04.14.03

720 Miles in 3 Days

Posted in Travels at 12:26 pm by Leopoldo

Friday evening I drove the three-hour drive from Portland to Seattle after work. I met up with Sara in Seattle tired but happy sometime around 10pm. We had dinner at a very nice restaurant atop Capitol Hill called The Rose Bud. The ambiance of the restaurant was superb and the food was quite good, though there was something about the mushroom dish that Sara ordered that quite disagreed with my palette. The waiter brought me a sample cup of a simply superb Chipotle corn soup. While sitting in the restaurant I was pleasantly surprised to see Ingy and Heather walk by on their way to visit another New Years friend, Lisa at a bar around the corner. We did not stay late though, as we had to get up early the next morning to go hiking.

We were on the road heading to Yakima at 6:30 on Saturday morning. At my aunt Lisa’s house in Snoqualmie we met up with Lisa, my Mom, her friend Marilyn, our friend Kate and later on with a co-worker of Lisa’s Amelie and her husband Stephen. The eight of us Caravanned across the pass and over the dessert to a nature area just north of Yakima. There we found our hike: Umtanum Trail, otherwise known by the locals as ‘Rattlesnake Alley’. As promised by our hiking books the trail delivered beautiful wild flowers, grand canyon landscapes, lots of sagebrush, a great creek and plenty of birds. What the books did not mention and I was delighted to see was abundant Beaver sign, and with that I mean whole bunches of freshly downed trees. The drive out and the drive back were both through torrential rain, though there were was only a drop or two on the hike itself. No rattlesnakes were spotted, which so far as I am concerned was all for the best. The hike totaled just over six miles (Stephen had a GPS device with him), which were mostly mild, but had some very rough spots as we hiked up steep embankments, hugged the cliff side on slide areas or balanced our way across talus slopes. There was one hard fall as a whole set of rocks gave way as my mother crossed one of the talus slopes, but thankfully bumps, bruises and some scrapped skin was all the damaged suffered.

The plan was to find some good authentic Mexican food for a post hike lunch in the town of El Conquistador turned out to be pretty bad industrial Mexican food. I don’t think anyone was eager to stand up and go somewhere else after being served chips and shown a menu, though after eating my enchiladas I wished I had. After dinner we visited Hyatt Vineyards where the owner was very gracious in letting us sample his fine red wines. Most of the party was very impressed by the selection. I was only really interested in his Syrah and the Reserve Chardonnay.

After the hike we drove back across the pass in a rain fall so heavy it was hard to see more than a car ahead. Tired and sore Sara and I took a few minutes to rest and watch the new Matrix Reloaded trailer before heading out to a birthday party at the house of a friend of hers. I was not much good at the party, being an introvert I quickly looked for a corner seat where I could hide. Tired as I was the mass of people I did not know proved too much for me so we left early.

Sunday was a mellower kind of a day. Sara and I had brunch at a restaurant on First Hill then downloaded pictures from her camera taken on our visit to New York (the pictures should be posted to the gallery soon). I visited my grandfather who is recovering from open heart surgery in the afternoon. In the evening I had dinner with Sara and her roommates who made a delicious pasta with sauce made from vegetables picked that afternoon out of their garden. The conversation somehow steered towards Devo (which I found out comes from one of the band-members belief that humans were de-evolving) and The Church of the SubGenius.

On the drive to Seattle I listened to two volumes of the Living in Oblivion series. Between the drive out to Yakima, around town and the drive back I almost finished off the series as well as some good Celtic music. Driving back to Portland was once again through poring rain. It was on the drive back that I remembered I had zeroed out my odometer as I departed. As I pulled into the garage the car’s odometer showed I had driven just over 720 miles in 3 days.

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