Vacation to Happiness

So I spent the summer in Baltimore, which is actually a much cooler city than I ever would have given it credit for without living here. But there were definitely parts of me that suffered from being so separated from the outside world. My three week vacation after the first quarter gave me back all of those parts of myself I had been missing all summer, and will go down as possibly the three most amazing weeks of my life. It started off with a backpacking trip to the Dolly Sods in West Virginia with my friend Amanda.

Couldn't have been a better kick off to the vacation....despite the fact that we got lost....and got all of our food eaten by a bear and had to come out a day early. It was just amazing to sit in the dirt and grass and not worry about sitting on a hypodermic needle.

After we woke up to our ransacked stuff sack and realized we were lost we were a bit disgruntled...

...and then we happened upon this diving board that some fellow hiker was kind enough to construct in the middle of the woods. So we chucked our packs and shoes and took a much needed swim.


After that excursion I turned around and got on a plane to Seattle.....where everything was right in the world for a week :) Here's why:

















That last one was the view from the plane as I was leaving, as if to say "don't forget how much you love it here, we will be right here when you come back."

Struggles Goes East!

So I left Seattle at the end of April to trek back across the country, spend some time with friends and family in New England, and then head down to Baltimore to settle into my new home. After initially hating Seattle when I first moved out there, I grew to love it and in the last few months it started to feel like home. So leaving that was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, but thankfully I had a friend to drive and explore with from Seattle to Minneapolis. That and some amazing send offs from my friends helped to lighten the blow. We hiked Lake Serene after diggin into some ribs from the BBQ Pit (BBQ served from a school bus- amazing), then camped out in Leavenworth with all of my favorite people. We left from there and headed to Missoula Montana and had some amazing pizza, stayed at a friends house and then had a tasty delicious breakfast (and everything was SO cheap! sweeeet). Drove down to Yellowstone and explored some sulfur springs, drove around a bit and set up camp......in the freeeezing cold. Then we sat in the car and ate dinner because it was too cold to sit outside. We also tried to drink coconut milk but we both thought it tasted like suntan lotion- I later found out its not meant to be drunk on its own. We got up the next day, walked around some geysers, saw the grand prismatic, and watched Old Faithful blow. Then we drove down to Jackson Hole Wyoming, got some much needed exercise, followed by an even more needed shower, and treated ourselves to a delicious dinner and the luxury of a mattress instead of a flat piece of ground. This of course, was all after my ford focus (which we lovingly named 'STRUGGLES') chugged up the rockies in second gear. We were relieved to get to the top except that on the way down, my friend Joe said 'I just heard a funny noise, and now I smell a funny smell'....mmm comforting. Struggles, Joe and I all made it safely down and the good ol girl was ready to go again after a good nights sleep. We spent a day in Jackson Hole, I tried to hike in the Grand Tetons, but it turns out that 4 feet of snow and no snow shoes isn't exactly conducive to getting anywhere. So I hung out at the visitors center and learned stuff while Joe sat in a bar nearby to write a paper. Then we drove to Casper Wyoming, oh boy is that place a joy. We camped in a hurricane (super) and got up the next day to go to Wall Drug in South Dakota. BISON BURGERS!! mmmmm and homemade donuts...and cherry pie...and bison hot dogs..and maybe more homemade donuts. And a mechanical T-rex?? yeah. Then we drove to the Badlands, set up camp and toured the park just before sunset. A-mazing. Got up the next morning and had the most epic bike ride of my life. Then for the last stretch into Minneapolis. Spent a few days there and had a great time with friends. Then I picked up my dad at the airport, we took a walk around Lake Calhoun, ate dinner at a bowling alley and left for Chicago the next morning. What a cool city!! We walked downtown and went through the park, saw the bean, and went out to dinner at Kinzies Steakhouse mmmmmmmmmm. Our destination for the next day was Buffalo, which conveniently let me see one of my favorite ladies, who I haven't seen in two years! Lovely :) Then finally home to Maine. Oh, lovely Maine.
North Entrance to Yellowstone National Park

An elk following directions.

This guy was called the doorman, because he stood guard in front of an amazing sulfur spring.

mmmmm purty.

View from the top of the sulfur spring.

The Grand Prismatic.

The Grand Prismatic....with me in front of it.

Those are some Grand Tetons.

Jenny Lake boathouse in Grand Teton National Park....this was as far as I got on my "hike"

The view from the bar Joe was writing his paper in. Rough.

Mobile home. Parked in the Badlands.

Ooooooh. Dried earth.

Cacti!

Sunnnnnset

Holy moly



The corn palace, which serves as the state house of South Dakota. Hmmm.

My new home!

So it appears its time to do this cross country move again. I'm moving to Baltimore for school, starting in June, so I figured I should take a trip out and get a sneak peek at Baltimore and see if its really as gritty as everyone says it is. It is. But, its also a beautiful city with tons of really cool stuff in it, AND amazingly friendly, genuine people, both at the school and in the city. I've been dreading this move for some time now but now I'm really excited! I'm leaving Seattle on April 23rd for a roadtrip and will be spending the greater part of may bumming around New England and eventually driving down to Baltimore to start this thing off. Woop woop! Anyway, here are some shots from my new home!! I've been freaking out about being so far away from mountains and leaving the nature that is everywhere out here to go to an entirely concrete city....turns out there's beauty in really unsuspecting places...maybe my new hobby will be finding it :)

These two were taken on the street next to where my Kate lives (hopefully where I will also be living)


















Baltimore here I come!!

I found the red October!

So I never really finished my post about Hawaii....eventually it will happen. But so much has happened since then thats worth talking about that it feels like a digression to go back that far :) It has been exactly one year that I have lived in Seattle now. I have ranged from an initial gutteral hatred for the place, which morphed into acceptance of a mediocre city, which then grew into love and appreciation for the beauty of this place...and now I have settled on really liking it here, but knowing that my heart lies back east. Its a seemingly good place to be for the time being, but knowing that I will eventually head back east sometimes gives my current state a very temporary feeling. Annnnyway, enough about that. The rest of this summer was beautiful, though I didn't get to enjoy it nearly as much as the first half. I hopped in with both feet to the school application process and stuck my nose in my computer for a good two months, working on odds and ends, essays, logistical details etc. In addition, I found out that I had to move AGAIN.....I have now moved 5 times since leaving Maine a year ago.....awesome. So we did a really hectic, frustrated house search and ended up in a cute but sub-optimal daylight basement apartment that has more quirks than perks. I found myself getting really stressed and unsettled, so I decided to dedicate october to refinding the mountains and sucking up any last sunlight and maybe even foliage I could before a loooong rainy "winter" sets in. So, first I set off to Granite Peak which is a nice close hike. Its about 40 minutes outside the city and I decided that would be a perfect hike to do on my own. The view from the top is a full 360 degree view of the mountains, including Rainier, and its steep enough for a workout but only about 8 miles round trip. I put some hot apple cider in a thermos, packed my book and my flute and set off. I met a girl on the trail and she was hiking solo too, so we paired up for a bit but I really had wanted to just spend some time with myself so I let her go ahead after a while. The best thing about this trail is the meadows near the top and how all of a sudden Mt Rainier (a huge gianormous volcano) pops out of nowhere.
What gianormous mountain? Oh THAT gianormous mountain?

When I reached the top I found a spot all to myself. I was so excited for hot apple cider. I'm not sure why, but I kind of assumed the thermos wouldn't work and that my cider would only be luke warm...so i took the cap off to feel. It seems I was right, no steam. So I went to take a chug at which point I realized I was HORRIBLY wrong and it was still scalding hot, so I pulled it away but managed to pour it all over myself in the process. So here I was, at the top of this beautiful mountain, now covered in scalding hot apple cider, which would soon be sticky....and I really didn't have a complaint in the world.
Mt Baker in the background, and my fluting shadown in the foreground :)

After finishing the rest, slightly more cautiously, I ate some lunch and played my flute for a while. It was so relaxing for that to be the only sound I could hear. That day was just what I needed. So the next weekend I planned to do another hike. But I wanted to go much deeper into the mountains, to something more difficult so I called up my friend Sam and we planned to do Cascade Pass. This is my favorite hike, and I posted pictures of it before. So, Sam and I drove up north for 3 hours (the last 20 miles of which was on a dead end dirt road). We got about 3 miles away from the trailhead when we stopped in front of giant orange baracades that said "road closed for road work". REALLY? You couldn't write that at the BEGINNING of the 20 mile dirt road? Just a thought. We just sat there and laughed so hard. But there was a different trailhead about a mile back that neither of us had ever tried so we decided to do that one. This one was called Hidden Lake Trail. We had no clue about the length or elevation gain of the trail, but we figured if there was a lake it had to be pretty. The trail started out really steep, just winding through some meadows, then it traversed across the face of the peak in front of us and took us up through some snow capped peaks. The further we climbed the more we were absolutely floored by the view.
Mt Baker in the background..

The whole day was a comedy of errors (all of which were of the 'had to be there' variety, so I wont bore you....suffice it to say we had tons of fun). This is now my new favorite hike. I couldn't get over the view from the top, with the lake (and it certainly was hidden), we could see Mt Baker, Glacier Peak, Mt Shuksan (all of which are amazingly beautiful glacier capped mts in the area) along with some incredible mystery mountains :)
Look at how hidden it is! They tucked it right in the middle of nature there!

So October is now coming to a close and I feel like I've given summer a proper farewell. There is so much more to be said, about all that lies behind and ahead in my world right now. But I'm signing out for now.