Women's Square Dance Weekend

This weekend we went to Silver Falls State Park in Oregon for the annual Women's Square Dance Weekend. We danced a lot and enjoyed good food and women from Washington, Oregon, California, and New Mexico. The theme was Oktoberfest.

 

Geese Hazard on the Golf Course

Today there was a Canada geese hazard on the golf course. They seemed mostly unperturbed by the golf balls whizzing by.

 

 

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Beach Glass Hunting on Alki

Today was a more typical northwest summer day: sunny and in the mid-60s to 70s (not like the 80s+ we've been getting). We went beach glass this morning at Alki. The tide was pretty low, so we went on the other side of the pier from where we usually hunt. We saw some anemones in the tide pools and found a lot of nice glass. We found three nice pieces of cobalt blue, which is unusual. Most of our glass is (not surprisingly) brown, with decent amount of a bit of green and clear.

Anemone in a Tide Pool

 

The illusive cobalt blue beach glass

A white piece

Green beach glass

 

We almost missed getting back to the other side of the pier before the tide came back in and cut us off.

 

Sandra walking under the pier

 

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Labor Day Camping

We went camping at the Mount Ranier National Park this weekend. We stayed at the Cougar Rock campground. The toilets were flushing, but you had to walk a lot longer to get to them. We got there Friday night in time to share "gracious living" (hors d'ouvers) with our camp mates, Lois, Joyce, Dinah, and Jonica (who organized the trip).

It rained a lot on Saturday. A lot of the reserved campsites were empty as folks decided not to brave the weather. We managed to get in a two-mile hike on the Wonderland Trail at Longmire in between rains showers. The afternoon was spent playing pinochle with Joyce under our pavilion while it poured rain. We were able to have a fire for gracious living and really appreciated it: it was cold (in the 50s). Sandra got to play with her new toy: tongs for the campfire.

 

Sandra playing with her new fire tongs

 

Sunday was dryer. We drove up to Paradise to the Visitor Center and hiked about a mile on the Dead Horse Trail (no dead horses). It was 42 degrees (about 6 degrees cooler than it was at our campsite). The mountain top was still socked in, but we got lots of beautiful views of wildflowers on the alpine meadows.

 

Hiking on Dead Horse Trail

Nita and Wildflowers (the photo isn't foggy, it's cloudy up there)

 

Sunday we drove home, taking the scenic route to the east of the mountain to avoid all the Labor Day traffic on I-5. We had a great time on our trip. It feels like a nice end to a great summer.

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