Blue Angels

The Blue Angels visit Seattle at least once a year for SeaFair. They do their main show over Lake Washington, but they do fly-bys around the whole city. Last year I watched it the show from Lake Washington. It was loud and intense, but the weather was overcast so they could not do any of their most impressive fly-up moves.

This year was all clear skies, but I didn't have to time to venture to the lake. This photo was taken from the roof of my building on extra-zoom. The Blue Angels are questionable in their advertising of the military and the amount of fuel they eat up in their performance among other things, but they are fun to watch. I am impressed at the engineering an the pilots that zoom by in crazy formations.

Hiking at Rainier and St.Helens

This has got to be one of my favorite photos. I love the flower, bee and Rainier combination. The essence of summer. The photo was taken on the Goat Mountain trail that is between St.Helens and Rainier. We spent the weekend camping in Iron Creek Campground and exploring the area. The weather was fantastic the entire time, and the wildflowers were in full bloom. I did not count how many there were on this hike, but on a hike to St.Helens last weekend I counted 28 .



The following day we actually went up to Paradise to do some hiking (almost snowshoeing, does it count as snowshoeing if you're not wearing snowshoes but are slopping through super deep snow?). On the way we drove past this amazing canyon. I had not noticed it during our previous drives and loved how it contrasts with the whiteness of the mountain. The deep crevasse compared to the openness of the rest of the landscape.



This was at the start of a hike to Harry's Ridge at St.Helens. Unfortunately this was the only time that the top of St.Helens decided to come out of the clouds. Still, the weather was only partly cloudy, the wild flowers were in full bloom and the scenery was magnificent. I love the geography/geology of St.Helens. Seeing the trees that are left over from when it blew up, and the desolate landscape is absolutely mind blowing.

Weekend in Colorado

Two weekends ago (I know...) I went to Colorado to visit my mom, who was on a conference there. We started off by going into the Rockies toward Vail, then up to see Stillwater Reservoir and Flat Top Mountain, and up to Steamboat Springs. The second day we went through Rocky Mountain National Park to Boulder. It was an amazing trip and unbelievable that so much can be squeezed into just two days. I have the full set on flickr, but here are a few glimpses.



The wildlife was the highlight of the trip for me. I do not see much wildlife hiking in Washington State, so seeing some in the Rockies was a real treat for me. We saw two giant heards of elk, a couple of moose, some pikas and a marmot. Delightful! I wanted to see more marmots, but we saw so many last year I think some elk is a great treat this time around.



I also loved the great expanses and lakes all around. So beautiful! The bright blue sky all day long, with beautiful thunderstorms in the afternoon. Such a dynamic weather range!



On the flight there, Rainier was close up. I mean we flew right over it. I could see the bends of the glacier and even spy Paradise Inn on the south side. Amazing! I love the circular crater (is it a crater?) on the top of the mountain. I also love that it is so diverse with such different formations on each side. I really have to explore more sides to it (though getting to the top is a little too intimidating for me).



I spied Rainier on the way back again (pardon the double plane photo, but it was the most interesting thing I saw all day in my morning flight home). It was further away but still beautiful, and I got to examine it from the north side. I also got to spy on Crystal Mountain Ski Resort (left middle part of photo) and the road up to Sunrise part of Rainier. Love it!

Seattle glimpses

I was grabbing some dinner one evening and eating it outside at the Seattle Center before heading to the opera. To my luck, the sun was shining in the perfect location to give me a bit of a rainbow. A rainbow combined with the Space Needle? What more do you need in life? Oh, I was also eating sushi at that time. Yes, now life is good.



I love Seattle in the summer. The weather is not too hot, and the skies are blue and the trees green. The vibrancy of the colors is love for me. Unfortunately, this is the coldest summer we have had since the 50s... so I'll have to treasure the few real summer days we get. This view is from the top of the Columbia Center.



This is a block away from my apartment. This dog has two different color eyes and has a habit of looking out the window. It also amuses me that he lives on top of the bookstore that has a cat as a mascot. This is a glimpse of the neighborhood I live in.



This photo is very simple, but I took it while wandering in Downtown Seattle. The tree canopies were in full stretch and you could only see the sun peering through the top of the leaves. I might have upped the vibrance of this photo a lot, but I love the bright green color.

Iceland in a photo a day

It is impossible to sum up Iceland in so few photos, but I will try. Ryan has the full set (processed by him, these were processed by me) on his flickr. So two weeks late, I'll try to make a bit of a summary.



The first day was the flight - it was a red eye from the US to Iceland so I am taking a 'guess' that when I was flying by Greenland it was the previous day, but I have no idea (and it most likely was not). But lets pretend that I was still on US time. Anyways - it was awesome to see the mountains of Greenland rising out of the ocean. So beautiful! Also much less green than ICEland.



The first step for us after getting the car was to go to the Blue Lagoon - about the only thing our brainpower could handle after being awake for 20+ hours. The Blue Lagoon is a tourist trap, but it is a super awesome tourist trap. Giant pool of warm water in a lava field? Yes! And a bunch of saunas of various degrees of steamyness? Yes! The smell of sulfur was a little overwhelming but worth it. The only problem is that the sulfur does horrible things to your hair - mine was a tangly mess for a couple of days after we went even though I shampooed and conditioned twice. I loved the Blue Lagoon - the Myvatn Nature Baths are the cheaper version of it but not quite as impressive - smaller and not as good of saunas. After this we just went and collapsed at the hostel with a little bit of wandering around the city in between.



The next day we did the 'Golden Circle'. The geyser area was a lot of fun because Strokkur erupts every 5-10 minutes so it is not very long to wait until the next one. I LOVE this photo for capturing the water just coming out of the ground.



The following day was fairly bad weather. We did get to see some beautiful waterfalls but the highlight was going to the Jokulsarlon lagoon and looking at the icebergs. Hundreds of icebergs float in the lagoon and are of the most magnificent color. We even did a boat tour in order to get closer to them - no Titanics were pulled in the making of this photo.



Seeing sheep is not specific to the next day - we saw sheep every day. In quantities larger than people, horses and cows combined. They wander the countryside/highlands in the summer and then the farmers gather them up in the fall to get inside for the winter. I think they are adorable.



I ADORE this photo. This is Viti crater in the Myvatn area. That is Ryan walking away toward the crater. I think the wide angle shot really makes this photo look 'epic'. Capture the beautiful crater and the landscape. It even kind of looks like Ryan is going off to run into the lake?



The next day we spent a while in the Myvatn area again. These craters are on the south side of the lake, but they are not actually craters. They are this shape because they gathered up steam I believe and then dried in this shape, and not because they were all erupting volcanoes.



This is Hvitserkur - an amazing rock formation on the northern coast of Iceland. The white color on the rocks is all bird droppings - the area is filled with all types of birds. We decided not to go down to the beach in front of the rock because of the amount of birds present. One of the birds of that area has a tendency to dive bomb humans and pierce their skull (or other part of your body). Their eggs get stepped on by beach dwellers so it is understandable why they hate humans. Anyways - we didn't take a chance and admired the rocks from afar.



The highlight of the trip for me was seeing puffins. We went to Latrabjarg, which is the western-most point of Iceland to see the great puffin colonies there. The birds do not have land predators so they do not mind when you get inches away from them. They are clumsy and adorable. And they come out in thousands every evening when they come home from fishing. This was by far the highlight of the trip - to be sitting on top of bird cliffs surrounded by puffins (and other birds). A must for any Iceland visitor (from mid-June to mid-August when the puffins are there).



We actually loved the puffins so much that we came back the following day to visit them again. There are many more puffins out during the sunset hours, but there are a few puffins each day that decide not to go fishing. :) Most of them were actually laying and dozing off.



The last day in Iceland was spent in the Snaefellsjokull national park (and peninsula). The park is centered around the volcano/glacier pictured and is filled with amazing lava fields, chasms and rock beaches. I though it was the perfect relaxing end of the trip day. I wish we were there when the snows had melted a little more though so we could have driven up closer to the glacier. But this was the case for the whole country - it was a cold summer so the snow line was a lot lower than usual for the time of year.



And to finish off - these are our bags headed back from Iceland on the light rail in Seattle. An end to a beautiful trip.

Sorry for the short summary - I have been procrastinating on this for long enough. There are a lot more photos on flickr, and a lot more things that we did, but this is a short summary/advertisement of Iceland.

Post-Iceland, but non-Iceland, photo dump

Pardon the long absence from photo posting - the trip to Iceland was wonderful, but it also involved an intense amount of time by the camera. This means that when I got back... I had no desire to get anywhere near a camera. So this means patchy photos for the past week and a half. But I think I am recovered now I am getting back in the swing of things. To celebrate that... I am not going to post about any Iceland photos (because I have not processed any... Ryan processed them all), but I'll post the random shots I have taken since returning.



My first weekend back there were two things that had to happen: a bike ride and a hike in the mountains with real trees. I did not get any photos of the first activity (though it was a wonderful ride of 26 miles!), but this photo was snapped on our hike to Kachess Beacon. The hike was featured in the 'not snowy even though it is super snowed in everywhere else' section, so I went for it. Seattle is about a month behind in the whole 'summer thing' so there is a huge amount of snow in the mountains. This hike was snow-free and delightful (and very steep). There were very few people and amazing wild flowers at the top. Loved it! Perfect hike to get back into the Cascades. :)



This.... is some mushrooms growing in my apartment. My friend Kallie got me some seeds to plant some herbs and got some soil so it would be super convenient for me. Well.. being the lazy person that I am I have not done this... a month and a half later. So then Ryan looked over at the bag of soil which is poofing up a big. Turns out some mushrooms started growing in there! Pretty awesome! This means I had a living thing survive in my apartment without putting in any effort! Amazing! This was a shot before I let the mushrooms loose in the back yard.



I was surprised to find last Thursday that there was a farmers market right in the middle of the Amazon campus. Turns out that Pikes Place is going there every Thursday for the summer. Amazing! No effort to get fresh fruits and veggies? I am in! That day I bought some strawberries, raspberries and cucumbers. :)



I was attempting to get some shots of the sky today.... but no matter how I tried to tweak the settings, the clouds would end up being clipped white. After many unsuccessful shots I tried going to auto mode. Perfect shot immediately. Why do I bother trying to set my own settings on a nice camera again....?

Pre-Iceland Photo Dump

I am leaving for Iceland in an hour - and since I know there will be a LOT of photos to process when I get back in a week, I want to post up the photos I am behind on. Granted I do not have a photo of the day for the last two days... but that is because I kept forgetting to put in a new battery into my camera. Whoops? Maybe I'll upload some camera phone pictures later... but that just seems lame..?



This was at afternoon tea at Queen Mary's Tearoom for Rama's baby shower. Delightful! What a classy place! Perfect place for a baby shower, or just a place to chat and spend some time. Beautiful decorations and tea cups, delicious teas, sorbet, tea sandwiches, scones and all so much more. Wonderful. I am definitely going to return there (or find some more tea rooms in Seattle). It has been oh so too long and makes me think of the amazing tea in London when I lived there.



Next up is Quirkle - a new boardgame. I've been researching games that do not involve much or any english that my family can easily play and this one was recommended to me. Love it! The tiles you see here are the ONLY component to the game. The game can be played with kids of adults and is extremely simple but.... sly? A scrabble with tiles possibly? Anyways - I really recommend it. It is great both with two and four people.



Then there are my first homemade truffles. I have wanted to make them for a while and decided to start off with a classic chocolate recipe. Of course I will turn first to see what smitten kitchen has to offer - and it delivers! Absolutely soft middle, a bit of a hard coating and delightful cocoa powder to top. They are not too sweet - even a bit bitter if you inhale the cocoa powder first. Perfect. I want to try some more iterations - with pistachios, mocha and hazelnut to start? So much to try! It did involve latex gloves and getting the kitchen covered in chocolate... but worth it in the end. I may add that even Ryan (who does not like most of my sweets) loved them and ate about 70% of the almost one pound batch. :)



The above photo is one of the many murals on the fence around my neighborhood construction project - the future CapHill light rail tunnel. I love how they decorated the walls - it made the project look so much more friendly. This particular mural is on the other side from where I usually walk so it was the first time I saw it. On that sunny day it really shone. :) I am looking forward to the light rail tunnel, but for now I am excited to look at the fun paintings.

Natury snippets

Ryan has digested the hint that I love flowers so he picks me up some when we go to the market on Sundays. I love that the bouquets that the sell every week are different. This particular one had a lot larger flowers than usual and awesome 'twigs'. I am not sure what they are called but they are great. :) And the bouquet lasted in good shape for a while - I am only throwing it out today after a week and a half of gracing the apartment.

Also have I mentioned that I get a bit obsessed with the 'vibrance' slider when I am editing photos? Yeah....



This was a shot while sitting in happy hour. It is simple - but I really like how the leaves sort of blend with the background. It has a beautiful eerie feeling for me. And didn't involve any post-processing, something that makes my life easier at the end of the day. :)

Seattle goes to Parade time: Solstice and Pride

Summer in Seattle means finally nice weather and lots of parades. One of them is the Solstice Parade - known by many as the 'Naked Bike Ride' (ps, if you put naked in the title of your flickr photo you'll apparently get an intense amount of views). Unfortunately, the past two years that I have gone... the weather has been less than stellar. This year - it was positively cold (as you can see from the spectators in the back) and I could see the goosebumps on some of the riders. But they kept going!

I love the intricacy with which people 'dress' for the parade - that is some awesome ideas and painting. No, that is not clothing they are wearing there - they just pain it good (though I think the woman in the middle has some clothes on).

After the bike ride - the parade continues in similar fashion - lots of insane floats and crazy costumes. By far the best parade I have ever been to. Love it. :)



The parade last weekend was much less interesting. It was part of Pride Week in Seattle. I thought it would be of the similar plan as the Solstice Parade - freaking crazy. No... not really.

There were fun floats - like this amazing Flying spaghetti Monster. I got to be touched by his noodely appendage. :P

Most other groups were just various companies in the area marching down with their support. That is all great and stuff... but not very interesting to watch. BECU, Alaska Airlines, Starbucks, Orbitz, Amazon, Microsoft... etc. When will it end...? After two hours of watching I bailed on the parade. It is fun and I love the energy but if I am going next year I'll march with the Amazon float and then go home - no need to watch the whole of the parade.



Maybe if I march I could even be one of the box dudes? Pretty awesome indeed. :P

Rainbow bright

Ever have one of those days when the world is spinning in color? Everything is swirling all around. Spiiiin!

In other words - this was my attempt at taking a creative photo where the colors of the rainbow that I have on a glass paperweight can really shine. It does look colorful but I do not think I spun it enough. Also I should have tried it somewhere that the glass would not get so much reflection on it.

A glimpse of Eastern Washington

The change in the scenery of Washington state is astronomical when you cross the Cascades. From green and wet to dry, flatish and yellow. An intense contrast. I keep joking that in the winter I need to take a trip out to eastern Washington to get more sun. But that also means that I'd have to drive over the passes - might be just easier to fly to Hawaii or Cali?

Two of my teammates and I went on a day trip training in Kennewick and decided to make a road trip out of it. Kennewick is 3.5 hours from Seattle drive, and in addition to that we took the long way back through Leavenworth. The trip to the training started at 5am and was made without stops - got to make it to training. :) After a fun day of training (this was a 'customer connection' training where we listen in to call center calls - I found it super interesting), time to head back.

The first detour was taking the Yakima Canyon Road instead of the highway. Not that you would have noticed, because we were driving at highway speeds. If somebody has a BMW, you should drive it as such, right? Anyways - it was a roller coaster, but oddly fun. The above photo was taken in the canyon.

The next detour was driving up to Leavenworth instead of taking the I-90 pass over the Cascades. There was 'rock-blasting' on I-90 so the northern pass seemed like less stops - and going fast was one of the requirements for the trip (one again, the BMW). Leavenworth is a "Bavarian" village in the northern Cascades. Adorable, and a complete tourist trap. But it has a great Munchen Haus with bratwurst and beer. I've stopped there on every pass through Leavenworth and loved it. Not expensive sausages, and amazing mustards and sauerkraut to cover them in. Fun trip. :)

Featured vegetable: Asparagus

Asparagus only entered my regular diet about a year and a half ago. It is an odd looking veggie, and one I stayed away from because of ignorance. That was of course before I discovered just how amazing it is grilled with some oil and then sprinkled with a tiny bit of salt and pepper. Delicious!

Now asparagus is something that it is hard for me to resist when I see in the store. Especially when it is now in season and everywhere. What to do? Buy it, eat it and adore it. :)

Seattle Eats: Sushi and Steak

A new sushi discovery for me last week was Nashino. It is located by the Arboretum (aka not in my usual walking radius) so it was exciting to get out there for a girls night.

This is now my favorite place for sushi in Seattle. A little problematic since it is more expensive than the places downtown and is further away and you need a reservation, but I am willing to deal with this. Special trips out there must be made.

The sushi was amazing. Extremely fresh and melting in my mouth. It was a little sad that the rolls came as 4s instead of 6s, but I was willing to deal with this to get more of a variety. I was especially amused by one roll that had asparagus in it.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the sake there. We got one of the frozen bamboos full of sake. It was so good! Whenever I've gotten cold sake before it has just come in a wine glass. Maybe the bamboo is what does the trick to make it delicious? :)

And pictured is the dessert. Do I really need to explain that it was delicious?



My love of the Metropolitan Grill is well documented.  Amazing steak. Chill atmosphere. Great lemon drops. What more does one need for a date night? :)

Trip report: Mt.Rose

On a super sunny day, all of the hikes right near Seattle are bound to be filled with people and allow no privacy or solitude in the woods. Therefore the solution is to go further: the Olympic Peninsula. On a particularly beautiful day we headed over to Mt.Rose which is on the south-east corner of the Olympics (aka, no need to take the ferry!) The trip reports said there was snow on the top, but they were hard to read as the last two were written from the POV of dogs (who does that...?).



The hike itself started off beautifully. Starting from a beautiful intensely blue lake and immediately heading steeply uphill. This is a steep hike: 3500 ft elevation gain over 3.25m trip up? That would be a lot. But elevation gain I can handle - intense amount of snow and no trail? Thats something different.

The top of the trail was a loop so we saw some people come out the left side when we got there and we decided to go right (since that MUST have been what they did). Oh no. At first I was convinced that we were not on the trail at all - there were lot of fallen trees and only one pair of footprints every once in a while. A little further on, the trail completely disappeared under the snow. You could still see the markers every once in a while, and the lone footprints at times.

Apparently at this point in time the trail had lots of switchbacks. Well this is not easy to tell when everything is covered by thick snow, so we just plowed straight with no switchbacks. Super steep. When we got to the ridge, we lost the trail completely (but came upon two guys who were also looking for the summit and way up). The summit appeared to be on the left so we followed the ridge for a while.



Ridges and lots of snow are not my friends - I do have a bit of avalanche fear. And when I am walking on an overhang in super deep snow, sometimes sinking to my waist in it, a little bit of fear exists.

Thankfully, after a long trip along the ridge we finally found the summit, and a much more footprint defined and marked trail down on the other side of the loop.



The summit itself is nice in that it is a giant rock in the snow. Aka - you can sit on a dry spot after a long, long trip on snow. Very enjoyable. The view was a little covered by trees, but still amazing. I enjoyed the fact that there were not many people out. No crowds = awesome.



The way down was also painful on the knees. To mediate that we slid down a bunch of the snow-covered part. Though once the snow became patchy that was too dangerous and then it was down to walking carefully up the steep trail.

Overall, a fun hike. I am not sure I'd return - I am more excited to try the neighboring mountain: Mt.Ellinor, which is supposed to have a super-duper amazing view from the top. A little to much snow there for now, but maybe later in the season. :)



The mountain we hiked up is in the middle of the frame here - not covered in snow on top (or so it appears). I believe Mt.Ellinor is one of the peaks on the right side.

Lanterns and Flowers

I often return to Pike Place Market and find fun things lurking around the corner. One of the new discoveries of my last trip was super quirky light fixtures on the south side of the market. Love them! They had various guys walking around on all sides of the staircase holding the lights. I love the combination of practicality and art. :)



These beautiful flowers are in the Cascade Community patch which I've wandered by before to see the great scarecrows they have. Right now the whole thing is blooming all over. Absolutely beautiful. I see some veggies starting to come up also - hopefully they'll get to wait until the owner gets them. It is hard to resist the deliciousness. :P