Chasing summer

Well, we tried to chase summer down. In order to find some warm weather we headed east, over the Cascades to get away from the freezing temperatures and rain. It has been a crappy summer out here and we are desperate for some shorts people!

So last weekend we drove down to Seattle.....we met up with my parents who just got back from a week in Alaska with my mom's college buddies. My parents only had a few hours in Seattle before we took them to the airport, there were continuing their retirement party in Banff and Jasper National Parks for another week! But we had enough time with them to go out to brunch near Pike Place Market at a restaurant called Etta's. I was so happy just to get a few more hours with them, it was worth the drive.

Once we (sadly) dropped them off at the airport, Jay and I took off on the hunt for summer. We drove over the Cascades on Rt.2 and eventually stopped at Lake Wenatchee. We found a GEM of a campground, a place at the end of the lake called Glacier View. Yes, there was a glacier view. Not bad for car camping! Once we set up the tent and the tarp (it looked like the rain was going to follow us), we hit the trail. About halfway through searching for a trail we wanted to take, I realized I forgot the fuel for the camp stove. Crap! So much for that hike. So we jumped in Tink, the trusty Toyota, and headed out to the tiny town of Plain. Plain is not plain, it is GORGEOUS! Sunny, with rambling rivers, mountain views, and grassy plains. We got what we needed and headed back to the camp site. We decided there was still time for a quick hike up to Hidden Lake. So up we went through this gorgeous forest of cedars and Ponderosa pines. There were mushrooms everywhere! Good thing we brought along our book. The lake was beautiful, the sun was low and everything was golden. To make it even better, the lupine was blooming all around the lake. You could disappear in the fields of lupine. And things just got better! On the way back to the car, Jay scooped up a king bolete! We had no clue we could find these tasty mushrooms in the eastern Cascades. Suddenly we were hooked. All plans for hiking tomorrow we scrapped for a mushroom hunt. Back at the campsite, we had paste with boletes in the sauce. Bliss!




It rained all night (perfect!) and stopped by the morning. I love that kind of luck! We broke camp and hit the same trail for more boletes. But this time we left the trail and ended up spending hours in the woods searching for boletes. We totally lost track of time! Jay kept finding all the boletes and I was getting very jealous. Finally, at the very end of the search, I came on a huge group of them! Everywhere you looked there were boletes! There was one sad problem though - maggots. Ugh. Yes, wild mushies are tasty to things aside from humans. If the bolete is in good shape, there won't be any maggots. None! The one we ate last night was totally clear. But the vast majority of the mushrooms we were finding today, not so clear. Kinda nasty. But we thought we could salvage a few, so we still collected the best looking boletes.


At this point we had blasted through the morning and we still had a long drive back to Anacortes! So we drove to Leavenworth (funny little town built to look like Bavaria). We grabbed a beer (had to in Bavaria) and bratwurst (veggo) and enjoyed the SUN! We found it! Then we drove through Chelan and stopped to get some cherries at a roadside stand (I was in shorts finally!). Then into Winthrop (this town is designed to look like an Old West town, funny themes out here). We got ice cream here and basked in the sun still. But then we had to say goodbye to the sun and summer and head over the mountains back to Anacortes. So we went from shorts and flip-flops to snow! The snow is still quite thick at higher elevations in the Cascades!



We stopped at a forest service trail at about 5000 ft (?) to stretch on a 1 mile quickie walk to a lake. This turned out to not be so quick as we slogged through a ton of snow and it started to downpour on us! The trail was buried in snow, so we had to follow other hiker's tracks. How odd that I was just in shorts?! Rainy Lake was rainy for sure, but it was gorgeous too. We could hear the glacier rumbling and calving in the distance and there was a big waterfall cascading down on of the steep mountainsides. Not a bad place to be in the pouring rain.

After we left Rainy Lake and the funny gray jays (that begged for food) behind, nothing super exciting happened. We arrived home late, with soggy camping gear, to two cute kitties. What a mess to deal with! Jay took charge of the boletes and I have no clue what I did. A million things I'm sure!


This past weekend was relatively lazy, although we went diving yesterday. I need to get a few more dives in before I head to Antarctica!