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.

Camping and marriage

You know, a pleasant surprise? Like buying a second hand book and finding someone left a 20 dollar note inside, a forgotten bookmark maybe. Paying for economy, getting the bump up to business class. Waking up and it's a Saturday not a work day. Buying one and getting a whole other one for free, unexpectedly!

I don't really know how this feels, but I can tell you about the most pleasant of surprises. Marrying this handsome guy, discovering how much you both love camping AFTER the wedding.
Ben and I met in Vietnam, we didn't do outdoorsy things there, we lived in South Africa together briefly, did a few more outdoorsy things but not really. Spent a year in a long distance engagement, so, as you can imagine, not much outdoors action going on there.
Till we get married, we survive the wild Northwestern never ending winter, finding a passionate love for being outside, being outside together, and more recently camping.
Ben didn't know marrying me that I'd happily deal with sleeping on the ground, brave outhouses, smell like mosquito repellant and miss a shower here and there for the pure joy of camping. We freaking love it!


A most happy surprise we have been to each other.

This is us camping rustic style in Big Meadow Lake over the weekend.

How cool are our orange chairs? Ben won them in an office draw a day before our camping trip. So bright and kind of tacky, I love them!