The North Cascades. In photos and figures

Summer is summering it's glorious heights around here and nothing could make me happier. I'm content in heat, it's my favorite. All the other seasons require my sales skills at best to convince summer me that it's all part of loving the change from one to the next. However, here I am in it and I want to take it in and love on all things hot.

You know what I love about summer? (Other than everything)

Roadtrips! When a roadtrip involves camping and when a little camping involves a a little hiking. All the things!

Last weekend we went wild for the North Cascades National Park. We camped, we hiked, we thought about how happy this makes us.

Here is that weekend in numbers:

3: The number of campsites still open when we arrived at Colonial Creek Campground sites at 5pm Friday afternoon

+150: Campsites on a first come first serve basis.

7: The amount of backup campgrounds Ben had written down for in case. 

12: USD per night, per campsite.

18: The amount of times we said how relieved we were that we landed the camp site we did.

5: The amount of hours spent driving from Spokane.

2: The amount of confused deer prancing around the busy roads.

8: How many times we made fun of Winthrop

7: Miles,  the hike we took on that Saturday.

12: That hike in kilometers.

0.5: Miles up in elevation

6: The amount of times we said: "Easy Pass Trailhead should be called 'Challenging-not-so-easy-but-worth-it Pass Trailhead"

2845: Mentioning to each other that this is breathtaking.

3: Marmots spotted.

0: Bears, mountain lions and Big Foot spotted.

1: Dr. Seuss flowers spotted.

1 044 839: Bugs on the hike.

1: Cliff bar consumed.

76: The amount of times we talked about how that was possibly the most beautiful hike we had ever completed.

30: USD for a year long Northwest Forest pass.

5: USD for a day pass, per car.

6: Time re-applied sunscreen.

132: The surprising low amount of photos I took

89: The photos I took of me following Ben.

3: Days after the hike and my body is still injured.

11: The time of night the campsite starts to quite down.

13: Our estimate of free range children running around, possibly starring in Lord of the Flies 2.

21: My mosquito bites.

0: Ben's mosquito bites.

1 00 000: The times I will happily go back to the North Cascades.

2: Times per day I need to remind myself that I actually live in Washington and I'm not just a tourist anymore.

You guys! This is like my backyard now.

All: The amount of friends and family I hope to lure in to coming to visit me by these seductive nature photos.

 If you were wondering... The glaciers in the surrounding high country slowly wear down the mountains, the grinding of rock against rock produces a fine silt that meltwater streams carry into the lake below. This 'rock flour' if you will, reacts with light and gives the lake this amazing color.
I like being useful around here.

I'm going to copy the lovely Text Sketches with her great idea of linking up to  Found love. Now what for her brilliant  Travel Tuesday link up idea. I don't know about you, but I can spend all day dreaming, reading, planning, envying any form of a travel story. So come check it out with me.

Yes... it's another post about Northwest nature stuff.

See the previous post? The one where I went to a big city?
Okay good,
so I can go on crushing on our nature hikes and drives and views I'm falling in love with around here.
This here is the top of Mt. Spokane and it's hiking trails:

 

We don't have too many mountain ranges in Jo'burg, only a few lovely hills. I know Colorado and the Western side of Washington think Mt. Spokane is adorable. To me, it's the best. My first mountain you could say.

Celebrating the melted snow we decided to drive up to the very top. To take a million pictures, breath in the freshest air, dream of flying kites and enjoy the 360 views. I can highly recommend it if you're heart can survive the hairpin turns towards the top.

After being on 'top of the world' we decided to head back down a little ways for an afternoon hike.

Remember those childhood books where you could chose between what should happens next? Well I don't but every American child seems to. So are some of the hiking trails up on Mt. Spokane. In the winter these trails function as cross-country skiing trails, so the paths are wide, allowing for hand hold hiking (my favorite kind of hiking).  The area where we hiked had about 4 different paths to choose from. We hiked in a few miles and chose to come back a different way. For some reason this is more fun than you're average loop hike.

Please forgive the bad quality of this photo, but you get 'the picture' right? (I laughed at my own joke there)

You'll have to get used to this space being flooded with more 'we're-always-outside-in-green-with-blue-and-some-yellow' for the next few months. Having survived my first real hard core winter (Canada chuckles) I understand the need to take advantage of months with sunshine, above freezing temperatures and ice free paths.

We want to go camping this weekend so there will more of this kind of nonsense coming up. (Well that and Mexico we hope!)