Bucket List #65 | Hike Mt. Si

We spent the summer of 2016 training for a huge adventure (more on that to come). The last step in our training was to hike Mount Si, which is the training hike for Mt. Rainier expeditions. They say that if you can complete the Mount Si hike in under 2 hours, you are ready.

It's not the kind of hike that you do with kids, or at least with a 5-year-old who is too big to be carried and too small to do that strenuous of a hike, so we enlisted the help of our very good friends to have Walt and Zuzu over to play one Saturday while we did the hike. It took about 6 hours total, with the hike and drive time, so - we're talking VERY good friends, here. :)

We had so much fun doing this hike together. It was my first time hiking with a pack and I think I did a decent job of it. 

We made it up in about 130 minutes - so not quite the 2-hour limit, but we weren't attempting to climb Rainier, so we felt pretty good about it! 

The view was beautiful and the long stretch of time spent together with no distractions was even better.

This is a great hike - probably my favorite we've done in Seattle. It is very steep, but not super long, so if you like vigorous outdoor things, you'd probably love it!

Portland!

Playing catchup again! Being an adult leaves little time for things like journaling/blogging, doesn't it? But I'll try to do a broad recap.

For Landon's Spring Break this year, we decided to head down to Portland, Oregon to visit his Grandpa Burgener.

I'm so glad we went! We have lived within a few hours of Grandpa and Betty for years and hadn't done a proper visit. They were very gracious and happy to see us.

While there, we figured we may as well do some epic exploring!! We've been to Portland twice before as a family (and I used to live near here as a young child), but we haven't had much chance to see the sites.

We decided to use our time to take a ride on the Portland Aerial Tram, visit Powell's, eat our weight in food at the Portland food trucks, and visit an ice cream hot spot called Salt & Straw. There's a lot of eating involved in visiting Portland. :)

The next day, we had a huge surprise for Walter. The OMSI Museum happened to have a traveling display the same time we were in town called Game Masters. It was about video game designers through the ages, and included actual game consoles, from 80s arcade games to the most recent Kinnect and Wii games. When I saw the advertisement, we discussed it at length. It was expensive. And we work pretty hard to stay OFF screens when we're together on vacation. But it just seemed like too great of a chance to pass up. Walt's favorite thing in the world on display in the town we were hanging out in? So in the end, we went. And literally this photo made it all worth it:

This was his face when we got close enough in the line for Walt to see the giant Mario/Zelda poster and realized what we were doing. He could NOT hold still. He tried out nearly every single game, we stayed for hours. He bounced from one thing to the next and told us all about the different Zeldas, Marios and Minecraft games. He asked lots of questions and we enjoyed chatting about game design and showing Walt some of the games from our childhood. He LOVED it. Sometimes, spoiling your kids is a perfect idea.

Meanwhile, Zuzu found some fun things to do, too.

They had a great children's play space and she spent about an hour exploring it while Walt continued gaming. :) Rumor has it there were several sections with science and art and some other stuff, but we never made it that far!

We had a great time. Each year, we've managed to scrape together enough money to do a little spring break trip, and I've loved all the memories we've made! We've seen some fun things around the PNW, and spent time with great family members. And of course, Walt's favorite thing in the world is staying in hotels. So there's that.

Peace out, Portland. Hopefully we'll see you again soon!

Bucket List #66 | Mima Mounds

The Mima Mounds are a group of... well, mounds in Washington that no one can fully explain. Mysterious geologic formation? Obviously, it went on the bucket list! We finally got a chance to visit them on the way to Portland this week (more on that later). 

They were actually so much cooler than I was expecting! 

It's a beautiful site with prairie foliage and a fun little hiking trail. 

The morning we went, there were dense gray clouds and kind of a fog settled over the mounds, which made us feel like we were in Europe or exploring a fantasy world. Fun. :)

We spent about 45 minutes walking around, exploring and taking photos. There are more extensive hiking trails and a fun picnic spot, so we could have easily spent an afternoon there if we'd had the time.   

The mounds are "unexplained" in that no theory has proven how the mounds got there. Our resident scientist, Almost-Doctor-Landon, told us that it was probably a combination of geologic factors, such as a glacier, and biological factors, AKA ROUSs. Or ok, just regular gophers. But it's more fun to imagine that we were visiting the Fire Swamp. (Is anyone still with me? ;))

We definitely had fun visiting the Mima Mounds! We'll rate it:

Maybe we'll go back someday and take a picnic. Anyone want to join us? 

Bucket List #92 | Rattlesnake Lake

Right after we moved to Seattle, the guy who came to hook up our Internet told us about this place not too far away that is famous for several Bigfoot sightings. That was the first time I had heard about how the Pacific Northwest is the capital of Bigfoot. Maybe I had been living under a rock?

Anyhow, Landon and I have been looking for somewhere to get some elevation training in (we're planning an expedition this coming summer. :)), so for Labor Day weekend we tackled Rattlesnake Ledge.

It was a gorgeous hike - just the right length for us (4 miles roundtrip), since we were packing our kids up, and just the right amount of challenge. (1160 ft elevation gain on the way up)

The lake is super low this year, so that was sort of disappointing, but the view from the top was still spectacular.

We didn't see Bigfoot, but there were some mysterious tracks on the trail...

And this suspicious formation of rocks at the bottom of the lake bed. Maybe it's pointing to his hideout?

We really enjoyed this hike and would definitely recommend it. Get there early because when we got down at around 1pm, the parking lot was packed full and there were cars just circling, waiting for a spot.

We rate Rattlesnake Lake and the accompanying hike:

Not as spectacular as a few things we've seen, but super fun nonetheless!

Bucket List #29 | Forks, WA

(Still so behind guys, but I'm working on it!!!!)

Let me preface by saying that I'm NOT a diehard "Twilight" fan. True, I have read the books, but sort of in the way that one watches a car crash on the side of the road...I just couldn't stop until I knew how the train wreck ended! But I couldn't get through the movies. That said, living in such close proximity to a kitschy place like Forks just seemed too good of an opportunity to pass up. And we ended up having a lot of fun!

The town of Forks is actually just outside of Olympic National Park...it's kind of in-between the areas of the park. To get to the coast, you have to drive right through it. I knew it was a little town, but I was still surprised by just HOW little. This place really is in the middle of nowhere.

We stopped by the Chamber of Commerce where they had a little map for us to follow around town. It was fun to see all the creative ways people turned their little town into a tourist spot. I think my favorite was the treaty sign: (Team Jacob!)

We made all of the obligatory stops, and even got the high school janitor to take a photo for us - which was completely embarrassing, but you could tell it wasn't the first time he had done this. I couldn't stop laughing at every place we took a photo. I felt like a total poser because I couldn't even remember what some of the stuff was. They gave us a trivia page with our map, and I only knew the answers to a few of the questions. The best part was, we weren't the only people doing the tour!

Overall, it was a fun stop and I'm glad we did it. I'm also glad we rolled it into our Olympic National Park trip - it would not really have been worth a separate drive out to the peninsula.

I give Forks, WA:

Although you might love it more if you're really into Twilight!