Andrea's adventures on the trail...
Another beautiful yoga + hike retreat at the Crystal Mountain ski resort 🙂 It was hot, but so clear and beautiful! Nothing is better than a couple of hours of yoga on the platform at the top of Crystal after riding the gondola up, then lunch and hiking back down!!
I know, I know… more photos of Mt. Rainier! I can’t help myself, I love it up here so much. I don’t care for crowds and I prefer to hike alone or with just 1 or 2 other people. The best way to do this is to get up at 5 a.m. on a weekday and head out, with my goal being boots on trail by 7 a.m. I had a wonderful, early, human-free hike out to Skyscraper Pass from Sunrise. Skyscraper is my favorite place in the whole park to just sit quietly and take it all in. I’ve been known to brew up a pot of tea and sit and read here for hours. I was hoping for mountain goats, but instead I was kept company by 7 marmots along the trail, one who decided to keep me company at the pass for quite a while.
So, yes, more Rainier photos. This is my happy place, where my heart is full and I’m content to just be in the present moment.
I had a lovely visit with friends in Packwood this week. We hiked to Silver Falls in Mt. Rainier National Park, and the next day took the kayaks to Walupt Lake for a lovely paddle and picnic lunch. Good good times! I can’t say enough how much I love my Point 65 North modular kayaks because they are ridiculously easy to load and unload – I can fit 2 full kayaks in the back of my Rav4 without having to lift them up onto a roof rack, which would never happen with my shoulder issues. Life is good….
One of the days we spent in the Scotland Highlands in May was a trip to the Isles of Mull and Iona, in the Inner Hebrides. It was a long day, a 1 hour car ride from our Airbnb, 1 hour ferry, 1.5 hour bus ride across the Isle of Mull (one lane road with turnouts, kinda fun in a huge double-decker bus!), and another short ferry across to the Isle of Iona – then everything in reverse. But the weather was wonderful, the scenery was amazing, and it was well worth every minute of the trip.
The final destination was the Abbey of Iona, which has been beautifully restored. It’s believed that the Book Of Kells (now in the Trinity College Library in Dublin, Ireland) might have been originally produced here close to the year 800. It was also in Fionnphort, Isle of Mull, that I took a rather embarrassing tumble in a pile of seaweed and was soaked from the waist down – luckily I dried out in the sunshine in time for the bus ride back across the island! Mull is known for its pink granite, and Iona is known for beautiful light green marble.
We spent a week exploring and hiking around the Glencoe area of Scotland in May. This is one of those places where photos don’t come close to doing justice to the beauty of the area. We were incredibly fortunate to have a streak of warm and sunny weather while there, and we made full use of it! We stayed in a small town south of Fort William called Ballachulish, which used to be the site of an old slate quarry. From here, it’s a short 15 minute drive to the gorgeous Glencoe Valley area, with stops everywhere for exploring and hiking. It’s a very desolate-looking area, in a very beautiful and surreal way. It’s either rocky or boggy, with not much else for miles and miles. It’s also close to the Inner Hebrides Islands along the coast of Scotland. Some day I’ll go back here, there is still a lot more exploring to be done here!
My family and I had a fantastic 3-week trip to Ireland and Scotland in May. Newgrange (Brú na Bóinne) isn’t a hike per se, but it’s one of my favorite places in all of Ireland and I wanted to share it here. It’s a passage tomb/mound built around 3200 BC. The exterior has been rebuilt, but the interior is still in perfect condition and has never been rebuilt or repaired, still watertight. No photos are allowed inside, but I encourage people to look online for photos of the interior. On the winter solstice sunlight shines into the interior for about 15-20 minutes; this is the only time of year there is natural light inside. Going inside is by tour only, from the excellent visitor center nearby.
This place gives us all goosebumps, in a very good and amazing way. It is older than Stonehenge or the pyramids of Giza. To be able to stand inside of thousands of years of history is very humbling and awesome. We love this place so much that my daughters and I all have a triskelion tattoo inspired by the swirls that are carved on the entry stone of Newgrange. If you ever get to Ireland, this is the ONE place I always suggest to people. The final photo is of Knowth, another nearby mound with excellent rock carvings, but not accessible on the inside to the public.
Every once in a while we get an amazing few days of weather in early spring, and I took full advantage of that last weekend, hitched up my Hiker trailer (www.hikertrailers.com), and headed to Kalaloch Campground in Olympic National Park on the Washington Coast. I managed to get one of the best sites in the entire campground with a perfect view. To be able to wander the beaches in March barefoot, in shorts and a tank top, is such a treat and I loved every minute of it.
After getting set up at the campground, I headed north to Ruby Beach for the afternoon. Ruby is by far my favorite beach on the Washington Coastline. I spent all afternoon walking miles barefoot in the sand and soaking up the sunshine. Back to Kalaloch campground for dinner and watching the sunset from my incredible campsite before snuggling into my trailer for a wonderful night’s sleep.
The next morning after a refreshing sleep, I walked Kalaloch beach, found an amazing huge driftwood log, and did some yoga to start my day. What a wonderfully restorative, peaceful, beautiful trip 🙂
It IS possible to work on a tan in January in Washington State… you just have to hit the mountains on a bluebird day, wear a tank top, bring an air mattress and a picnic lunch, and enjoy the day!!! This was above Paradise at Mt. Rainier this past weekend.
Not only was John Muir an incredible naturalist, he was also a wonderful writer. I have one of his most famous quotes tattooed around my ankle: “The mountains are calling and I must go.”
Here’s another one that calls me to the mountains time and time again…
“SAUNTER”
“I don’t like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not hike! Do you know the origin of that word ‘saunter?’ It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.” – John Muir
There’s a saying in Washington, “We don’t tan, we rust.” I certainly feel like that often, but sometimes we get lucky and have a few glorious winter days where it’s much warmer up on Mt. Rainier than it is in the lowlands. In wintertime, I live for those weather inversions! THIS is how I like to get a winter tan, and get a little bit of vitamin D to get through these short winter days 🙂 I only wish I’d had shorts on.
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