Another full conference day for Melody, and I went to a castle. We both avoided the rain but not the heat.
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Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
Welcome to my blog. I document my adventures in travel, style, and food. Hope you have a nice stay!
Another full conference day for Melody, and I went to a castle. We both avoided the rain but not the heat.
Melody's first conference day, so I walked around a bit. Since she didn't have anything in the afternoon, we went down to the Financial District to do a walking tour.
This was the first of our "split" days, where Melody and I do different things. At least for part of the day. I went to a Blue Jays game while Melody walked around a bit and had dinner with some people at the conference.
We often try to do a day trip when traveling, and that’s what we did this day. The last time I was at Niagara Falls was almost 50 years ago, and Melody had never been, so we figured it would be a good thing to do. We were prepared for crowds (a weekend day during the peak summer season) and were able to get plenty of time looking at the falls from two countries.
Our first full day in Toronto included going through the Royal Ontario Museum and doing a walking tour of Chinatown and Kensington Market.
Melody wanted to go to a week-long book group event in Toronto, so I tagged along so we could make a vacation of it. The last time we were there was almost a quarter century ago, so it seemed like an opportunity to revisit the city.
I was in Southern California last month for my cousin Charlie's memorial service, who passed away in April. He was married to Sherry (the oldest of us first cousins), and next year would have been their 60th wedding anniversary. They have three children (and spouses) and eight grandchildren (with three spouses).
It’s that time of year for me to record a piano piece for my mom’s birthday. This one is a Chopin Etude, Op. 28, No. 9 in E.
This installment covers hikes from the past several months. We were in Arizona for a week in November and did a couple of hikes in Saguaro National Forest. In late January/early February, we went on a short road trip to the Leavenworth area and did some snowshoeing. The last couple of snowshoe hikes were in the Seattle area.
Melody signed up for a literary translation conference in Tucson, so I tagged along. We went a few days early so she could also play tourist for at least part of the time. Melody hadn't been to Tucson before, while it's been about 40 years since I was last in the city.
Autumn marks the end of the hiking season in the Pacific Northwest. We ended getting only a handful of hikes over the past several months, but Melody did hike several times with a weekly group.
Most of our hikes in May were during our trip through the Columbia River Gorge, but we did sneak a hike early in the month to Wallace Falls. We intended for that early hike to get us used to elevation gain (knowing we would have 2,500+ ft gain hikes), but it also ended up being very long. And the last hike was snuck in before several busy upcoming weeks.
Ask almost any person who doesn't live in Seattle about our weather and you're almost always going to hear the word “rain”. In reality, we don't get a lot of heavy rain but have many days where there's at least some. This past week, however, was very different, as we had a historic heatwave.
Spring is a good time to go looking for wildflowers, so we did that in the Columbia River Gorge. We did a bunch of hiking and a little bit of playing tourist. The weather was mixed, but the worst we had was a little rain, a little hail, and big winds. Yes, we did see lots of wildflowers, as well as a lot of views of the Columbia River.
After a couple more outings on snowshoes (one at Blewett Pass and one at Stevens Pass), we went up north towards Bellingham for the first hike of the season.
This year’s recording for my mom’s birthday is the first movement, Modéré, of Ravel’s Sonatine in f# minor.
We were able to fit in one more hike in November 2020, then switched to snowshoeing starting in January. In addition to a couple of outings in the Snoqualmie Pass area, we also spent a couple of nights in the Lake Wenatchee area and got in some great snowshoe hikes there.
A new year always means a presentation by the Seattle Times, celebrating their Pictures of the year and Videos of the year. Predictably, this year's event wasn’t held in person, so instead of arriving extra early to make sure we get a good seat, we settled down on the couch to watch the show. The video is available online.
We did a lot of hiking in September and October, with all but Snow Lake on a trip we took to the Mt. Baker area and Leavenworth. I only tracked the larger hikes, which is why there isn't distance/gain data or graphs for the short ones.
We took a few hikes in July and August, with a couple along Highway 2 and another near Mt. Rainier. They were each more challenging than the first two hikes of the season.
