Anyway, our plan was to take a bigger hike than the Goat Mountain hike on Wed. but we missed the road because it was a turn off in the middle of the construction going on. The RV may not have made it anyway. There was a trail before a bridge over the river, so we stopped there and took the short, gorgeous trail. It was early enough that there was still a mist over the river.
After that, we headed out and went back to Bellingham. While in Bellingham, we spent a number of days with Rod and Sarah. They took us to a concert in a park. This park had over 40 different types of trees and it was the oldest park in the city. On Friday we went out to a Thai restaurant that was very good. Afterwards, we headed downtown for a gallery walk. Apparently during the summer, the galleries in downtown Bellingham open and are free to peruse until 10pm. There was a lot of very neat work.
The next day, we had a nice Indian buffet lunch, then headed to Seattle. We're hanging out in Seattle now, visiting a friend of mine that moved out here for grad school. She's renting a house so we have a perfect place to park. She bikes or takes the bus everywhere. Today, we basically spent the afternoon biking around. There are a lot of bike lanes and trails here, which makes biking relatively easy, though some of the hills are a bit extreme.
For dinner we ended up stopping at an El Salvadorian restaurant and had tacos and pupusas, which are amazing. They even had cactus in them! We'll probably stay here for a few days.
-Miranda
The misty river.
A very neat section of trail.
Yet another neat section of trail.
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Yesterday, we woke up and headed for the trailhead, which was up a road that we had already driven up and knew about. The hope was that while we were hiking, we would get the battery charged back up, so we parked in a spot where we hoped the sun would stay out and not be blocked by the trees.
The hike was 3.2 miles with a 2900 foot gain in elevation. The first couple miles were absolutely gorgeous. The forest floor was covered in needles from the pine trees and the trail continually switched back up the mountain, but didn't get too steep, for the most part. Once we started getting higher, it felt like we were walking through a jungle. There were trees a bit off the trail, but mostly smaller ones, and the sides of the trail were very overgrown, enough so that they practically covered the trail. When we finally got out of that, we started heading up a steep slope. We finally got to the top and noticed a group sitting there, so went over to chat. They were with the forest service and were up there to work on a section of the trail. They claimed the trail kept going, so we headed off.
We kept hiking up the mountain, crossing snow, until we got to a steep slope. We could see the trail up the slope, so kept heading up. A section of the trail was washed out from a mudslide. We scrambled up to the next section of trail and kept going. There was another section that was washed out! We decided to just call it good from there. That's the point where I took the first photo. It was super steep! We walked down the trail until we got to where it was washed out again, then went straight down the mountainside to the lower trail and kept going from there.
We eventually learned that the technical end of the trail was the lookout where we saw the group of forest service workers. Though on our walk down, they were working on one of the steep sections of trail. It was a huge mud pit. I just about fell in trying to balance on the rocks they were putting there. They were working on diverting the water off the trail and putting rocks on the trail.
We made it back and the RV was in the shade... Of course. We did get enough power for another day or so though, so we headed back to where we stayed for those couple days earlier in the week. The cats were happy to get to go out again.
This morning, we heard thunder, so knew a storm was probably coming. We got everything packed up in case we had to leave, but let the cats run around outside still. Now it is pouring and poor Curly and Pickles are under the RV because they're too afraid to get in the RV. Once the rain lets up a little again I think I'll try to get them again.
-Miranda
The top of the hike.
Joe in a very cool looking tree along the side of the road.
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Well, there definitely was a mouse problem.
First off, the cats did not want to come in. It was a pain getting them in for the evening. We went to sleep relatively early, but at some point in the middle of the night, Joe heard growling. He swore it was a bear. We turned the light on and see all four cats hunched down on the floor. Eventually we heard the growl again, and it was Curly, with a mouse in his mouth.... He kept letting it go, it would run like crazy, he would chase it, catch it again, then eventually let it go. I finally got a hold of it when it didn't run off right away and threw it out the door (sorry Curly).
We tried to sleep again. Pickles came and lay down between us, purring like crazy. All of a sudden, she jumps at the vent! I look at the back of the RV, and the other three cats are sitting on the table, staring up at the ceiling. It took a bit, but eventually we could hear little feet running around on the roof. I don't know if it was squirrels or mice or what, but it was incredibly annoying.
They calmed down again, only to start running around in the front an hour or so later. I kept watching for someone to come out from there carrying something, but never did. Eventually, Joe said, we're going. I ran outside, put the bike back in the rack, grabbed the solar shower and off we went. There was a very large parking area right before the highway, so we stopped there and went back to sleep. No more crazy noises, so we finally got some sleep.
-Miranda
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We've been in the national forest near Mount Baker since we left Bellingham. We left the spot we were at yesterday in order to go for a hike. Joe had checked out Google Earth and it looked like there was a trailhead for parking, then a 3 mile or so hike up a large trail (Google Earth said it was a trail, but it looked like a road) from there to "Twin Lakes", then from there, there was another hike to a peak. We got to the trailhead parked, then started walking. Unfortunately, the 'trail' was actually a road that went all the way up to Twin Lakes. We walked probably half way before a pickup was driving up the road and let us hop in the back. Looking at the road, there's no way the RV would have made it anyway.
While we were still in Bellingham, we had stopped at an outdoors store and ended up getting a camelpack (hydration pack). That was during one of our walks downtown. Before we left, we stopped at REI to get me one. We used those during the hike. It was a huge help to not have to carry the water in nalgenes.
Anyway, Twin Lakes was gorgeous. There was snow up there and a number of areas for tent campers. It was a pretty busy place. We headed up the trail, which had gorgeous views basically the entire way. There was one sketchy spot where we had to cross snow because it covered the trail, but that went fine. We met a guy part way up that told us the rest of the way was blocked by snow that was too precarious to pass. We went up to get a good view from where he was standing, had a small lunch we had brought with,, then decided to try the other trail we had seen (it bypassed one of the precarious snow spots). There was no way around the next snow spot and it wasn't a good view, so we headed back down.
It had started sprinkling, but we started walking down the road anyway, figuring someone would be down that we could hitch a ride with. It started raining harder, so we stopped under a tree and a large pickup showed up not long after. She was kind enough to pick us up. On the way down, we met someone coming up who asked her if she had a chain, because someone got their truck stuck hanging off the road. She fortunately did. And apparently she had pulled people out of these types of situations many times before.
We got to where these guys with their little Toyota truck were. The passenger side of the pickup was completely off the road. With one pull, it swung down some so the front end was completely off the road. The guys jumped on the back bumper to get that down further while she slowly pulled. When it was mostly back on the road, one of the guys jumped in so he could hit the brake once it was completely on the road. Hopefully they're more careful about where they try to pull off the road in the future.
Since it was raining, we just went to a nearby sandpit. We were having issues finding fast internet, and we were running low on power, so figured that would be good enough. We left this morning. It's still pretty cloudy, but it looks like it might clear up a little. At least enough to get some more sun. Joe had found a neat area a couple days earlier when he had gone biking, so we went there to check it out. There's a spot at the end of a relatively short road that is right next to the river, but has a number of camp spots. It was pretty busy when he had checked it out, but as we were heading that way, about 6 cars left. We went there and all the people are pretty much on one side, so we picked the spot farthest away. Joe went to talk to the nearest neighbors, letting them know we're letting the cats out and it turns out that it is the same two guys that we helped pull of the road yesterday. Anyway, they said there's a bit of a mouse problem.
We'll probably just be here until the morning, but we'll see.-Miranda
The view from the first nice view point we went to. Those mountains are Canada.
Mount Baker
The Twin Lakes. You can sort of see the camping/parking area also.
Joe and the snow crossing we did do.
The RV at the first trailhead on the road.
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We spent a number of days in Bellingham parked outside Rod and Sarah's house. They were quite kind and we had a great time chatting with them quite a bit. We mostly focused on working the first day we were there. On Sunday, we went out to a very good sushi restaurant with Rod and Sarah. Afterwards, we went to Mallards, a local ice cream shop. They home make all their ice cream. There are all sorts of neat flavors. On our way back to the house, Rod pointed out a number of restaurants that have good vegetarian food. So, Monday, we decided to walk to one of them to try it out. Unfortunately, it ended up being close, so we headed the rest of the way downtown. There is another vegan restaurant down there. The food was decent (Joe had a sea vegetable burger and I had a walnut, and various other things, burger) but the service was pretty awful. We did a bunch more exploring and eventually walked back home. For dinner that evening we took our bikes and headed in the opposite direction to Fairhaven. We walked around a bunch then ended up eating at a different sushi place. It was also quite good and they had a couple different interesting rolls that we tried.
On Tuesday, we walked with Rod to the vegan restaurant that we had tried to go to the day before. The food was definitely interesting. Some was good, some was a little too odd. We continued on to downtown again and eventually stopped at Mallards to get some 'ice'. It's basically like a sorbet.
That evening we had a great dinner a couple that knew Joe back when he used to spend summers here through his uncle, Michael. The food was excellent and it was fun chatting. I even made them some homemade chocolate pudding for dessert.
We left this morning because we were hoping to find some forest in order to let the cats out. We are near Mt. Baker now in a neat camping spot (there's a small clearing and a fire ring) not far from the nearby river. Unfortunately, we got here too late to let the cats out, so they're going a little nuts. Tomorrow morning we'll let them out. Hopefully they won't wake us up at 5, but I'm not too hopeful. One issue here though, is the flies are insane! We can't spend any time outside, otherwise they swarm around you. We do have some internet, so we'll see how it goes. Hopefully we can stay here a couple days.
-Miranda
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