Good Morning Richland! You know, it doesn't have the same effect as, say, Robin Williams. It's 8:30 am on this bright and sunny dMonday in Richland, WA. It is predicted to hit 95 today, with highs in the mid-to-upper 90s and lows around 60 all week. If only it would pass 100. We get ice cream when it gets over 100. When, not if.
So, it being Monday, I'm quite ahead of myself with the weekend update. This weekend's goal was to have a quiet and relaxing weekend. We went to the local minor league baseball game. The Tri-City Dust Devils. It was free bobblehead night, but we got there after they stopped giving them out. The nice man whose seat we stole (they scooted over one seat so we could sit with the people we had moved to sit with, some fellow interns) got me one though, because those with season tickets got a free one after the initial set was given out. It's a bobblehead of the mascot, Dusty, and is quite funny. I put a picture of him up. I think he's going to become our Flat Stanley on the way home. Take a picure of him everywhere we go.
Saturday morning, Ben and I packed up and headed out to go camping. We went to Kachess Lake, but couldn't find the campground, so we went over to Cle Elum Lake. There are three lakes right in a row, so we had lots of choices. We finally settled on the Red Mountain Campground and parked our car. We went to get our tent out of the trunk and realized that it was still safely nestled in the corner of our hall closet. Oops! Luckily there was a general store back down the road, so we bought a cheap tarp (more like an oversized garbage bag) and put our sleeping bags (yay for PNNL people with camping equipment) and mats on that. There was no threat of rain, so we weren't worried. We were right on the Cle Elum River (like just across the way). It was a pretty river, looked clear and clean (and COLD!). It had probably come off of a glacier in the North Cascades. Ben hopped right in. I stuck to the stand knee deep, then get the heck out of it. It was very very cold. We chilled by the river and read. We also hiked around at the lake for a while. Dinner was delicious (chili. yum. again, mad props to PNNL people with camping equipment). We could see the stars from our tarp, so we watched the satellites go over for a while. It was so clear that you could see just about everythying.
We got up and had breakfast and cleaned up camp at our own speed. We headed back to Richland and go there in time to nap/go to the pool/buy toilet paper. We could see both Mount Adams and Mount Rainier on the way home. The skies were nice and clear. It's so strange that you can see the lone tall mountains for miles and miles. There simply isn't anything here to block the view.
Dusty Dust Devil and Cle Elum Lake
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Hello family and other readers!
I'm being a slacker about blog posts. I'm sorry. I need to write about Portland and the Fourth and stuff like that. I guess I should do that.
Therewere ten of us that went to Portland last weekend. The boys left on Thursday night and went camping near Mount Hood. The girls (and Christian) left on Friday morning, bright and early at 6:30. The drive is quite nice, as the interstate follows along the Columbia River in Oregon. We stopped on the way in (about 20 miles from Portland) and went hiking up to Multnomah Falls. It is supposedly the fifth highest waterfall in the US. So I read on a plaque. It was quite a hike, with a paved trail that was straight up-hill for a mile. We hiked back down (and I believe this is where I got a call from the family) and got back on the road to Portland. Since we were there so early, we couldn't check in to our hotel. Instead, we had lunch at a 50s-style diner in the mall, then headed into the heart of the city. We got some maps and directions, then dropped a few people off and went to check in to the hotel. When we got to town, we met up with the guys and wandered the city for a bit. We stopped into Nordstrom because some people needed the bathroom, but a few of us girls got waylaid by the shoes. There were shoes easily over $700 there. Yeek! We walked all over town, and made sure to go to Powell's Bookstore, then decided to grab dinner. Powell's is fairly ginormous. It is supposedly the largest independent bookstore in the world. I believe it. They have maps there. After that, it was time to stake out a spot for watching fireworks. There is a river walk type park that we camped out in, along with half of Portland. The people of Portland, as a side note, are strange. There was a very non-Asian man in front of us who had on some sort of ninja costume thing. And his hair in a top-knot. It was strange. Then there was the girl whose nose was attached to her skirt by a chain. There was also a naked woman. Apparently she was peeing behind a bush. Strange.
So, back to the fireworks. They pulled up two barges, one on either side of this bridge, and shot the fireworks from there. I have lots and lots and lots of pictures of fireworks. I had to move closer to see around the trees, which was definitely a good decision. Very nice show.
Saturday morning we went to the Portland Saturday Market. It was a rather large street market that had all sorts of local artists and creative people selling their work. I picked up a few things there, but they are surprises for people, so I can't tell about them. They also had food vendors there, so we ate lunch at the market. I had a delicious gyro made right in front of me. There were tacos, chinese food, and even african food. After the market, we headed to the south end of town and, after several detours due to poor navigation on the part of Thelma Louise (she picked a road that wasn't there), we finally ended up at OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). OMSI is pretty stinking cool. We saw an OmniMax movie on sea monsters. There was an interactive room full of things you could do that demonstrated basic science principles. We used our bodies to make an electrical connection and light a lightbulb...It also made our muscles twitch in our arms. We also made flying machines out of paper cups...I built a cross-braced structure and tested it on the moving platform. Mad props to me that it didn't fall down (and hadn't when I came by 10 minutes later). There was also a dinosaur exhibit with lots of fossils. Very cool hands-on museum for kids and big dorks like us. We grabbed a late lunch in a very cute cafe, then we decided to go play pool. It turns out us girls are not that great at pool. We had fun anyway.
Sunday, we went to the Portland International Rose Test Garden, which was absolutely beautiful and which yielded a large number of pictures. We also went to the Portland Japanese Gardens and walked around for a bit before we joined in on a special event they had going on. They had people who taught you how to make origami, then helped you write your wishes in Japanese and tie them to a bamboo branch that you could take with you.(I just looked it up and it's called the Tanabata festival)
Once we were done there, we grabbed Thai food at a cute place in town, then headed back to Richland.
This weekend's adventure: Camping at Cle Elum lake. Hopefully in the Wish Poosh campground, but they don't take reservations. We'll see. We're looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend. Maybe do some kayaking, but only if we want to, of course. Enjoy the pictures!
I'm being a slacker about blog posts. I'm sorry. I need to write about Portland and the Fourth and stuff like that. I guess I should do that.
Therewere ten of us that went to Portland last weekend. The boys left on Thursday night and went camping near Mount Hood. The girls (and Christian) left on Friday morning, bright and early at 6:30. The drive is quite nice, as the interstate follows along the Columbia River in Oregon. We stopped on the way in (about 20 miles from Portland) and went hiking up to Multnomah Falls. It is supposedly the fifth highest waterfall in the US. So I read on a plaque. It was quite a hike, with a paved trail that was straight up-hill for a mile. We hiked back down (and I believe this is where I got a call from the family) and got back on the road to Portland. Since we were there so early, we couldn't check in to our hotel. Instead, we had lunch at a 50s-style diner in the mall, then headed into the heart of the city. We got some maps and directions, then dropped a few people off and went to check in to the hotel. When we got to town, we met up with the guys and wandered the city for a bit. We stopped into Nordstrom because some people needed the bathroom, but a few of us girls got waylaid by the shoes. There were shoes easily over $700 there. Yeek! We walked all over town, and made sure to go to Powell's Bookstore, then decided to grab dinner. Powell's is fairly ginormous. It is supposedly the largest independent bookstore in the world. I believe it. They have maps there. After that, it was time to stake out a spot for watching fireworks. There is a river walk type park that we camped out in, along with half of Portland. The people of Portland, as a side note, are strange. There was a very non-Asian man in front of us who had on some sort of ninja costume thing. And his hair in a top-knot. It was strange. Then there was the girl whose nose was attached to her skirt by a chain. There was also a naked woman. Apparently she was peeing behind a bush. Strange.
So, back to the fireworks. They pulled up two barges, one on either side of this bridge, and shot the fireworks from there. I have lots and lots and lots of pictures of fireworks. I had to move closer to see around the trees, which was definitely a good decision. Very nice show.
Saturday morning we went to the Portland Saturday Market. It was a rather large street market that had all sorts of local artists and creative people selling their work. I picked up a few things there, but they are surprises for people, so I can't tell about them. They also had food vendors there, so we ate lunch at the market. I had a delicious gyro made right in front of me. There were tacos, chinese food, and even african food. After the market, we headed to the south end of town and, after several detours due to poor navigation on the part of Thelma Louise (she picked a road that wasn't there), we finally ended up at OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). OMSI is pretty stinking cool. We saw an OmniMax movie on sea monsters. There was an interactive room full of things you could do that demonstrated basic science principles. We used our bodies to make an electrical connection and light a lightbulb...It also made our muscles twitch in our arms. We also made flying machines out of paper cups...I built a cross-braced structure and tested it on the moving platform. Mad props to me that it didn't fall down (and hadn't when I came by 10 minutes later). There was also a dinosaur exhibit with lots of fossils. Very cool hands-on museum for kids and big dorks like us. We grabbed a late lunch in a very cute cafe, then we decided to go play pool. It turns out us girls are not that great at pool. We had fun anyway.
Sunday, we went to the Portland International Rose Test Garden, which was absolutely beautiful and which yielded a large number of pictures. We also went to the Portland Japanese Gardens and walked around for a bit before we joined in on a special event they had going on. They had people who taught you how to make origami, then helped you write your wishes in Japanese and tie them to a bamboo branch that you could take with you.(I just looked it up and it's called the Tanabata festival)
Once we were done there, we grabbed Thai food at a cute place in town, then headed back to Richland.
This weekend's adventure: Camping at Cle Elum lake. Hopefully in the Wish Poosh campground, but they don't take reservations. We'll see. We're looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend. Maybe do some kayaking, but only if we want to, of course. Enjoy the pictures!
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
As promised, Mount Rainier pictures. We got up on Saturday morning, picked up a tent from a fellow intern who lives around here, and headed out toward Mount Rainier National Park. If you have never been there, I highly suggest going. Every view is absolutely stunning. Definitely wait to go in the summer, because many of the roads are only open during those times.
I'll stop advertising now. We got there and camped at Ohanapecosh. It's in the southeast corner of the park. We set up our lovely 2-room tent with a long discussion of which poles went where. The poles were color coded, but there was no way to tell which color went where. We were situated right beside a river, so we went down the hill and poked around for a bit, then we unloaded everything we didn't need in the car and headed out to find something to do. We got our map of the park and headed toward Paradise. There are two main areas in the park: Paradise and Sunrise. Sunrise isn't open until July, so we couldn't go there. Paradise is under construction and was a bit crowded because it was the highest point open to cars while Sunrise was closed. We drove up there and took tons of pictures and ate barbecue sandwiches in the grill. It didn't seem like there was a specific trail (all sorts of snow everywhere), because there were lots of people wandering in a general uphill direction. My favorite were the women in saris trying to hike in the snow. Because there wasn't a distinct trail that we could see, we asked a ranger, who sent us to another part of the park for what she thought was the most amazingly beautiful trail ever. Some of us were in sandals (mind you, we were fine with that, since we'd already had a snowball fight in our sandals), so she didn't want us in the snow. We went to her trail, the Trail of Shadows, and learned that it was 0.7 miles total. It was a flat trail that wandered the edge of a meadow. The trees were quite beautiful and tall, but we were looking for something a bit more hike like. We decide to head to something we see on the map, Grove of the Patriarchs. Turns out to be a rather short trail too, but the trees were ginormous. There were some twin cedars that were supposedly 1000 years old. and completely rotten in the middle. Very cool trail. There was a bridge over a river that was quite wobbly and didn't suit me at all, but I made it across alive. Yay!
We cooked burger meat and onions and potatoes and peppers in tinfoil over the fire that night. Yum! There was so much food in those packets. We made s'mores and sat around the fire until we all got tired and decided to go to bed. The next morning, we made omelettes in baggies and prepared an entire loaf of peanut butter sandwiches. We packed up the car and set out to Silver Falls. Quite a cool waterfall. You hike along these rapids for a while. We actually thought those were the falls. Then we walked a little further and found the real waterfall. It wasn't that tall, but the sheer volume of water flowing was quite impressive. Lots of pictures of that. We started toward Chinook Pass (we were going to hike Yakima Peak) but were delayed when we came around a corner and saw some people on the side of the road and dust on the other side. We stopped and found that their motorcycle had hit some gravel and run off the other side of the road. The bike was sitting on the side of the bank. The riders were both okay other than some scrapes and bruises. We left some of the group with them along with some water and bandages, then Ben and I drove to the nearest place we could find a ranger to get some help. We went back and stayed with the couple while we waited on the rangers. Several trucks came up and started bandaging them up and asking lots of questions while they waited on a tow truck. Ben and Steve were handed stop/slow signs and sent to either end of the area, but the curve was so tight that they couldn't see each other, so the rest of us spread out and directed them so that they wouldn't cause any other wrecks. We ended up directing traffic for about an hour and a half. The gentleman who owned the motorcycle took our names and addresses with him and the rangers thanked us and sent us to a visitor's center to get Junior Ranger badges. We got to the visitor's center and the lady there acted like she was very loath to give the badges away. We told her what we had done and how we had helped, so she gave us badges and made us raise our right hands and swear to do our parts to help out on the roads and the trails and anywhere or something like that. We all promptly wore our badges around like the big dorks we are.
Once we had gotten back on the road, we headed again to Chinook Pass, but we decided just to stop there and eat lunch rather than hike. We ended up hiking anyway, as we wanted to picnic in the snow and do some sledding. So we trekked up a hillside and ate our peanut butter sandwiches in the snow overlooking the mountain. It was quite incredible.
We made it home, safe and sound, and are resting for the next two days before we head out bright and early (6:30) on Friday morning for Portland. Rumor has it that the biggest fireworks show west of the Mississippi is there. Actually, it's on the bridge between Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA. Pictures of Portland to come, I'm sure.
I'll stop advertising now. We got there and camped at Ohanapecosh. It's in the southeast corner of the park. We set up our lovely 2-room tent with a long discussion of which poles went where. The poles were color coded, but there was no way to tell which color went where. We were situated right beside a river, so we went down the hill and poked around for a bit, then we unloaded everything we didn't need in the car and headed out to find something to do. We got our map of the park and headed toward Paradise. There are two main areas in the park: Paradise and Sunrise. Sunrise isn't open until July, so we couldn't go there. Paradise is under construction and was a bit crowded because it was the highest point open to cars while Sunrise was closed. We drove up there and took tons of pictures and ate barbecue sandwiches in the grill. It didn't seem like there was a specific trail (all sorts of snow everywhere), because there were lots of people wandering in a general uphill direction. My favorite were the women in saris trying to hike in the snow. Because there wasn't a distinct trail that we could see, we asked a ranger, who sent us to another part of the park for what she thought was the most amazingly beautiful trail ever. Some of us were in sandals (mind you, we were fine with that, since we'd already had a snowball fight in our sandals), so she didn't want us in the snow. We went to her trail, the Trail of Shadows, and learned that it was 0.7 miles total. It was a flat trail that wandered the edge of a meadow. The trees were quite beautiful and tall, but we were looking for something a bit more hike like. We decide to head to something we see on the map, Grove of the Patriarchs. Turns out to be a rather short trail too, but the trees were ginormous. There were some twin cedars that were supposedly 1000 years old. and completely rotten in the middle. Very cool trail. There was a bridge over a river that was quite wobbly and didn't suit me at all, but I made it across alive. Yay!
We cooked burger meat and onions and potatoes and peppers in tinfoil over the fire that night. Yum! There was so much food in those packets. We made s'mores and sat around the fire until we all got tired and decided to go to bed. The next morning, we made omelettes in baggies and prepared an entire loaf of peanut butter sandwiches. We packed up the car and set out to Silver Falls. Quite a cool waterfall. You hike along these rapids for a while. We actually thought those were the falls. Then we walked a little further and found the real waterfall. It wasn't that tall, but the sheer volume of water flowing was quite impressive. Lots of pictures of that. We started toward Chinook Pass (we were going to hike Yakima Peak) but were delayed when we came around a corner and saw some people on the side of the road and dust on the other side. We stopped and found that their motorcycle had hit some gravel and run off the other side of the road. The bike was sitting on the side of the bank. The riders were both okay other than some scrapes and bruises. We left some of the group with them along with some water and bandages, then Ben and I drove to the nearest place we could find a ranger to get some help. We went back and stayed with the couple while we waited on the rangers. Several trucks came up and started bandaging them up and asking lots of questions while they waited on a tow truck. Ben and Steve were handed stop/slow signs and sent to either end of the area, but the curve was so tight that they couldn't see each other, so the rest of us spread out and directed them so that they wouldn't cause any other wrecks. We ended up directing traffic for about an hour and a half. The gentleman who owned the motorcycle took our names and addresses with him and the rangers thanked us and sent us to a visitor's center to get Junior Ranger badges. We got to the visitor's center and the lady there acted like she was very loath to give the badges away. We told her what we had done and how we had helped, so she gave us badges and made us raise our right hands and swear to do our parts to help out on the roads and the trails and anywhere or something like that. We all promptly wore our badges around like the big dorks we are.
Once we had gotten back on the road, we headed again to Chinook Pass, but we decided just to stop there and eat lunch rather than hike. We ended up hiking anyway, as we wanted to picnic in the snow and do some sledding. So we trekked up a hillside and ate our peanut butter sandwiches in the snow overlooking the mountain. It was quite incredible.
We made it home, safe and sound, and are resting for the next two days before we head out bright and early (6:30) on Friday morning for Portland. Rumor has it that the biggest fireworks show west of the Mississippi is there. Actually, it's on the bridge between Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA. Pictures of Portland to come, I'm sure.
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