Hello Mr. Baker!

Last Saturday, Jared and I were handed a gem of a day: blue skies, sunshine, and a big old mountain range waiting to be explored. Since arriving in BC, the two of us have developed a bit of an infatuation with Mt. Baker. So we hopped in our car, grabbed our Best Wildflower Trails of Washington book, zipped over the border into Washington, and drove to the trailhead. It was a curvy twelve miles down gravel forestry roads to get there, but it was well worth it. The views on the way up were spectacular.

The trail basically started out with a two mile uphill climb through the woods. About a mile in, we met up with a man who gave us some bad news: the trail was still snowy, the flowers sparse. But the views at the top were still supposed to be spectacular. This year was especially snowy in the mountains, and mixed with the cold summer/spring we've had so far, the snow's been a bit reluctant to leave. But we decided to treck on anyway. And thank goodness we did. There was some snow.

 Well, quite a bit of snow.

But within no time, we hiked right out of the treeline and the snowfields and onto a sight straight from heaven itself. Or at least the Sound of Music. Just try to tell me these hills aren't alive :)

 

And there were flowers. They were a bit small and shy, maybe not as abundant as they should be in a couple weeks, maybe not the bright primary colors we were promised, but they were still there--just waiting to be appreciated .

 

 And some of those beautiful reds poked their heads out.

  

 

  

And these little yellow guys were just everywhere. (this photo isn't ours, by the way.)

But I've got to admit, the blue skies and Mr. Baker smiling at us right up over the horizon sort of outshone the flowers. It was hard to tear my eyes away.

 

The trail came out on an alpine meadow adorned mountain ridge. It was one of these sweet flexible hikes where you can hike along the ridge to your heart's delight. The only problem was the snow.

 It disappeared in spots, but grew a bit more abundant as we climbed higher. And the drop offs became a bit steeper as well.

 

 But we kept going. And with each slip and slide across the snow, we were one step closer to Mr. Baker. There he is,smiling  all proud on the horizon.

We spent an amazing morning exploring the area, enjoying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches perched on a little peak, and becoming more and more convinced that we should try backpacking together (me, at least. Jared was already convinced about 4 years ago).

And to be honest, we spent a bit of time plotting how to get to the top of Mr. Baker. From our perspective, we could just keep going and going and going on our ridge until we got right to the top. But the clouds started growing a bit heavier, and we had to admit that we weren't exactly prepared for the trip. Apparently it takes more than PB&J, a new pair of hiking pants, and half a pop-tart to complete the climb. Maybe another time.

The snow was firm enough that we could hike right on top without sinking down. But the downhill slopes were still a bit tricky. I ended up taking a little bit of a slide down one small patch, but fortunately a small tree caught me before I could go too far. This picture shows just how much snow is left to melt.

 

Our little Kia made us proud this trip. She may be small, but she handled the rocks and gravel like a pro. Sort of.

 Once we got off the mountain, we pulled off for a nap next to the river.

All and all, it was a pretty spectacular day. I'll admit, our infatuation with Mt. Baker grew into a full on love this weekend. We both can't wait to get into those mountains again, and have already picked out a bunch more trails to try.

And yes, Jared finally convinced me that backpacking and primitive national forest camping would be a fun time. But that'll be an adventure for another day. :)

Has it really been a year?

Well it's not exactly to the day--the day was this past Sunday--but Jared and I have been married one year! It's hard to believe that just a year ago, our life looked like this:

I mean, for one thing, look at how long my hair was! But aside from that, I think we've done a lot of growing and changing. It's been an awesome first year. And we're both so excited for many more years to come.

This past weekend, we traveled down to La Conner, Washington for a little weekend getaway. We began our trip on Saturday morning. After finding the tiny town of La Conner, we drove over to Whidbey Island. First we stopped at Deception Pass state park to check out the views.

 The pass is actually the area containing the bridge joining Fidalgo Island (which I was not aware was an island--it's pretty well connected to the mainland by the highway and at low tide the bridge just covers a muddy area) and Whidbey Island. Who knew?

Whidbey island was amazing. It's hard to believe how diverse the landscape is out there--one minute we were driving through dense, moss covered trees, the next we were driving past fields full of sheep and lavender farms, all overlooking the ocean, and still in sight of mountains. It was gorgeous. We stopped at a couple little towns too. We spent a little while in Coupeville, a little town with lots of little shops and restaurants. They also had the most amazing churches. This is the United Methodist church in town:

And this is the Catholic church there:

You can't really tell because this is a bad photo, but it's a little yellow church with gingerbread trim--a regular little painted lady of a church (forgive me if that's inaccurate, any architecture experts out there). It was like stepping into a fairy tale for me, everything was so pretty!

We also did some shopping around La Conner. Lots of antique shops to explore, it was great. In the farm area around town we kept seeing these fields of some wilting plants. I thought they were poorly growing corn, but then we saw some wilted petals too...turns out they were tulips. Fields and fields of tulips. We kept seeing posters around town from past tulip festivals--next year we will definitely have to go down there when they're in bloom. Oh, and in one of those fields we saw two big old bald eagles just hanging out. They are some big birds. But anyway, after exploring town, we headed to our bed and breakfast--the Queen of the Valley Inn. It was out of town a little ways, overlooking a field of some very pretty cows. I also thought I saw a wolf in those fields...but it turns out it was just the B&B's resident dog. Oh well :) It was a beautiful little place too. 

Our room was pretty neat--it was the only one to boast a sunken jacuzzi tub room--which was a tiny little area under the stairs. 

They joked that it was their Harry Potter room. I loved it. 

On Sunday we went back to Deception Pass State Park and enjoyed a day of exploring. Right now wild roses and rhododendrons are in bloom, and so are these yellow bushes--I don't know they're name, and they're probably invasive, but I think they're beautiful :)

The first little beach we stopped at was awesome. 

 It was in a protected bay, and was so peaceful.

 And I had to test the water to make sure it was salt...it was. Uck. It looked pretty clean though :)

 The other side of the point had some tide pools. It was a protected area though--I guess a couple years ago the pools got trampled and almost completely destroyed by people visiting the beach. We poked around them a bit, following a rope path that the conservation club had mapped out.

 I guess the ones Jared saw on Vancouver Island were a lot cooler. The only wildlife we saw were a couple angry hermit crabs fighting.

 We explored the park more and found that it was a little point dropping off into the ocean with rocky cliffs.

 It was so beautiful, I could have stayed there all day. Or week. I'll just build a tiny little cottage on that point and stay there my whole life. And recruit my family to move there too--that would be perfect :)

 Jared had the camera, which is why there are so many pictures of me. You can see him in the shadows of some pictures though.

 Where it wasn't rocky, it was a cool little grass and wildflower meadow. And yellow is in season right now.

 Then we poked back up to the Deception Pass bridge. It was really a gorgeous structure. And of course, despite the signs--

--I bet you can guess how Jared got these pictures of the bridge.

 They are pretty cool, I'll admit...but worth risking his little red-headed neck? I'm not convinced :)
This is the looking-down view from the bridge. The water was moving pretty fast at that point.

After an afternoon spent reading snuggled in some rocks along the water, we called it a day--and a wonderful weekend.

It was pretty tough getting up, eating breakfast early in the B&B's sun porch and heading to work on Monday, but we did it anyway. The weekend was definitely a blessing and something to be truly thankful for, and I'm so glad I got to share it with Jared. I'm so excited for another year of adventures with him!

Juan de Fuca

It's a little late, but here are the pictures from Jared's backpacking trip as promised!
So here's a map of the area:

Jared was hiking the Juan de Fuca trail, which is along the coast of Victoria island on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. From this map, you can see more details of the trail itself. 

Jared and the group of 70 high school students, teachers and helpers started in the area designated as "most difficult." You can see from the trail map how many little creeks and inlets they had to cross during the trail. Apparently it was pretty muddy too :) Here are the pictures from their first day:

 This is where they camped the first night, Chin Beach.

Jared's campsite

 The second day was more hiking. This portion included a pretty long and scary looking suspension bridge--this is the view looking down:

  The third day, they drove up to Botanical Beach, where they studied the awesome tide pools.

 It makes me green with envy. Fortunately, they didn't see any whales--if they had, I would've been real mad :)

 Oh, and they have awesome massive trees there too (probably still my favorite feature of the Pacific Northwest).

It looks awesome. I can't wait to explore the island myself :)