Month: July 2014

Crystal Mt. – Saturday July 12, 2014

Today is our first outing since we retired a week ago.  We got here at 11:45 trying to get out of the heat wave at home.  It is going to be 85 – 90 for the next week. It should be 75 – 80 here.  Hank and I got out for a 3 mile walk this afternoon.

It did seem very strange to leave home and not know when we would be back.  The next time we have to be someplace is July 23 when we see “The Book of Mormon”, it’s just weird not having every day and minute scheduled. Also not having to worry about work projects I should be working on for next week or year end Board Meeting.
Camp site picture.
Do you see the flamingos in the front window?  These are new traveling companions, Jean got them as a retirement gift. The ground was to hard to stick them into the ground.
I have a picture of the flamingo we left at home to watch after the house however my phone WordPress program will not let me add the picture.  I will try later.

Paradise, Mt. Rainier Natl Park – Monday July 7 – 10, 2014

I started this blog so the kids could keep track of us when we were on vacation.  As of last Thursday both Jean and I are on the great vacation as in retirement.  I have also focused on posting pictures of each campsite we have visited.  This is our first retirement campsite.

Dean gave us 4 days and 3 nights at Paradise Inn at Mt. Rainier and we had a great time.  I was up each morning and hiked up the hill with a goal of getting to Panorama Point above Paradise, or at least get close.  One of the biggest challenges is the snow has hung on late this year.  The trail was 98% snow covered on Tuesday morning and about 92% snow and ice this morning.  Walking on the ice and snow takes a lot more energy and I’m not in the best of shape.  This morning I left at 5:30 a.m. and got to Panorama Point at 7:45 a.m, back to the lodge at 9:45 a.m.   I was alone on the mountain until I started back. I could see people coming up the trail at 7:00 however they did not catch me until I was on the way back.

I am still working at how to add hiking maps into this blog from my new InReach Explorer.

Here is Monday’s hike from the InReach website and in Topo
Wednesday Topo view:
The trail “Y’s” a short way up the hill and on Wednesday I tried the right side of the Skyline trail, however it was snow covered and it started across a steep open face.  I decided it was best to turn back and go the safer route.

Remember this is a satellite photo from 2012 and this year 95% of the ground north of Paradise (above in the picture) is white in snow.

Today’s topo shows the trail all the way to Panorama Point.
This is today in an aerial format:

Finally this is Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with the GPS data downloaded from Delorme and put into Google Earth map.

Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:

My InReach is set to transmit my location every 10 minutes to the satellite and store inside the units memory my location every minute.  I connect the InReach to my laptop to get the 1 minute locations posted into the Delorme website.

Jean got to sleep in each morning and we spend most of the day reading and looking around Paradise.  In the evening we spent some time looking through telescopes the park had set up at the visitor’s center with two very knowledgeable astronomers.  One afternoon they set up a telescope and we got to look at sun spots on the sun, that was really cool.  I did get a few pictures over the three hikes, 517.

We ate most of our meals in the Paradise Inn restaurant so I had to include this picture for Tanya.

 

Home – Sunday July 6, 2014

I am trying a new blogging program on my iPad to see how well it will work for off line blogging.

The first line was on line this is off line and published later.

This is BLOGSY and it has a nice photo drag and drop function. When traveling and off line I will still need to get a application to resize campsite pictures I take with this iPad. The picture is of Brian during a play last winter.

This picture is one I resized on the ipad, of course I cannot figure out how to find the true file size. I guess I’ll publish the post and read the file size from my windows desk top.
Think I will give this a try.

 

Home – Saturday July 4, 2014

First – Happy Birthday to Tanya

According to Tanya she is reaching her mid-thirty’s today.  We are having great weather here so she decided to spend her birthday in Uganda.  Left last Saturday and hopefully she will have her luggage today.

This is the first day for sandals in 2014.  I usually start wearing sandals on the Thursday before Memorial Day when we are heading south for our two week vacation at Zion and southern Utah/Nevada/Arizona etc.

This year sandals days started yesterday July 3rd the first day of my retirement.  The official retirement countdown is Jean 0 – Harry 0.

Here we go ——-