Category: Crystal Mountain

Crystal Mt. – Thursday July 2, 2015

It is time to move on.
The construction activity is getting closer and closer to our motor home.  They are moving dirt into the parking lot within 40 feet of where we are camped and the dust they are creating is becoming a problem.   I thought I’d walk up to the construction shack and find out if they are working a 4 or 5 day work week.  Since no one from this project has actually walked down to this end of the parking lot I thought I’d also point out they were about to start dumping dirt into the stream which comes under and along the road.
The dump truck driver fly’s into the parking lot backs up and dumps, never looking to see where the stuff he is dumping is actually going.  To the right of this picture the dirt goes all the way back to where the stream is along the road way.

It is not a big stream however it does run all year around so blocking it off would create a problem for them.

The guy ( I think Carl ) in the construction shack was not the most personable person I’ve ever talked too.  He said they are going to be working Monday – Friday all summer.  He was not happy when I told him about the small stream and all he really wanted to do was argue about how there wasn’t a stream at that end of the parking lot.   He was even more unpleasant when I showed him were the stream is located.  Oh well, I guess being nice and friendly with other people is not a priority in our current way of communicating, I should of sent him a Facebook IM.

Crystal Mt. – Wednesday July 1, 2015

Our quiet Crystal Mountain campsite:
Has become a construction site:
A construction company from Bellingham just stated a project to reconstruct the 6 mile road into Crystal Mt.  The bid from Pierce County says the majority of the work will be done during the summers of 2015 and 2016.
I think our days of quiet and elk walking through camp are numbered if not over.
Saturday and Sunday night I could hear elk just before sundown however I didn’t hear a thing last night.   We’ll see how it goes, they may not be working on the weekends and we could go to Silver Springs or someplace up road 70 during the week.   The skiers will be happy.

Crystal Mt. Sunday June 28, 2015

Hank and I got out this morning for a hike up the right side of the valley.  My Fitbit says we went 7.35 miles, 15792 steps, the gps on my InReach says we got to 5608 feet up the mountain. We turned back because I cannot tell how tired Hank is when we are hiking.  He goes as fast as he can until he has nothing left.  We were at about 4 miles and my guess was another 1 to 2 miles to the top.  That would add 2 to 4 miles to our outing and I decided 7 to 8 miles on our first day out was enough.  I also have to watch out for his feet. The trails up the right side of the valley are all  roads and I’m always concerned about  the amount of time he has to walk on small crushed rock and larger rocks.
I marked a waypoint where we turned around.

We did the right thing turning around, Hank has been sleeping since we got back.  He’ll lift his head when I go outside to make sure I don’t leave without him.

Crystal Mt. – Monday July 28, 2014

Another write offline to be published later.

Monday Hank and I hiked up to Bullion Basin.  It was a beautiful day, we had a good time and were TIRED when we got back.  Left about 10:30 back at 3:00.

 

Here is topo InReach view of the hike.
This is the satellite view.
Picture of Bullion Basin, and yes the basin is named for gold bullion.  This whole valley was a gold mining area in 1890’s.
Hank asking do we have to stop NOW, I still want to smell thinks.  When he’s hiking up the trail he pants to stay cool and drags his tongue in the dirt and dust someday I’ll remember to take a picture of his dirt tongue (happy Hank).

Picture of Mt. Rainier from just before the trail reaches Bullion Basin.

 

I have more Mt. Rainier pictures, here is three more 13, 14 & 15.

Have a great day.

Crystal Mt. – Sunday July 27, 2014

Lange Family Retirement weekend continued through today.  As I said Brian was not able to attend and he was missed.  We had a great time and the weather was wonderful.  Saturday morning Jean, Tanya, Mike, Hank and I went up to Sunrise on Mt. Rainier so Mike could say he’d been to Mt. Rainier and the rest of us had not been to Sunrise for a long time.  Christine got here at noon and we all enjoyed a beautiful day and evening around a campfire.

(editorial comment: I’m writing this offline with MS Word and the blogger template, so we’ll see what happens.  I have 4 pictures to put into the blog which are on this laptop and will need to be uploaded to wordpress. We’ll see if they upload by putting them into this document, if they don’t I’ll upload them into the workpress media folder and insert them online.) (Posting through MS Word did not work, I uploaded pictures to wordpress and cut and paste the text.)
I thought this was a nice back drop for a flag picture.
I took a bunch of flag pictures and I liked these the best.
Here is Tanya, Mike and Tanya’s little friend.

I also liked this picture.

I’m going to try and post this now in case it doesn’t work and I have to rewrite it. (didn’t work through MS Word, oh well.)

 

I still have pictures from out Mt. Rainier stay.

Here is 10, 11, and 12.

Crystal Mt. – Thursday July 24, 2014

We are back to Crystal Mt. for Lange family camping weekend.

Campsite and traveling flamingo pictures.

This will be our family ( less Brian) retirement party.  Brian gets to work this weekend at Village Theatre. Tanya will be here tomorrow afternoon, Mike in the evening with Christine and Benedick coming Saturday morning. Weather is going to be mid 80’s. 

Last night was family (less Brian) “Book of Mormon” night, truly a funny musical.  This is the second time to see the musical and a week after Tanya returned from UUUganda, it was a fun evening.