Bandera Mountain

Summer is in full force here in Seattle. 
Kate and I chose to brave temperatures in the upper 80's to 
hike Bandera Mountain on a gorgeous, clear Monday. 
I only have photos from my phone, so pardon the lack of quality. 

Once we reached the steep meadow area the bear grass was phenomenal. 

We also saw plenty of paintbrush, lupine, and many other 

wildflowers I don't know the names of. 

Rainier was beautiful and once we hit Little Bandera 

we could see more of the jagged Cascade profile that I love. 

We had a short snack break at the summit before heading down. 
The bugs were BAD. We borrowed DEET from the two other 
hikers we saw on the way up. Too bad I already had several bites 
including a horse fly bite on my knee swollen to half-dollar size. 

It was an excellent hike which I would totally do again. 
Thanks, Kate, for joining me! 
Next time, bug repellent. 

SF and Sonoma

I spent a few days down in San Francisco 

visiting my brother and Kara. 

It was great to spend time with them and to 

see some new things in the city. 

On the first day there my brother and I visited the Exploratorium. 
That place is amazing! Honestly it put my beloved Pacific Science Center 
to shame. I loved that there were so many different areas of science 
represented and everything was so interactive. It didn't feel like it was 
just for kids. I will definitely go back as there was so much to see. 

 Their apartment is just north of Golden Gate Park so we 

spent time exploring Stow Lake and climbed up Strawberry Hill. 

We saw a turtle laying eggs! 

 We also enjoyed lots of good food: tuna melts at Velo Rouge, 
poached eggs la mer for breakfast at Zazie, 
pastries and oatmeal at Cinderella Russian Bakery, 
and amazing vegan Mexican food at Gracias Madre.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was driving up to Twin Peaks. 

It was a gorgeous evening for a 360 degree view of the city. 

Plus it was sunset. Talk about perfect. 

It was also really windy as you can see in the photos of us. 

Another favorite part of the trip was driving up to Sonoma 
with my brother. These photos were taken at Joseph Swan Vineyards 
where we had an appointment and were the only ones there. 
The setting was gorgeous and it was very casual. 
We also went to two tasting rooms in downtown Sonoma. 
Westwood Winery has a quaint little outside patio down an alley. 
The guy working there let us try different grapes and had a lot of 
good information. He recommended we visit Kamen, which was 
trendier and had fancy water and snacks. I really enjoyed all three 
places and felt like we got a good variety. I also bought wine 
at all three and managed to fly home five bottle of red in my 
suitcase successfully. Whew! 

Thanks to Kara and Alex for letting me stay and showing me 
some fun new spots around the city! 

Bead Lake and wildfires

I spent this past weekend at Bead Lake with Joe and 

"a whole bunch of Muhms" (it was a family reunion). 

I took a lot of photos of Max...he is so adorable. 

I left my camera aside for most of the weekend since I was busy 

meeting lots of cousins and kids of cousins and enjoying getting 

to know more of Joe's family. On Saturday we did a "Run for the Berries" 

in a nearby town and one of Joe's cousins had shirts made for all of us. 

We had huckleberry pancakes after the race and then enjoyed lots of 

"dock time" laying in the sun, swimming, and throwing sticks in the 

water for the dogs. We also enjoyed lots of good food and plenty of walks. 

We drove home Sunday afternoon/evening and came across 
some crazy smoke from the wildfires and even a pyrocumulus cloud 
(which I learned about in this post from my favorite meteorologist) 
Joe took most of the driving photos since I was driving at that point. 

I can't believe July is almost over already... 

whidbey weekend

I spent the weekend of July 19-21 at the Whidbey house 

with my whole family. My brother and Kara flew up from SF 

and we celebrated my brother's birthday. 

On Saturday evening we took a picnic down to the beach 

and made a fire. We cooked beans in the can and make s'mores for dessert. 

It was such a beautiful evening with a waxing gibbous moon. 

On Sunday we took the boat out and did some crabbing. 

We anchored and enjoyed cocktails and snacks. 

We kept five huge Dungeness crabs for dinner. 

That night for dinner we had fresh crab and a blackberry pie for dessert. 

I made the pie with berries my mom and I picked earlier in the week. 

I also made blackberry gin fizzes from Smitten's recipe. Yum! 

It was so nice to have a weekend with the fam in such a relaxing place. 
This summer is turning out to be full of excellent weekends.