Umtanum Creek October 11, 2013

Untanum Creek Canyon
between Ellensburg and Yakima
October 11, 2013

We took a Friday off to go desert hiking.  This is a lovely creek that feeds into the Yakima River.  They say you can see lots of wildlife here, but we only saw a snake, a few birds, and the bushy tail of something darting into the bushes.  We also saw a very cool beaver dam as well as remains of several others.

Mother's Day 2013

May 12, 2013
Mother's Day
Westburg Trail

For Mother's Day, we took a hike on the dry side of the Cascades, in the desert out from Ellensburg.  In a wildlife preserve, it's a four-mile out and back trail up a canyon to the ridge line. It's 1800 feet gain, and there was a fair amount of complaining in the first mile, but then the kids settled down.  It was pretty much up the whole way, with a couple pretty steep stretches.  Silas is just awesome  - not even 4 years old and made it the whole way.


  It was supposed to rain in Seattle, but hasn't, but we did get rain for about 30 miles around the pass. No rain where we were hiking, but pleasently overcast so we're less sunburned and it wasn't too hot.  Just a perfect day for hiking.


The wildflowers were amazing.  The first photo is from near a cairn at the top the ridge.  There were tons of wildflowers.

The second is walking on the ridge, with great views of the Yakima Valley.


The third photo is of a caterpillar nest.  We saw quite a few of the these caterpillars attacking the poor blooming shrubs.  Not sure what they are, but they sure were cool to look at.


 I need to learn the names of the desert wildflowers.  There were flowers of every color, and from the ridge you could see some sides of the canyon that looked like they were snowed on because of the complete coverage of the white flowers.  At one point, we could see white, 2 shades of yellow, orange, red, pink and purple flowers.

Winter Break 2012 X Country Skiing in the Methow

 Skiing in the Methow
Christmas 2012

With my family, my sister's family and my Mom.  Thanks to Mom, Noell, Gary, Elliott, Winnie, and Hugh for making this such a great trip.


The first photo is one afternoon Noell, Mike and I went skiing, and the sun briefly came out!  The conditions and weather were wonderful all week.


Silas and his cousin Hugh had lots of fun in the snow.
































My mom enjoyed snow shoeing.  We broke trail (with Mike) one afternoon around the lake outside our cabin.  Really beautiful.










We also did some sledding and general goofing off.