Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Yesterday we hiked about two hours, up the Pacific Northewest Trail to Oyster Dome. It is a 6.5 mile hike in the Chuckanut mountains, south of Bellingham. About halfway up is a beautiful overlook of the Puget Sound, and when you get to the top, it is amazing! You can see the Olympic mountains and the San Juan islands from the top as well. It was so incredibly beautiful. This is scenery I am not used to experiencing, despite all of my traveling. We met a few people at the top, and hung out and took pictures. It was really, really beautiful. John and Andrew have done stuff like this before, but I never have, so the reward of hiking for so far, so steep, was the amazing scenery. It really did make it all worthwhile. Hiking is nothing to sneeze at by the way...us midwestern folk can't really appreciate the value of a ridiculous trail, and I know the one we took was nothing...but for the average person living in the flat, midwest cornfields, hiking through the mountains is intense! I absolutely loved it.

After the hike we went to a barbecue at a friend of Andrews. It was a lot of fun, we had some amazing discussions about relevant issues. It was really interesting to gain such a unique perspective because we definitely have a different outlook on life, but ultimately want the same things. It was a lot of fun.

Bellingham has an amazing spirit. It is such a unique little town, filled with people with such personalities. It is a place that has a Ride Your Bike to Work Day, and everyone participates. They have a Chalk Art Festival where everyone chalks up the down town area. They have a "Peace Arch" in a park, and schools called "Peaceful Happy Place" and a Peace Learning Center. There are amazing shops, venues, local museums, and performance venues. They have their own award-winning brewery and a really cool gourmet coffee shop. It is amazing, because there are no fast food/incorporated restaurants, stores, etc throughout the town, and nobody misses it at all. There is a street a little away from the historic downtown area that has all the fast food crammed into about three blocks, but nobody seems to use it. Andrew said from the high way, they don't even mention the fast food on the sign! All of it is local restaurants. The outdoor activities are numerous. A person can hike, ski, rock climb, kayak, mountaineer, you name it, all in Bellingham's backyard. It is such a beautiful and lovely place to spend time. I really, really like it here. It is a completely different ambiance from what we have out east.

Today we are supposedly going hiking up Mount Baker. Apparently this requires skis/snowshoes or something along those lines. It should be fascinating considering I have never in my life been on a pair of skis or snowshoes. I didn't even know people still used snowshoes unless they were herding reindeer in Greenland or something...guess that shows how much I know about real winters :-) So I am definitely looking forward to it! We have the best guide, Andrew is the greatest. I mean, most people have to pay good money for his wonderful service, and we are fortunate enough to call him a friend.

I'll keep you posted and upload pictures as we make them!

-Jx2