Monday, August 30, 2010

tastes like summer

Last week it was still summer (yes, the weather has already turned in Seattle) and we had our first bbq meal. Thanks to the J.R.s, we now have a (free!) bbq on our porch!

Turkey burgers with spinach and feta (really straight forward, but here's the recipe), topped with grilled onions + other fixings, grilled corn on the cob and a fresh green salad. It was way too much food, so we made sure not to fill our bellies with too much salad.

The only other thing we've made on the grill so far is naan, which is probably the food that grill will see the most of, and why Rob thought he really needed a bbq.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Rattlesnake Ledge

On Wednesday, Steph and I went on a hike that I had been hearing good things about: Rattlesnake Ledge. It is pretty close to Little Si and Twin Falls, two hikes that we did last summer. The hike is pretty short, but it has a nice steady climb, and some pretty impressive views.

From the bottom:

From the top:
After the hike we went to Isadora's, which is a little cafe in Snoqualmie that one of my students made a video about. After seeing the Tuna Melt in his video, I knew that I wanted to try one.

It took a little while to get our food. So the waiting room sign was appropriate.


The tuna melt was worth the trip. A good amount of dill and some nuts. MMM.

Portland!!

This last week Steph and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary. Since we felt the end of our summer fast approaching and didn't want to quite give it up, we decided that we would get out of town one last time. We used some credits that we got from a trip that we booked on Hotwire, and got a hotel in Portland.

After arriving in Portland, we hopped on the light rail in search for some food. We were hoping to eat off of one of the many food carts that they have downtown, but unfortunately most of them were closed at that time of night. We did however, run across an Indian festival that was happening in town:

There was lots of cheap food. We decided on Pakora and a Mango Lassi. A good choice:
After we just walked around downtown. Portland is big, but it never feels busy.
The next morning we headed across the river to take a trip on the aerial tram. The aerial tram has a cool view, but unfortunately just goes up to the hospital. Once you get up, you pretty much have no choice but to come immediately back down.



After the aerial tram, we took a trip to Bunk Sandwiches, which we saw featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. The shop was pretty small, but had a really cool vibe. And we loved the Cuban Sandwich that we had -- mostly because of the Beaver's Hot Sweet Mustard that we dipped it in.

I forgot to mention that we visited Portland on the hottest day of the year. To avoid the 95 degree heat of 1 in the afternoon, we went to the Avalon theater to see a cheap screening of the Karate Kid.

I have been talking trash about the new Karate Kid for a while -- mostly because it represents a lot of what is evil about Hollywood these days. But you know what? That movie is really good. Easily one of the best times that I've had at the movies this year.
The best part of the trip was that I got to spend a fun day with my wife. Here she is:

She is the coolest girl that I know, and a person that I have been privileged to spend the last two years with. They have been full of adventures, and I can wait to see what the rest of our time together will bring.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

finishing off the Burke-Gilman

Did you (out-of-towners) know that Seattle has a really great bike trail? We've ridden it on various occasions, and decided to finish off the last third of it last week by riding from Gasworks park to Golden Gardens Beach.

Gasworks Park
en route at the Ballard Locks with our amazing sandwich from Paseo
Golden Gardens Beach
Three cheers for summer bike rides!

Mt. Rainier

Check this beauty out!
Rob and I drove to Mt. Rainier last week to go on a hike. The picture above is one of a only a few that we have where you can actually see the mountain. The fog rolled in shortly after, so we could only assume the mountain was still there as we hiked at it's base.

There are SO many hikes in the National Park (I somehow didn't know this prior to the trip). We chose the Skyline Loop (at Paradise) which is a really popular hike, but because it was my first time hiking around the mountain we wanted the best views (a description of the hike says, "The Skyline Trail above Paradise takes you quickly to nearly 7,000 feet-about as high as you can get in a short hike from the car anywhere in Washington state. The loop trip is spectacular on clear days, with views to the Rainier summit above, wildflowers all around and a view south as far as Mount Hood below.").

It is a little strange to hike on a busy trail, I felt like I was in the middle of a pilgrimage at times, climbing stairs in a line with other hikers. But it really was beautiful and obvious why it's so popular.


The hike turned out to be a little more than we bargained for, just because there was a lot of snow on the trail. Something about me and hiking: going down steep trails freaks me out - I see visions of myself sliding or stumbling to the depths below - but during this hike I learned a new fear: hiking in snow (especially when it's combined with a downward slope).

For example: (yep, we did this)

I survived, there were actually only about five stretches of snow and Rob held my hand (literally - I'm a wuss, I tell you!) through the stretch that was the scariest...

...this one. Just kidding.

Us on the trail Skyline Loop (wherever you see fog, just picture a 14,411 foot mountain):


The bathroom on the trail was cool. I pretended we were actually climbing the mtn and this was basecamp.

We had to take the trail slow because of all the people and the snow. It was taking longer than we had time for, so we saved a mile by cutting through the trail via the Golden Gate Trail, which is still 1.5 miles long (we had come 2.5 miles already).

I don't know what the second half of the loop looked like, but the Golden Gate trail was so so beautiful:



What a great hike! Hopefully we'll spend more time at the National Park in the future!

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Camping in Chelan

Our road trip was a couple of months ago and we still haven't posted about everything we did. Rob put up some nice posts from a couple stops, so I thought I'd share about Lake Chelan. Our last stop in our 4-stop trip.

We thought about going to the lake, finding a hike, or some other outdoor adventure. But, we had had enough of that during the previous days on our trip and decided, instead, to hit up the water park! It didn't have a wave pool or, my absolute favorite thing in the whole entire world, a lazy river, but it had some really fun slides that entertained us for a few hours.

After setting up camp (again) we went into town to see Toy Story 3 here:

and we sat here: (edge of the balcony)
and my handsome husband is right here:

Chelan is a cute cute town. We didn't see much of it, but I do recommend visiting. We camped at the State Park which was okay. Our spot was not private at all, which can be a bummer (because it doesn't feel like camping and can be a little awkward), but there are plenty of private sites that I'm sure you have to call way ahead for. It was another warm night (the previous night, in Oroville, had been warm too, but both nights in Manning were very cold), in fact we woke up to a very warm tent. The sun was right on us and it was a frantic, desperate, couple moments of trying to breathe the outside air. I had decided to start changing before it hit me fully and I wouldn't let Rob open the tent door. He had to stick his mouth up to a crack in the tent window to breathe in some outside air. I thought it was funny, and very classic of camping.

The only picture we have of this campsite:
Rob playing around with the camera (something about F Stop mumbo jumbo)


R.I.P roadtrip beard


I was digging it, but now it's gone.