Destination: Dayton WA

My long-planned but oft delayed visit to Dayton finally came to fruition a couple days ago. I've had an ongoing fascination with this small, southeastern Washington town for years, due in large part because of it's history, which goes back to the very early 1800s. Indeed, Lewis and Clark made several camps in the area (most of which are well-documented) on their return trip to St Louis in 1806. Missionaries, miners and other settlers followed shortly thereafter.

Dayton is located 30 miles north of Walla Walla at an elevation of 1700'. It lies at the southern extremity of the rolling Palouse hills, just north of the Blue Mountains. It is prime farming country, with lots of water and, and, for the elevation, a relatively dry and temperate climate. Three streams, all of historical significance, run through or near Dayton--the Touchet, The Tucannon and Pattit Creek. The town was founded in the mid-1800s and has an expansive, and full, cemetery to prove it. It has the oldest standing train depot in the state, restored as a gift shop/museum. The history of the town is perhaps it's biggest selling point, now that the infamous Green Giant asparagus canning plant has shut down.

After the 3.5 hour drive from Cle Elum, I checked into the Blue Mountain Motel at 3pm, where the manager readily accepted my $5 request for a quiet room, a request, by the way, which he honored by not booking the room next to mine, even though the motel became nearly full later in the evening.

It was nearing dusk, but before it went completely dark, I walked down Main Street to the central part of town, where I visited the requisite small-town gift shops, art galleries and thrift store. I walked past the town bar and the town sandwich shop. The real estate offices had already closed for the day. I was entrigued by the Skye bookstore, as it was also home to the local brew pub. With Scottish music playing in the background, I enjoyed a pint of Johnson Hollow Amber Ale as I browsed for some reading material.

Down the street, an Italian restaurant was just opening for the day's business. The building had all the charm of 60's burger joint, but as they were advertising homemade lasagna, I went in and wasn't disappointed. The lasagna was perhaps the best I ever had, mildly sweet with large bits of crushingly flavorful tomatoes and onions.

I returned to the motel and had a couple more beers which I had brought from home (both of which I had to open on the bathroom's towel hook, as I had no opener) and spent the rest of the evening reading.

I awoke early the next morning and went to the only place in town that was serving breakfast. After that I drove 20 miles up the valley into the Blue Mountains, to the Bluewood ski area, which at well over 4000 feet, has the second-highest base elevation of any Washington resort. It also gets plenty of snow, averaging 300 inches per year, mostly, I don't doubt, nice powder. This morning it was snowing hard, and cold, and windy. I would not want to have been on the top of the highest chair--it no doubt would have been bone chilling.

I drove back to town on the narrow Forest Service road and spent some time visiting the cemetery and walking the quiet streets looking at the many homes that were for sale. Finding nothing of particular interest, I checked out of the motel at noon and started the long drive back to Cle Elum, taking mostly the quieter highways through the snow covered hills of the Palouse, making several stops along the way, arriving home to a terrific snowstorm at about 4pm.

Jungle Creek

Well, I had ambitions of leaving Seattle early Saturday morning, December 1, driving to our cabin in Cle Elum, suit up for a winter hike, drive up to the Teanaway valley, climb to the top of the Jungle Creek trail and get back to civilization before it got dark. It didn't quite work out that way, but was an enjoyable day nonetheless.

After a sleepless Friday night due mainly to the unfathomable exploits of our 16-year old daughter, I left Seattle at about 830 and was in Cle Elum a little after 10, where I found about ten inches of snow and a freezing cold house. After warming up the house a little and having a quick breakfast, I jumped in the car and half an hour later I was on the Jungle Creek road near the north fork of the Teanaway River. The road had not been plowed and with about a foot of very light snow I was able to get within a mile of the trailhead. Not another soul was in sight--it's slightly too early for snowmobiles and too late for most hikers. Perfect conditions for an early winter hike.

I slogged up the road, taking nearly a half hour to get to the poorly marked trailhead. Was hoping that once I got into the trees, the snow wouldn't be so deep, but that didn't prove to be the case. Very hard going for the first half mile or so with the snow deep and the trail crossing the creek several times. The temperature was probably near 20, but I was down to just a sweater as the sun was trying to come out and there wasn't a breath of wind.

After a mile and a half the trail became steeper and the snow deeper. It was farther into the woods I had been on a winter hike in a long, long time and being alone added to an eerie feeling of being totally cut off from the real world. With the flat light and snow starting to fall, it was a totally black and white world, with the only color being the pale, pale green moss hanging from the fir trees.

But the wind soon started and tons of snow was being blown off those same trails, most of it finding it's way down the back of my neck. The steepness of the trail was discouraging and I knew there would be no payoff in terms of a view if I continued to the top, so I did the sensible thing and headed back down. Good thing I did, as I became extremely tired upon reaching the road and was hard-pressed to make it back to the car before dark.

Annette Lake

Let the I-90 hiking season begin!

47 miles outside of Seattle, less than 2 minutes off I-90 is not a recipe for success if you're seeking a hiking trail with any degree of solitude, especially when the destination is a pretty little sub-alpine lake, nested cozily between high ridges.

Yet that's the dilemna of Annette Lake, which for 6-8 months is roughly the hiking equivalent of 520 at rush hour. But beginning sometime in November, after the temperatures drop, the first snow flies and ice forms in the moist shadows, one can enjoy a bit of privacy on this admittedly average trail, well under an hour from Seattle.

Wanting to work off some holiday meals and anticipating chill temperatures and possibly a little snow to scare off the masses, I left Ballard Saturday morning at 11am and was on the trail by noon. There were just 7 cars on the strip-mall sized parking lot, one of them belonging to a single woman backpacker who had just spent a very cool night at the lake, with temps in the upper teens.

The trail starts off modestly switching back through a fairly open forest of fir with a stunning lack of undergrowth. After about a mile, the way crosses the Iron Horse Trail and continues up, sometimes steeply through groves of dark fir and the occasional cedar, with the freeway's faint roar mixing with a plethora of small rivulets casdcading down from the eastern ridge. At about 2500' fresh snow appears and the trail ices up, testing the grip on your boots and making one lust after those hikers coming down with walking poles.

After a little more than 2 hours, the trail flattens out and dead-ends in a picturesque bowl under snow-capped pinnacles, with the rather circular Annette Lake resting at their base. At around 2:30pm, the temperature was around 30 and there was not a breath of wind. A small waterfall was feeding the lake on the opposite shore and you could almost see a thin film of ice spreading across the water.

Soon enough some other hikers showed up, then some more and then some more. But for twenty minutes or so, plenty of time to eat lunch, all was quiet and peaceful and very, very worthwhile.

Skiing Stevens

So back in early December of last year, I was finally talked into going skiing with several friends at work. It had a long while since I last skied, but the timing finally seemed right and everything would have worked out great except that was the the particular day that Mother Nature chose to unleash one of the mightiest windstorms in years. After a couple very shaky runs on the easiest chair lift, the resort was closed for the rest of the day. Wind speeds were reported at 100mph at the top of the mountain.

Fast forward nearly three months later to March 8, when I finally had a chance to go back to Stevens Pass and redeem the lift voucher I got for the aborted attempt in December. My friend Randy and I took off from work for the afternoon and hit the slopes at about 130pm under fair skies, 28 degrees and no wind.

It felt great to be on the slopes again and though I probably haven't skied more than 10 times in the last 20 years, I did OK, all things considered. My thighs burned like fire during the first few runs, but eventually settled down to just a semi-crippling sizzle. One of the highlights of the afternoon was recovering some stashed beers and watching the boarders go through the terrain park as we chilled out on the sidelines. Never did the once-laughable bottle opener feature on my jacket seem quite so brilliant.

I think we took every lift on the mountain, save for the single most difficult and the easiest. Randy didn't let up on me at all, and by 6pm I was wiped out and ready to head back home. I only fell once the entire afternoon, but it was a pretty bad event, being a combination face plant, knee and ankle twister, sliding down the hill, totally out of control sort of thing. That was one fall where it would have been real nice if the bindings had released.

Neverthless, I survived and it was all good.

Time standing still

One more thing I want to mention regarding the fall off the ladder is how long the time seemed from when I first realized that I wasn't going to catch my balance until I was picking myself up off the concrete. I remember several distinct phases to the fall, including the thought that I surely was going to regain my balance, to definitely thinking I'd be able to jump away from the ladder and somehow land on my feet, like a two-legged cat. When those scenarios didn't pan out I knew immediately that it going to be a bad thing, the landing part, and I went over in my mind if I was going to land on my head, or which bones I might break, if anybody was watching, how much it would hurt, if I'd have to go to the hospital, if I'd be able to drive the car and so on, all in the space of a couple seconds, at most. Still, I was frightened or angry at my bad fortune, but just felt acceptance of whatever might happen.

It is truly amazing how the mind works and while this concept of time standing still during an event like this is certainly not original, I can definitely now validate that it is true. It does make you wonder about such things as near-death experiences and other traumatic events where one's consciousness feels truly altered.

Sonics Game

A friend gave me a couple tickets to the Sonics vs Blazers game last night so at around 6pm Savi and I jumped in the car and headed downtown to Key Arena. Of all the events we've been to, food has always been the prime motivation in her going, and last night was no exception. But she's always such great, great company that I've never minded indulging her with a pre-game burger and fries, popcorn and soda at the game, and of course whatever candy bars and other goodies we can sneak in under our coats.

We had a quick dinner at a burger place near the Arena and got to our seats a little before tip off. The game itself was uneventful, as are most NBA games, with a steady stream of turnovers by both teams and continuous breaks in the action for TV timeouts and free throws. The halftime, however, was great, as they retired the jersey of Spencer Haywood, one of my all-time favorite players from the early days of the Sonics.

We left the game a little early, played leaf tag on our way back to the car as a light drizzle fell and got home at around 9:30.

Sitting here in bed, semi-conscious...

...so I thought I'd resurrect my blog with a few random thoughts.

First of all, I'm sitting here with nothing to do because about an hour ago, while trying to install a new basketball backboard for my daughter, I fell off the topmost step of a 6-foot stepladder, landing flat on my face on the concrete, smashing the backboard and ladder to smithereens, in so doing. I'm still in a bit of shock, and wonderment, at the fact that I apparently did not break anything on my personal body, though my pride was severely bruised. I think the problem was, besides stupidly standing on the very top of the ladder, that I had my body half way through the actual basketball rim, trying to reach a screw at the topmost part of the backboard. That sort of prevented me from catching my balance when the ladder started to wobble, and worse yet, stopped me from jumping clear when I started falling. I had not finished securing the backboard, so that came loose when I pulled away and in some weird way I think it actually cushioned the impact. Of course, a car was just driving past when I fell, but it did not stop.

Anyway, to console myself a little bit (after I confirmed there were no fractures), I finally ordered a new digital camera. I just couldn't stand the research and the waiting for new models to come out, so when Costco.com today posted a good deal on a Canon a710 with a 2gb memory card, I jumped on it. It's not the dSLR type camera I initially wanted, but will probably be much more practical and hopefully something everyone can use.

The big Chilly Hilly bike ride is tomorrow and I was looking forward to spending a couple hours this afternoon tuning up my bike, but I'm hurting to much to do that right now. Hopefully I'll feel good enough in the morning to go on the ride, though my left wrist and the left part of my jaw are in considerable paint, at the moment.

What else has been going on since my last posting way back in October? Not that much really. I survived the holidays, in an uneventful, though somewhat melancholy, fashion and have been struggling a little bit to get traction in the new year. Did try downhill snow-skiing for the first time in several years. Unfortunately, it was in the midst of possibly the worst blizzard in a decade, and the resort was subsequently shut down after my third run. I got a credit for the cost of the lift ticket, which I'm still waiting to redeem....

I'm still working at the boatyard and that subject is probably deserving of its own posting, which I will try to do sometime in the near future. Suffice it to say that since late last September, when the office manager suddenly quit and I had to take over, it has been extremely challenging, and not necessarily in a fun way. But it has kept me on my toes and put me in an environment where I have to deal with people all the time. I'm happy to say that I have succeeded to a certain degree, though I admit that I have not totally committed to the idea of being in the marine repair business, especially with the prospect that my brother is going to retire in a few years.

So now it's later. 6pm the next day, to be exact. I diligently got up this morning for the bike ride, checked the weather, checked the ferry schedule, packed up my little collection of energy bars and packed away nearly two litres of PowerAde. I was totally convinced that my wrist was going to hold up but I thought it worthy of the attempt, inasmuch as I had been looking forward to this event for months. Though the entire left side of my body ached from yesterday's fall, I curled onto the bike and headed downtown.

It was an achy, uncomfortable ride and when I got to the ferry dock I knew there was no way I could deal with a 4-5 hour ride in my condition. By the time I got back home I could barely squeeze the front brake lever and nearly crashed into the garage door. Anyway, it was a good try.

I thought I'd better do something to be somewhat productive, so I ran to the store, got some fixins for a stew and got that started. Afterwards, I went to the garage and began resurrecting the old backboard, which mainly included some cosmetic fixes, including a new coat of paint. I'm sure Sav will be disappointed when I put it back on, but it served me faithfully for nearly 20 years and I don't really want to spend another $100 for a new one.

After lunch, I ran over to the Guild 45th Theatre to watch Peter O'Tooles new star vehicle, "Venus." Loved it. Though I don't really see an Oscar for O'Toole, it was a great performance, certainly worthy of a nomination. The film was touching, a bit sentimental, and for anybody over 50 years old or so, a potent reminder of our mortality.

That's it for now--back to the Oscars. By the way, the stew was great!