as before. Also, it was fun to try to pee all the way around the campsite.
Other than peeing, we went on a little hike on Saturday. The park borders the Green River rapids. While the trail didn't give us great views, it was pretty impressive. They have class II, III, and IV rapids, and it was neat to see them up close.
We played a little bocce ball and a lot of cornhole. Our games of cornhole usually get a lot of attention from other campers, but this time was a little different. We only got two comments. One was a little kid riding past who said, "They're still playing that game?!" and an older lady who said, "Oh, I see, you have to drink when they get it in the hole. Now I like it."
A little rain on Saturday night made for a wet night, but we had strung some tarps up over the tents to help keep us dry and they worked fairly well.
All in all, I'd say it was a very successful start to the camping season!
Pictures are available under Outdoors > Kanaskat-Palmer State Park.
When I moved into the new office, I came up with an interesting way to decorate the back wall. I used the National Geographic Topographic maps software to create a bunch of 8.5×11 PDFs. I printed everything off at Kinko's and then painstakingly placed each sheet on the wall with thumbtacks.
The whole process took forever. If I had it to do over again, I would pay extra to have it done on a plotter or some other large format. This would have saved a lot of time and also I think it would have looked better because some of the sheets didn't quite line up when I tried to place them on the wall.
That being said, I still think it looks pretty good. I get a lot of comments from people as they walk by my office. The map goes from Seattle in the lower left corner, east to Stevens Pass, and then north up to almost the north end of Whidbey Island. The smaller map on the side wall shows Mt. Rainier. As I go on various trips, I print off a small picture and stick it on the map.
I don't think I'll do it again (at least in this manner), but I'm happy with the way it came out.
