So, waaaaaaaay back in 2006, lil' sis came up for a weekend o' fun. The weather behaved, which was really nice. Good thing she wasn't planning to come this month. (Sheesh! Just when you thought the snow/icepocali were done, another few inches gets dumped overnight....) Anyway, she flew in on a Thursday night and fortunately I was able to take that Friday off to spend more time with her.
We first headed down to Pike Place Market in what seemed like a burgeoning trend, involving going to the market to buy yummy food to make for dinner later in the evening. While there we noticed a film crew surrounding a woman (we don't know who she is) and Andy Paige, who my sister recognized from TV. Apparently the latter is a makeup artist to the stars. After watching them film the flying fish at the south end of the market, we moved on. 
Next stop was the Seattle Public Library. Since en works part-time at an architecture firm, she just HAD to stop by (if for no other reason than to hold all the architects at bay when she got back). We headed in and noticed that they were cleaning the windows that day. The library was beautiful as usual. 
After passing by the Seattle Art Museum, still under construction (not much longer now though!), we passed through the market again and picked up some salmon, assorted fruits and veggies, a pretty bouquet of flowers, and other goodies. Then it was on up to picturesque Kerry Park. 
Unfortunately Mt. Rainier wasn't showing her pretty head that day. Then it was on back home to prepare our dinner and chow down. Thanks to some tips from dad on how to cook the salmon, we had a delicious meal. Since M&K were eating dinner at the same time, we felt very domestic and even documented it for posterity.
The next day dawned beautiful and sunny, so we took the opportunity to get up into the North Cascades for some prime larch viewing. After living here for 6 years and never seeing a larch in fall color, I decided it was time to make a pilgrimage. (Western larches are deciduous conifers - their needles turn yellow and fall off every year.) 
We drove up to highway 20 and passed through the North Cascades - which were absolutely spectacular. I've never driven that road when the sky has been clear - and it was just amazing. Our destination was the Maple Pass loop and Lake Ann. Due to the length of the drive to get there, we only had time to hike to the lake and back.
Luckily we were still rewarded with some beautiful yellow larches, as well as other vibrant fall foliage. The ground at the lake was frozen and the there was extensive frost on everything around. We found a sunny rock to eat our lunch and then headed back down, but not before crossing the creek to get close to a larch tree and then investigating the extent of a pond's frozenness 
(i.e. it took a lot of rocks to break the ice). Sunset on the drive back was gorgeous and I stopped a few times to capture the mountains in the afternoon light (since I was driving I had the power to stop, even if en didn't want to get out of the car :) 
On Sunday, we headed north again, but this time to a corn maze (inspired by a sign we'd seen the previous day). The maze was pretty neat, but we learned a few important corn-maze lessons:1. If you're going to go to a corn maze, go on the first weekend it's open. If you go after that, all the kids obsessed with finding the route to the finish will break through the walls of the maze and make shortcuts. These will soon be indistinguishable from the original path.
2. Corn mazes are muddy. Wear appropriate footwear.
3. We were probably the only two people in there trying to find our way through the maze without using the shortcuts
4. When en gets hungry and decides it's time to go, all bets are off and all shortcuts will be used to find the way out.
So back it was to Seattle for a little more time together, downloading pictures, and hanging out. All in all it was a great weekend and I sure hope she comes to visit again (hint, hint.) :)
The rest of the pictures can be found here.
No comments:
Post a Comment