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| Jeff, the kids, Jeff's Mom and I went on a road trip to Mt. Baker a while back. It was a beautiful day! Our first stop was at a waterfall. 
It was a scenic drive and it was fascinating to see how they carved roads into the hillsides. Huge switchbacks so vehicles could make it up without overheating.  The views were spectacular. The mountain with a lot of snow is Mt. Baker. The one with a small amount of snow and the one features the most often is Mt. Shuksans. The rest are peaks that I don't know the names of.
Here's Baker! 
Isn't that an interesting ridge? 
Zoomed in a bit closer, you can see there's a trail below the ridgeline. 
Zoom in even closer and you can see hikers on teh trail below the ridgeline. 
I have more photos to show but this one-at-a-time loading gets so tedious. I've been loading pics for ever now it seems and need to move on to other things. | | |
| On the 13th of September, Jeff's Mom came over and we decided to go on a hike to Bear Lake. Two of the neighbor girls also decided to come along. 
The road was washed out so we had to add about 3 miles to our trip, just to get to the trail head. Still, it was a easy hike and the kids obviously were having fun. 
The lake was very pretty, so calm and quiet with dust motes and bugs lazily dancing above the water. 
I had a good time capturing the reflections in the water. 
And seeing the reflections of the grasses in the water made it seem overcrowded! 
The dead tree made for an interesting focal point in the water as well. 
I was also trying to find a geocache (which I couldn't) and the kids were enjoying playing at the water's edge and picking wild blueberries. I found several interesting pieces of fungus while I was looking for the cache. 
I love seeing how trees evolve. Nurse stumps and exposed root systems; all very fascinating to me. 
Here's the kids playing by the water. The pretended they were fishing. 
Quin makes for a good Huck Finn. 
Kendrah, too. Both my kids are cute....they take after their Dad! 
I thought this photo was just plain fun. The grass in the water and the tree boughs overhead made me smile. 
Here's Quin playing peek-a-boo for his picture, then he pleaded, "Help me get down!" 
The kids devised an elaborate game of "house" or maybe "Survivor House" because the designated mom sent the remaining kids to find shelter, go fishing, and to pick berries. 
Last shot; a scenic view. 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- In news to update you...... Last Friday, Kendrah got sick and came home from school early. She spent the weekend in bed with a head ache and tummy ache, and on Saturday, a temp of 104, but fever free on Sunday. She felt fine and went to school Monday but the lazy weekend made for a tired Monday and she came home at lunchtime. The kids both did fine all week but on Friday (day before yesterday), when I picked Quin up from school, his nose was red and stuffy and he felt a bit feverish to me, so off to bed with him. Again, Saturday was a high temp day (no trick or treating for him) and Sunday, not. Quin still has a titch of a stuffy nose but he's running around with the neighbors (they know he was sick yesterday) and seems to be fine. Swine Flu? Who knows, but it wasn't bad, whatever it was, and it happened on weekends so that made it easy for school. Jeff heard about a job he felt underqualified for and I encouraged him to get his resume in anyway. Few days after that, he was scheduled for an interview for last Monday. It went well, and they scheduled him for a second, on Wednesday. That also went well. On Wednesday night he got a call from one of the people that wrote a referral for him and she told him that the company called her to thank her for recommending Jeff and to tell her they would offer him the job on Thursday. Woo! Thursday he got calls form each of the people that had sent in referral letters to say the same thing, then finally the company called and offered him the job. They offered him more pay than he had asked for, too. He starts on Friday the 13th. He couldn't WAIT to give his 2 weeks notice at his job!! As for me, I'm busy getting some financial things in order -- how confusing! My bank not only allowed several charges with my debit card (converted to Australian dollars and Indian rupees), but somehow came to the conclusion that I'd made them. It's been a huge battle to get my money back. I've closed out half my accounts and pulled most of my money but with automatic deposits and withdrawals still set up, I have to make sure I don't mess anything up. The bank manager is fully aware of what is happening and will do everything she can to get me my money back, and was apologetic of not downright supportive of me pulling my money out of the bank. I opened new accounts at a local credit union, after asking what would happen if such a charge showed up on my account again. She looked at me with a "duh" expression and said, "There are all kinds of filters for that, as soon as it shows up we block your card till we've talked to you." Made me want to cheer. Anyway, that's all that's interesting that I can think of right now. Next up, our trip to the Mt. Baker area. | | |
| With Zi Iob out of the way, I'm back to trying to catch up with other adventures I had last month. This one took place on September 12th, and a group of friends got together a group of boats to find a group of caches. There are several caches around Spencer Island that can only be accessed by boat. Unfortunately, there is no good (or close) place to launch boats from, so we were obliged to just work the boats down into the water from the bank, through blackberry vines, grass, and mud. Sandra helped Monique get her boat down. 
Then Sandra and I got into the Titanic and watched others get into boats. Quinn, Kate, and Darin on the topside, and Brian, Kit and Mike down below. 
Darin was helping Quinn get their boat down, but Quinn slipped. Luckily for me (not him) I had my camera out and ready. 
The Titanic is a slow boat so this was our view most of the trip. Taking the time to get my camera out just made us further and further behind so I didn't get as many pictures as I might have. You can see Mt. Baker there in the distance. 
Our first stop was also Mike's 5,000th find, so we all piled up at the bank and let him be the one to retrieve the cache. I handed out brownies, Kate and Brian tossed him some shirts they'd made for him with his milestone announced on the back, Mike signed all our names then did a roll call to make sure all the cashers were accounted for and we moved on. That's Brian (and Kate, you can barely see her in front of him, behind John) waving at me, the rest were intent on things happening on shore. 
There are a lot of old boats, it was like a ship graveyard. This one had a tree growing out of the hull. 
At another cache site, we knew there were bees in the area so Quinn took one for the team and, armed with bee spray, got out and did his best with getting the cache. We ended up writing our names on a piece of paper and putting it into the cache instead of trying to extract the logbook and list our names with the bees swarming. Quinn got stung twice, but we got 'er done. 
I got off this shot while I was waiting. Another dead ship. 
And just cause it took a long time for Quinn to stop playing with the bees and the cache, I got this silly one as well. 
And yet another dead ship. 
Once we got the caches accessible by boat, we went back to the "launching" place and get the boats out. Much easier this time, since the tide had come in. The parking lot is almost a half mile away, so several people went and got the cars, brought them back, loaded up the cars, took them back to the parking lot and walked back. Here's Mike, Darin, Quinn and Kit, looking like desperados in a western....without the chaps and cowboy hats. 
Then we did some of the caches on the island. Monique took this funny picture of me while I was waiting for the group to get back together at a cache site. 
Believe it or not, after spending a lot of time paddling around a large island, we drove to the other side of Everett and put the boats back in the water to paddle another couple of miles to get two more caches. Here's Mike, Marcia, John and Katy at the boat launch. 
The first one we stopped for was on the north end of Jetty Island. 
The next one was across some pretty choppy water and the cache itself was located on top of a dead barge. Monique was the one to climb up there and find it. 
I called this picture "Monique Retrieving The Cache", although, of course she's actually tossing it back into its place. I like to think she has some kind of magical powers to get caches. 
I'd worn my knee braces all day in the sun. I took them off for this last boating trip and discovered I'd gotten some really strange tan lines. 
After we got back, Quinn, Sandra and I did a few more caches in town to boost his numbers so he could claim one of the day's caches as a milestone, his 400th. Since it was getting dark, we took him to caches we had already done so we didn't have to take much time searching. One of the first stops was at a little overlook park (just a deck built on a hill). The sun was setting and the birds were having their last fling of the day. 
Quinn was close, but the cache wasn't there. 
Too bad Everett is so industrial, there wasn't a clear view of the sunset and birds without power lines. 
Power lines and other things. Still, I loved watching the birds play. 
And that was our boat trip caching day. | | |
| This is a picture Monique took of me celebrating my 2,800 milestone. 
I forgot to tell you -- remember that slippery slope that was so hard to climb up? On the way down we just sat and slid down it. I had on very slick pants and went down much faster than I wanted, ending up bumping hard on several marmot holes on the way, but better a "controlled" slide than one feet or face first. And yes, we did make it to the trailhead before dark. And yes, I took a hot bath as soon as I got home, and YES I'm totally sore today... toes, feet, ankles, knees, hips, elbows, calf, thigh, lower back, and shoulder muscles. I had a knee therapy appointment today and it was a lot of recovery stretches, ultrasound and other pain relieving things. If I sit for more than a few minutes, it hurts to get up and get moving again. The snow will fall in the mountains soon so I won't be bagging any more peaks this year, but for as sore as I am, that was pretty wild and will aim to double the number of peaks I got this year. I have all winter to pick the four peaks I want to claim next summer.  | | |
| We were almost to the peak and I had been hurting for some time already. My left knee had been giving me sharp pains but that eased up after I started using the hiking poles I'd just bought for Jeff. . My legs, though, especially my hips, were aching, but I was determined to make it to the peak. Monique, who had hiked a good 10 miles the day before (bagging Mt. Dickerman peak) and slept in her truck that night in the woods, was always far ahead of us and cautioning us, when she slowed enough to see us again, about needing to get back to the trailhead by dark. She probably could have gotten to the top in less than 3 hours. Took me twice that. Jeff kept me company. Jeff saw this small, but surprisingly flat area and said it would be a good place for our cabin. But then, where would our helicopter land? 
There's Glacier Peak, in whose wilderness we were. 
And here I am, getting another picture (read: catching my breath). 
We had hiked through that trail in the snow and were as far as we were going on that trail. 
I was distracted by the really neat rock. 
The remaining .13 mile was pretty much straight up, without a trail to follow. The almost vertical hill was covered in dead heather, dead grass, and dead, slippery leafy plants. There was very little exposed dirt to get a foothold on. Here's Monique Spidermanning up the hillside. She slipped, did a bellyflop and slid down several feet before managing, somehow, to stop herself. 
I'm looking straight down at Jeff (can you see him?), who had tried to scout a different way up but ended up just following us up the treacherous way. 
I found a marmot hole, dug in, and got another shot off. 
I was in so much pain for this last stretch. My heels hurt from all the pressure of clinging to this slippery slope, my toes hurt from getting crammed into the toe of my boots, my legs were screaming. 600 feet is not all that far. Unless you're going straight up. That just hurt. 
But you know.... I made it. It took me longer than anyone and they were enjoying the peak while I just moaning and groaning my way up, but I did make it to the top. Now, here are three panoramas. From left to right, imagine all three of these panoramas end to end. And you almost can see what I saw up there. 
 
That odd green monolith was the object of the cache. No one seems to know why it's there, how it got there or anything. The general consensus is that it tracks seismic activity. Weird, huh? Do you see Monique and her dog sitting on the rocks? And now we can see, for sure, why this is Glacier Peak Wilderness. Glacier Peak is huge, isn't it? 
We were on the peak of Zi Iob after hiking 7 and a half miles. Down here was a high as we needed to go to claim the cache. I rested and Monique hung out but as you can see, Jeff is making his way to the upper part. He came back and said, "I can see Mt. Baker from up here!" So naturally we all made our way up to the true top of the peak. 
Which is where we took pictures. This rock was the absolute highest part of Zi Iob. Monique is 5'4" and I'm 5"10, so she stood up as tall as possible and I got down as low as possible, just for fun. 
I had to stand on it, of course. 
Then of course, Jeff had to. 
Not to be out done. Monique and Miranda also climbed to the peak at the peak. 
We crunched through the snow and took a few pictures, and then rested for a bit. 
Here's a panorama. Mt. Baker is the itsy bitsy white peak far in the distance on the left. One more panorama and you would see Glacier Peak, but I didn't do another 360 degree panorama from here. 
Jeff decided to see if he had cell coverage. Somehow, when you're at 6343 feet elevation and aren't getting a good signal, raising your phone another foot or so....doesn't really help. 
After I took this photo, I put away the GPS and camera, pared down my carrying weight as much as I could, ("Here, hun, will you carry this, too?") and we headed down, down, down. According to www.summitpost.org: Starting Elevation:1850 feet
Summit Elevation: 6343 feet
Total Gain: 4500 feet
Round Trip Distance: 15 miles
"Zi Iob" is a Saukme Indian phrase for the immediate area surrounding Round Lake, and means "mysterious people" in English. Between 1986 and 1988 there was some dispute between the Washington State Names Authority and the USBGN about the naming of Zi iob Peak. This is why some maps indicate it's location while other maps show only a high point on Lost Ridge. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- And that, folks, was my 2,800th cache found. | | |
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