Category: Campgrounds

Crystal Mt. – Friday July 18, 2014

Hank and I were up early to hike in a new direction.  Up at 6:30 and out the door at 7:00 a.m.  We went to Sand Flats campground and headed up the trail.
We were back at 11:00 8.2 miles.  We went up and back the same trail.  I think the line shows some separation because in the lower section we were on a hill side in some large timber.  As soon as we got a little higher and into some more open areas the tracks stay the same.

Here is the track for the week.  The single line to the left is our track driving to Paradise on the 7th, I was to lazy to filter it out.

The next pictures are from our campsite in parking lot F going up valley and down valley.

It’s Friday evening and we are home for awhile get to see “Book of Mormon” on Wednesday.  By the way my Fitbit has me at over 26000 steps today.

Here are several more Mt. Rainier pictures.

Pictures (7,8,9)

 

Another great day, does seem like we just got back from our normal two week vacation and we should be going back to work on Monday ???? Hope I don’t forget Monday.

 

 

Crystal Mt. Thursday July 17, 2014

Another hike into Hen Skin Lake(s), their is actually two lakes about a quarter mile apart. Today was with Brian and Hank, it was a great day.

Upper Hen Skin

Where would we be without camera’s in our phones.

This is Lower Hen Skin from the other side from the trip a couple of days ago.
I have some wild flower pictures but they are on my camera and will have to wait.
We have been here since last Saturday and water is starting to get low. I think we will head home tomorrow afternoon before we are completely out of water.  Weather forecast is calling for rain on Saturday.
Hope this all posts I can not review the first half of what I wrote.

Crystal Mt. Tuesday July 15, 2014

Today I practiced doing nothing: finish waxing the motorhome, conditioned the side seals and took Hank for a 4 mile walk. Did get some hammock time in (thank you, Tanya). Also worked on Mt. Rainier pictures for a while. During the four days we were there last week I took 517 mountain pictures. I am going to post a few over the next weeks.

Here is today’s walk down to Sand Flats horse camp and Half Camp.
Mt. Rainier pictures:
You only get one picture today because Steve Jobs and I don’t think alike. I resized a bunch of pictures on my laptop, uploaded them to DropBox and was going to put them in this blog from my IPad. Problem is I named them in the sequence I want to post them, however once I get the picture/file to IPad I can not see the file name only the picture. Thus I can not put them in sequence because they are mixed in with a bunch of other pictures, oh we’ll.

Crystal Mt. – Monday July 14, 2014

Hank and I hiked into Hen Skin Lake today. This was my view of Hank for most of the day.

Here is the lake, however the Mosquitos did not show in the picture. The first time I hiked into HenSkin was in 1957 with my dad (small tear). Anyway Hank and I had a good time and hiked 9 miles. Weather is still holding so summer has arrived.

Wrote this off line so we will see how it posts.

Here is an InReach track of our hike, Added this with WordPress program on my IPad.

Crystal Mt. – Sunday July 13, 2014

Second try at this posting.  The first try crashed when I added the second picture, I’ll try this again.

Yesterday was one of those days when the moon is close to the earth.  Here are several pictures I took last night.  
These are all original pictures with not post editing (other than size).
We actually don’t see the moon all that often.
Hank and I want for our first hike up the valley today.  I think we went to far for him.  On the way back down he found a nice shady  tree and laid down for a while.
This picture is from my InReach tracking website, downloaded, saved and resized.  We did see some wild flowers.
This one might make a good puzzle.
Hank was tired:
It is time to pour a glass of wine and cook some Tanya steaks, Thanks Tanya.

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.

 

Crystal Mt. – Tuesday July 29, 2014

Lazy day today, did some things with pictures on the laptop and ordered a DISH satellite tv system.

Pictures: during our trip to Sunrise I took some great pictures of Tanya and Mike. I wanted to got them on a flash drive for TA. Tonight I’ll upload them to Microsoft’s OneDrive, then TA can download the full size picture. I put them on a flash drive so I don’t have to start up the laptop to send them. ( I think I’ll come up with a name for my laptop, the motorhome GPS is Martha ).
DISH TV: ordered satellite antenna, stand, 28 inch VIZIO HD TV, and motorhome grade mounting bracket. I will be removing the 27 inch tube TV we currently have in the motorhome and putting in the HD TV. This and the monthly access is Jean’s 40th wedding anniversary present ( I love you).
I also ordered a Dewalt caulking gun to use when I redo the duel pane windows. I need to do at least the the two front side windows before we head south at the end of August. The instructions that came with seal kit said a powered caulking gun is really necessary for a good sealant bead. I decided to buy this caulking gun because I need to do all the motorhome windows. All the windows have some degree of moisture in them.

After dinner Hank and I walked up to the ski lodge to enjoy nice evening in the mountains. At the lodge we (actually Hank first) got to see the local elk herd. There was at least 45 and could have been 50 or 55. They were spread out over the hill side and can be hard to see and count.

We will be heading home this (Wednesday ) afternoon. We have been here a week and water is getting low. It has been another great week, this retirement thing is actually REALLY good.

Here are some more Mt. Rainier pictures:
16, 17,18.
( I cannot get to my WordPress media folder from my iPad, I will publish this text and add the pictures using my phone).
The dust in the lower center is from a rock fall. After I heard the fall it took me a couple of minutes to see where it came from.

Fort Flagler – Saturday June 7, 2014

Hank and I are spending the weekend at Flagler.  Nine months ago I made reservations for all the weekends in June.  I’ve had to cancel the next two weekends and Jean has to work tonight so Hank and I came out to enjoy the great weather.

Hank rode shotgun for a while:

Retirement count:  25 calendar days 18 work days, Jean had 12 work days.

One of my retirement goals to do a lot of hiking.  GPS technology has advanced to the point where I could buy a unit which will transmit my location to a satellite every 10 minutes and post the position on a website anyone can access.  This is posted in real time.

Some of the cool things: as I said transmits location every 10 minutes, stores location inside the unit every 15 seconds (this is uploaded over web later), will sent and receive 160 character texts, can create stock text for quit transmit, confirms a text was received by satellite, has SOS button, operates for 100 hours, can set the location transmit at up to 4 hours, the unit can be pinged to give it’s location, pairs with smart phone for topo maps, and other cool things.

This is a screen print I took from Ipad.  The drive over here on Friday, the way points are every 10 minutes so this will also show where the traffic was the heaviest.
Couple of walks around the park.

The long line going to the bottom of the picture is from the drive in Friday.  It looks like it will be a cool tool we can use to show where we are whether we have internet or not.  This just needs a clear look at the sky.  Oh, by the way it is Delorme inReach Explorer.

It is also summer time.

Strawberry daiquiri time, had two.  I bought some frozen strawberries and put them into serving size zip lock sandwich bags, had three in the freezer (thinks for the GREAT idea, Jean).  Hank and I are both tired, we were up and at it early this morning, did a walk around the park before PBS’s Car Guys and Wait Wait.  Tanya gave me a FitBit at Christmas and today was the first day over 20,000 steps, 21,356 right now.

That’s it for today, no more motor home trip before retirement.