Workshop Night

We got an awesome cloudy rainy Saturday to relax in this weekend. To avoid binge watching and napping for the entire day we schlepped ourselves over to Joshua's work to have a workshop night. We ate thai food in the machine shop, picked a bunch of blackberries near the parking lot, and tinkered with our hobbies until midnight, and of course stopped on the way home to get min chocolate chip ice cream.

 

Joshua worked on his machine hobby (which happens to also be his job)

 

 

& I worked on my leather hobby without having to worry about

all my banging bothering everyone in our building.

 

It was a fabulous, productive evening where both of our creative juices felt tended to :)

Mountain Peaks for Days

 

This Saturday we drove up to North Cascades National Park. We would have loved to snag a coveted backpacking permit but, as we suspected, they were gone since Thursday. That meant the lovely 12 miler was gonna be a day hike. It actually was quite an easy hike and even the parking lot starts off with a great view.

 

We got up there early had a delicious omelet breakfast at a cute diner near the park entrance and then started up the Cascade Pass Trail. It has about 30 switchbacks which then open up into some fantastic delicious mountain views as we rounded around to get to the view of the pass. That was about 3.7 miles in.

 

Then we veered off to the left and hiked the Sahale Arm Trail. On the way we walked the ridge surrounding Doubtful Lake, so beautifully blue, and all the waterfalls feeding it. Some parts got pretty steep and the climb to the top was more of a scramble than trail. The hike can go all the way to the top of the peak so you can look over it, but it requires some climbing gear so we stopped when we got to the snowfields. We probably hiked to about 1600ish feet.

The best part was that the layers of mountains peaked out the higher up we climbed. Every time we thought that was all the mountain peaks another range would slowly poke up. Mt. Baker even managed to squeeze between some other peaks so we could see it. The Hidden Lake Hike we did last year felt like this one too but no where near as many peaks and constantly increasing views.

The day started out quite cloudy but as we ate our chili mac :) on top of our peak the sun started to push through the clouds and we got a sunny, & hot, hike back down. We spent the whole day up their wandering around dipping our fingers in alpine lake water, grabbing handfuls of snow, and saying 'wow.' It was exactly the hike we wanted that weekend, next up snagging one of those overnight passes!

 

it doesn't look steep or far but we hiked up to that very last large snow patch at the top

 

Pioneer Square Wandering

Saturday we ventured near downtown to buy supplies for a project we're working on. But on the way home traffic got bad and we got hungry so we parked along the water and ended up spending the day wandering around Pioneer Square.

It was one of those great fall days where we trudged through giant leaf piles, spent the afternoon drinking beer and talking in a small pub, stopping through our favorite toy store, and finally getting dinner at Bar Sajor which is an amazing restaurant I've been telling him about for months.

We had super delicious cocktails, pickled beets with thin sliced of beef, local mushrooms, and we ventured into dessert with a tasty apple pie concoction.

 

On Saturday we'd only planned the store trip but it ended up becoming a day we'd been wanting to do for awhile, we even happened upon the Sounder's game tailgate for some live music and watched them parade to the stadium.

Our friends went and made it even better by calling us up after their day and showing us a really cute new bar where we hung out til midnight and fit in a game of euchre and biked home.

he found what he wants for Christmas

Apple Picking!!!

 

 

 This Saturday we soaked up a bunch of gorgeous October sunshine on the Jones Orchard. My family used to go apple picking and we'd climb trees, shine apples on our jeans, sample way too many apples one bite each, and then go home and make applesauce.

The farm was beautiful that day with lots of light filtering through creating
textures and mountains slowly revealing themselves through the morning fog.

 I'm camouflaged :)

I've been wanting to share this experience with Joshua for awhile. Washington grows a lot of apples but most don't let you pick them (they actually want to use it as a business, pssh) But at a friend's recommendation we headed to this one. They had over 12 varieties of apples, a few Asian pears and pumpkins. We wanted to can apple butter again this year so mostly we loaded up on apples. Since apple picking involves taste testing Joshua was a big fan!

We finished our trip off with apple cider while sitting on the hayride's steps.

 

 

Then Sunday we set to work canning our apple butter. Something makes it even cooler when you know you picked the apples too! Mmmm apple butter makes fall so delicious.

Finally made it to the Needle

 

So far since living in Seattle we've kind of avoided the Space Needle. We didn't really have a huge desire to hurry to get to the top. We knew when someone visited us the occasion would arise naturally. This was that time. We finally went up...

It was actually more fun than the two of us had anticipated it would be. There were tons of people and shops around the needle which just created a fun lively atmosphere. Luckily it was a clear day and we could see some very pretty views from up top. (we had dinner there so the viewing area above was free)

Since we had dinner there as the sun was setting we took a quick look back from the observation deck before we left to check out the city lights. Looking back at the needle as we walked to the car it looked pretty majestic too. I think I like it more now :)

 

O and the restaurant rotates! It took me awhile to get used to it actually. I remember my mom saying when her and my dad went to the rotating restaurant in Cincinnati people would leave things on the edge to rotate back to it so we put our wine cork on the edge and happily we made it back around to it and someone added a "hello"!! Have to say it kind of made my night we found it again. As we spun we started coming across other people leaving things like coasters, tic tacs and someone put another cork on next to ours. I think it's pretty fun! It takes about 45 minutes to go around, we did 2 rotations.

It was fun to look at our city from a vantage point we haven't been to yet.

 

College Friends Visit Pt. 2

 

We were so excited they were coming to visit because we knew it would be relaxed and easy going while still being able to fit in a lot of food and running around. Those are our favorite visitors and they were great. It was so fun to just hang out with them.

Saturday we went kayaking and headed to Fremont Brewery. We had all gotten a beer and as we're sitting there the rotating tap was emptied and lavender grapefruit IPA replaced it so naturally we had to all another to give that one a try. Decidedly that place is dangerous you could sit around all day just waiting for another one to run out to try their next new experiment.

 

 

We walked around Gasworks park a bit, headed to Ballard for some milkshakes! and to see the fish in the lock. The locks were full of fish!

 

Then off to sushi for dinner and hot cakes for dessert (melted chocolate heaven)

Monday they headed off on their own and we grabbed pizza for dinner and checked out the Fremont Troll, lastly finishing off with a night view of the city from Gasworks. O and of course we watched Perfect Pitch in the living room that night.

4:30am the next day we whisked them off to the airport.

So so good to see them and to run around Seattle with them. They made us miss home though...

Pt 1 of visit