Phew! What a weekend! Just got back from a trip up to the North Cascades, which is a place I’m not all that familiar with. I’ve done the Diablo Lake tour back in the day but besides the crazy cool color of the lake, I don’t remember much else. Man, I’ve been missing out! What a gorgeous part of the state. (more…)
For those who know me well, packing light is not in my vocabulary. I’m the one at the airport shuffling things around because my XL suitcase is past the weight capacity :-/ Yes, an XL suitcase for Mexico. A place where you mostly live in a swim suit. Ugh. I’m bad.
So when the time came to pack for our three week trip to Eastern Europe, I decided to grab the bull by the horns so to speak and made the decision to only bring a carry-on + purse on our adventure. We’d be tackling so many cities and trains and buses, that the thought of lugging a 50+ pound suitcase around didn’t seem very, well, smart. Here’s my search criteria for finding the perfect bag:
I’ve spent the last month or so doing my research online and here were my top three options: (more…)
The mountains have been calling my name lately and decided it was time to pull the trigger and head to the baddest mountain around, Rainier. Many of the campgrounds located down there are first come, first serve which don’t always appeal to this planner gal so when I read that they have a handful that can be reserved, I jumped at the chance.
I’d been to Ohanapecosh Campground back in the day with my Mom and remember it being a pretty special place. We luckily got a site in A loop, which I think is the best one out of the bunch, especially if you could snag a river side one like we did. Nothing beat a cold beer and a dip in the river post hike! (more…)
Not sure what I was thinking when I decided to drag us up to the tippy top of this darn mountain! I’ve been following my fellow PNW outdoor adventures on a variety of social media platforms as of late and their pics had me super envious. Mountain tops, alpine lakes, rustic campsites surrounded by snow capped peaks…ugh! The wanderlust was BAD. I needed all of those things in my life STAT. I scoured the Washington Trails Association app and determined that this was best accomplished by hiking to Granite Mountain at sunset to capture the glory of it all.What I failed to realize was that this was an “expert” level hike with almost 4,000 feet in elevation gain. I’m not a numbers gal and didn’t realize that 1,000 feet per mile = hella steep. Like butt burning steep. Like so steep that I might fall off of this god damn mountain steep. The trail started like any other but we quickly realized that this was going to be a dozy.
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