Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 5)

I just got home from solo backpacking a 37-mile stretch of the Wonderland Trail on the west side of Mt. Rainier. What a stunning way to spend 4 days with just me, my boots, backpack, tent, and time with Mother Nature. My full post with more photos and day-to-day trail talk is HERE ~ please gather up your favorite beverage and wander some incredible scenery with me.

Let the packing begin!!! I head out on Wednesday for 55-60 miles of the Wonderland Trail around Mt. Rainier/Tahoma. I’m not quite sure where I’ll be exiting yet, depending on if I can add one last night when I go to pick up my permit on Tuesday morning.

This is what 9 days of backpacking food looks like for me (7 or 8 days on the trail, plus an extra day’s worth just in case). I really REALLY struggle to eat out on the trail. My stomach just says “NO.”

So I’m changing it up a bit this time, only plan on heating water once a day to make a dehydrated dinner each night at camp. The rest of the day ~~ breakfast, lunch, and snacks along the way ~~ will be easy-to-eat bars, nuts, and dried fruits so that I can basically nibble a bit at a time throughout the day instead of trying to force myself to eat breakfast and lunch. Hopefully that will help with keeping my energy up.

An absolutely lovely, squishy, wet wander through the woods this morning with a good friend. Only found 1 mushroom, but we spent a long time taking in all the teensy details that can only be seen by really slowing down, pausing, and noticing. The mosses and fungi and lichen are a world unto themselves – an entire universe on a single tree stump. It’s so so SO important to take the time to slow down and just pay attention

(If anyone is interested in my new mindfulness with nature journal about this exact thing, here’s more information about it!)

I spent quite a while looking at the dazzling array of colors, textures, and life-forms on an area of an old stump about the size of a hardcover book. So good to pause, be still, and simply notice.

It is especially amazing being able to share time like this with someone who gets just as geeked-out as I do about the small miracles happening all around us

Living in Western Washington State means having very little daylight during wintertime, which is compounded by the winter climate of rain, gray, gloom, and dark. I call it “The Dark Season.”

I’ve struggled with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) for 30+ years. I’m SOLAR POWERED, I need sunlight and outdoor activity to feel good, and I just don’t get that for half of my life. I wrote an article on my yoga blog about what it feels like to live with SAD for 6 months out of every 12.

I’m finally choosing to not be miserable every winter, and will be spending part of every Dark Season in a sunnier location from now on. Not just because it’s fun to be out in the sunshine, but for my physical and mental health and well-being. This year I’m spending 6 weeks in southern Utah in Nov/Dec, and have been here for 6 days thus far. The difference in how I feel between here and Washington State is incredible, and I’ve been journaling about my experience.

Since BluesBoots is about spending time in the great outdoors with Mother Nature, I think this is an appropriate place to share my winter sunshine experience.

I’m fortunate that 2 of my 3 part time jobs are online and portable. Spending 6 weeks in the St. George, Utah, area means I can still work while here, but also get daily doses of sunshine and outdoor activity. I teach and practice yoga, and am a Mindful Outdoor Guide, so I’m very in tune with what my body and mind are doing along with the seasons and outdoor conditions.

Things I’ve noticed in the past 6 days being in sunny Southern Utah instead of Washington State:

· I don’t need to have lights on in the house all day long even during daylight hours. Bright natural light v. electric light all day – big difference!

· I have so much more energy physically – outdoors daily for several hours in the form of hiking and biking.

· I feel very alert mentally, not like a hibernating animal.

· My mood is soooo good, even though I miss my family and friends at home.

· I’m waking up to natural light in the morning, not an alarm clock in the dark. My waking up experience is so much better, I’m ready for every day instead of having to drag myself out of bed.

· I’m not at all sleepy in the afternoons. At home in WA in winter I feel like someone has drugged me to the point that I literally can’t make it through a day without 1 to 2 naps. (I’ve fallen asleep with my face on my keyboard before, not pleasant)

· I’m naturally sleeping about 7.5 – 8 hours a day, not 10+. That means I have more time to do things during the day, hooray!

· I’m not freezing cold and fighting to stay warm all winter. I don’t need to wear 4 layers of clothes and a wool hat *inside* my house because I run so much colder than the rest of my family in wintertime.

· I’m NOT CRAVING SUGAR – which is a huge thing for me. In winter all I want is sugar and chocolate, to an obsessive degree, for that serotonin hit that I don’t get in wintertime. I gain weight every winter. Not craving sugar and being so much more active daily will hopefully stave off my yearly winter weight gain.

· I’m not having to force myself to exercise like I do at home. I know it’s good for me but in winter it’s like torture making my body move when all it wants to do is crawl into bed. Here in the sun I’m loving being active, it feels wonderful.

· I’m not feeling the need to snack all day long, I’m eating much less than I would be at home, but have so much more energy. It’s easier for me to eat healthy. Part of that is how I feel, and part is that I’m on my own these weeks without family in the house for now, so all of their snacky foods aren’t available to me because I’m not buying any for myself.

· It’s amazing to be able to wear normal clothes and not have to bundle and layer indoors like I do at home, where I feel like I’m freezing my arse off for 6 months of every 12, even though my thermostat here is set to almost the same temp as we have it at home.

· Even though it’s not warm here by any means, mid-50s F during the day, just the sun exposure itself is making a huge impact on how cold/not cold I feel.

Summary: For me in winter in WA, sleep and cold go hand in hand. When I’m cold (which is pretty much 50% of my life) I get painfully sleepy, and vice versa. Here with daily sun exposure I don’t feel cold indoors, I’m awake and alert throughout the day without an afternoon slump, I’m not craving sugar, my mood is exponentially better even though I miss my family, and I have more energy than I know what to do with.

I’m calling it a success. Thanks for letting me share.

Every year in autumn I like to take a lesson from Mother Nature as leaves are changing color and falling. What am I holding onto that I should let go of? What is no longer serving me?

I wrote THIS ARTICLE several years ago about things that can clutter up our lives and our minds. I also use some of these ideas in my yoga classes during this season. As I’m currently in training to become certified as a Kripalu Mindful Outdoor Guide, these lessons apply even more!

While you’re there, feel free to visit some of the other articles on my yoga blog as well!

What are you holding onto that you can let go of?

Phew!!! Took me days to sort through, label, and upload hundreds of photos, but it’s READY!

I spent an incredible month exploring Colorado and Utah, living in my little teardrop trailer, hiking, scrambling, and soaking in all the good things and sunshine this area has to offer.

These photos are just a tiny sampling to whet your appetite for more… visit the entire trip HERE. If you ever get the chance to visit, just GO!

83 trail miles hiked
6 National Parks
4 National Monuments
2 State Parks
2 other public land areas
3900 driving miles
2 exhausted feet
1 happy Andrea

(And another trip to Utah? Yep! In November I spent 5 weeks in the St. George, UT, area for even more sunshine)

There hasn’t been much new to add… it’s been a dismal, long, dark, cold, wet winter season here in the PNW. Unfortunately, that means I haven’t been able to be outside and as active as I’d like to be.

I also had foot surgery in March for a chronic problem, so my trail time has been limited while rehabbing that. Thank goodness for yoga, it’s the only thing that has consistently carried me through this winter!!!

I was able to re-work my entire postcard wall early this spring – – seeing all of the places I’ve been to helps me think of wonderful past trip memories and scheme and plan new ones. (Our reptile enclosures are here too, they add some brightness during wintertime). I’ll be heading back to Utah this fall, with several stops in Western Colorado as well.

October is a wonderful time to visit Utah, and I just returned from a 3-week hiking trip to Utah. Take your pick between scenic drives, hikes, slot canyons, or ziplines. It was all amazing and I wish I could go back RIGHT NOW!!

I visited: Craters of the Moon | Antelope Island | Bryce Canyon NP  |  Grand Staircase-Escalante NM  |  Hwy 12 Scenic Byway  |  Capitol Reef NP  |  Little Wildhorse Canyon  |  Goblin Valley  |  Canyonlands NP Needles District  |  Dead Horse Point State Park  |  Arches National Park  |  Canyonlands NP Island in the Sky District 

Links to videos are included in many sections. Keep in mind I just got a GoPro and had no idea how to use it well, so it’s a bit bouncy, but so is life!!!

I have to say here… if it weren’t for YOGA I wouldn’t be able to do these kinds of things. I have so many failed, operated on, and rehabbed body parts ~ yoga is why I can scramble through slot canyons and hike and explore the way I do.

Click HERE to see the whole trip!

NOTES:

=> Read the descriptions of the videos for explanations

=> You can speed the videos up in the Settings (gear-shaped thing-y on the bottom right, then choose playback speed) if you want to hear me talk like a chipmunk.

=> Don’t watch the zipline video if you get dizzy, I flip upside down a few times – weeeee!!!! .

=> Don’t watch Canyonlands – The Joint if you have claustrophobia.

VIDEOS HERE

Death Valley National Park stole my heart! I never imagined that more than 3,000,000 desolate acres could be so beautiful and amazing. Our timing was perfect in February, with cold mornings but wonderful afternoon temperatures and a lot of sunshine. In summer the heat is brutal, so late winter/early spring is a perfect time to visit.

We love scrambling through canyons, so our 2 choices for this trip were Mosaic Canyon and Desolation Canyon. We also walked miles in Badwater Basin, drove the scenic Artist’s Palette Drive, and visited the Devil’s Golf Course. So much to see and do here, and this is a park I will definitely get back to some day!

Mosaic Canyon was our first hike, with 2 roadblocks of a boulder jam and a dry falls that we knew ahead of time how to get past thanks to information from the Death Valley NPS website. In this canyon the rock is incredibly slick, the walls have been scoured smooth by millennia of flash floods. If you take the time to stop and look around, you’ll see many different rock colors that are beautiful!

Zabriskie Point is definitely worth a 10-minute drive to get to a viewpoint above the valley floor.

Badwater Basin is the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level. The ground looks like snow, but it’s a huge salt flat that goes for miles and miles, and is wonderful to walk around on. Walking a few miles out into the basin helps to give perspective on how huge this valley really is. There is a sign on the cliff above the parking area that is sea level, helps put things into perspective.

Artist’s Palette Scenic Drive showcases beautiful colored soils and rocks. Mother Nature truly is an artist, and she shows it off here. This is a one-way drive, take your time and take it all in.

Desolation Canyon is aptly named, and a beautiful hike that involves scrambling up two 6-8 foot walls that are easy enough to maneuver, especially with help from a hiking partner. Once you get to the ridge up top, there are expansive views of the valley below, and you realize that you are literally standing right above the Artist’s Palette Scenic Drive. For being so desolate, this was a phenomenal canyon hike and one we would definitely recommend.

Natural Bridge is a great easy hike if heading far into rocky canyons is not your idea of fun. It’s easy and short, we saw many people with children on this hike and would suggest it for anyone. The most impressive dry fall we saw was just after the Natural Bridge – it goes to show the incredible power of water in the desert.

Devil’s Golf Course is named very well … these spikes of heaved soil and salt deposits are 1 to 2 feet high and as sharp as razors. A fall here would not be fun. It was surreal walking among these formations.

Lastly, I can’t finish without mentioning the local wild burros that greeted us early one morning as we were driving to the park 🙂

Overall, Death Valley was a huge YES for us, a place we will definitely spend more time exploring sometime in the future.