Falling Behind

My apologies for not keeping up with the blog for the last few days. This past week has been filled with plenty of events, all of which I'll share with you.

Last Monday and Tuesday, T and I visited Rasar State Park (near Sedro-Woolley) to camp and hike for two days. The park is located in the beautiful Skagit (rhymes with gadget) River valley, in the foothills of the Cascades. While there were only about 3 miles of hiking, we spent most of our time right along the Skagit River, which is a gorgeous blue hue year-round.

The dogs--surprise, surprise--loved swimming in the water, which, considering it was flowing right out of the mountains, was chilly even in the sunlight. While we relaxed on the beach, some guy talked our heads off about fly fishing. At first I wasn't interested, but he informed us that in the winter season, the Skagit River is one of the three best salmon fishing spots in the continental U.S. When I'm older, wealthier, and probably a little more boring, I might look into fly fishing. The dogs couldn't care less. T worked on a crossword puzzle. At least he had a pretty sweet beard.

On our 2nd day, we drove into Concrete, WA for some groceries. Personally, I enjoy driving into tiny little towns and seeing what kinds of gems and oddities exist. On this particular trip, we discovered that Concrete's high school is located directly next to its airport, its shopping district is about two blocks long, and that one of its educational building appeared to have been in a recent fire. Oh, and we had the worst coffee of our life in Concrete. Ironically, I'll probably remember that cup the most. Anyway, this photo says it all:

Our campsite was lovely. Really, one of the best sites we've ever had, though we haven't the same amount of experience as some of our family members, who spent the same couple of days hiking up the Enchantment Lakes area. Anyway, the site was great, but our neighbors...yikes. I guess if I were going camping with my two loud dogs that barked at absolutely anything passing by, and my three or four children who pretended to be Disney characters (specifically "The Lion King's" Naala and "The Little Mermaid's" Ariel) while shaking every single last leaf from the surrounding trees from 8 in the morning until 10 at night, well, I guess I would think twice about ruining everyone else's good time. Thank God we had a case of Blue Moon. (editor's note: Naala? That's a pretty obscure Disney character to be. I mean really, she didn't receive a handful of airtime from the Disney animators, although admittedly, I never saw the Lion King 2. I could be wrong. Regardless, I'd think kids would be more into, I don't know...ANY of the original characters? Maybe I'm too old to know enough about Disney's Generation Z characters. Who that clown on the right is, I have no clue...Pete?)

Here are a few more photos of our journey to the Skagit River valley:





Oh, and before I forget, on the morning of our return to Bellingham, we stopped at the place we saw on the way in. It's called Latte-Da. Oh man! We got one look at the sign from the highway and agreed immediately we had to stop here. I wish I would've gotten a shot of the actual building, but it's essentially a two-story victorian-style cottage planted in the center of a flat lot, and they serve coffee and breakfast goods off of the porch. The coffee was terrible, but it was such a peculiar place that I admit, I am a fan of Latte-Da.