Loki the Trickster Dog

We adopted a pet. He's brunet with a squiggly white blaze that falls off the left side of his nose and a coat that makes him look like an old bearskin rug when he is most relaxed, at which point he kicks his back legs out behind him and lays flat out with his tummy on the ground.

Loki

Home away from home

I love seeing new places when I travel, but I also tend to keep coming back to the same places and people that I fell in love with the first time around. Places that I feel comfortable, at home. Gästehaus Kolp in the village of St Jakob is one of those places. Each apartment comes with mountain views and the most wonderful hosts. 

Morning coffee with a view towards Petteneu

Darmstädter Hütte immer wieder gerne!

Our second day was forcasted to be sunny, so we walked into town and used our St Anton Sommerkarten to go up the gondola towards the Valluga peak. It was still a little cold and cloudy at the top of the first gondola, so we decided to go up the other side of the valley on the Rendelbahn and hike around for a bit... after buying hats to keep us warm on top of the mountain! 

Rainy day hike (St Anton)

From Vienna, we took the train up the Inn valley to where one of its tributaries ends at the Arlberg Pass. There are a series of villages there that are relatively quiet in the summer (a few thousand inhabitants) but bustle with skiers as soon as the snow starts falling. We were too early in the season for snow, so the precipitation that fell on us left us a little soggy! Regardless, we headed up a beautiful valley to Konstanzer Hütte

Ducking out of the rain in a covered bridge

Wieder in Wien

There are some lovely cities in Europe. Prague is romantic, Amsterdam is egalitarian with wild tourists, and Vienna is elegant. I miss it. Turns out, there was a way to get on a train in the Czech, give ourselves a couple hours' "layover" between trains in Vienna. So, we walked from the beautiful new Hauptbahnhof (main train station) into the city center. 

Fountain at the Oper (Opera house)

Science and Industry

Ostrava was not a significant town for the first thousand years of its history. In the 1800’s, coal deposits were discovered in the area and heavy industry boomed. One of the old steel mills near downtown was rebuilt over the past 5 years into a center for science and industry. We went up the Bolt tower on top of the old blast furnace and then into one of the coolest science centers we've ever visited.

Crashing a Czech Wedding

The pretense for our trip was a friend's wedding. That wedding took place in the middle of our trip in Ostrava. Lucie and Ales picked us up in the morning and took us to a cafe that looked like there Ostrava Mafia was meeting. Half a dozen friends of the bride and groom sat around a coffee table, wearing suits and dresses with yellow accents (their parents names the original group the “waps”). They had gathered to discuss ”the Plan.”

Brno

The day that it started raining in Baden-Würtemberg, we jumped on the train and headed to the Czech Republic. After a train ride, frantically running around rainy Nuremberg trying to find our bus, a double-decker ride to Prague, and a helpful Czech conductor (with cousins in the US) putting us in the correct train, we were relieved to see our friends waiting for us at the train station in Brno. Lucie and Ales whisked our hungry selves off to one of the good local eats in downtown Brno. Pilsner Urquell, fried cheese, stuffed peppers, knedliky, and excellent company brought us back to wakefulness.

Stuttgart

I visited Stuttgart three years ago at about the same time of year. This time around we waited until the last day of our stay to go into the city because the Wine Festival started that day. While we did eventually spend a wonderful evening in the city center eating Maultaschen and chatting friends of our host, we had an entire afternoon to explore the city before everyone was off work.

Über Ulm

In German there is a "Zungenbrecher" (tongue-breaker) about a city in Baden-Würtemberg, Ulm. It goes like so: In Ulm, um Ulm, und um Ulm herum. Try saying that 5x fast! "It doesn't flow as well in English, "in Ulm, about Ulm and all around Ulm." On our third full day in Germany, we added a preposition; we went Über Ulm. The thing that the city is most famous for is its church tower, the tallest in the world (aside from the yet incomplete Sagrada Familia). On the recommendation of a friend's friend, we headed over to hike to the top.

Castles and churches in Esslingen

Monday was a holiday for us, but the rest of the world was back to work. Anne rode her bike to the office that morning so that we could use her car to go to Esslingen, a town only 20 minutes away by car but an hour away by train. Still unsure of what all the road signs meant, we jumped into the kiwi and went on an adventure.

Löwenstein

We spent our first full day in Germany with friends in the wine region around Stuttgart. Bea, who visited us with Anne in April, is from a town called Löwenstein. Most of her family still lives there and operates a wonderful winery.

Amsterdam Layover

Sometimes, when I'm planning a trip, I mess things up a little. This time around, it was booking our flights to and from Stuttgart out of Amsterdam. I accidentally booked it twice, and the flights I had to keep had a ~8 hour layover in the middle on the way there. It made for a long day of travel... But then again, we got to spend part of a day in Amsterdam!

So Cal Beaches

In the past two months, I have been sent to southern California twice for work. The first was to Costa Mesa for some update training, the second was to Long Beach for a standard training. Of course, while there I unwound a little after long training days at the nearby beaches: Huntington, Newport, and Long.

Back to the desert

Immediately after our road trip, I was off and at it again for work. It was a trip over a sun scorched plateau in in the center of the American west. This time, I was going a little faster than the 70 mph we averaged coming home from Utah... and it was even hotter when I landed at Sky Harbor airport!

There were thunderstorms nightly. You could see them coming for miles.

MWRT part 10: Boise and the way home

On Saturday afternoon we drove out of Utah and headed up I-15 towards Idaho. It was a fairly quick drive, and we made good time in the heat and wind. At one point, we raced a thunderstorm across southern Idaho and watched lightning strike on our left, blue sky on our right. We drilled 8 tumbleweed as we drove through the dust cloud and came back into a sunny sky.

MWRT part 9: Heber Valley

The reunion was held at Soldier Hollow, the site of the XC Ski and Biathlon events in the Salt Lake City Olympic games in 2002. The site was renovated after the games to include two golf courses to give those with summer homes in Midway something to do. We took advantage of the many snow free XC ski paths for regular walks after meals. 

MWRT part 8: Over the Wasatch Front

When I'm navigating, I don't always take the most direct route. Our drive from Idaho to Heber City was a perfect example of this. I saw a little road out of Salt Lake City that wound up over the Wasatch Front, and suggested that it might be the most direct route to our destination. While it likely was, SR 190 was full of switchbacks, steep grades without guard rails, and spectacular views. 

MWRT Part 7: Idaho Falls

Driving down I-15 through Idaho, arrived at M's brother and sister-in-law's place in Eastern Idaho. We spent a while with them walking the dogs and had a great dinner in Idaho Falls. After dinner we went to where M and I were spending the night, left our cars, and walked in the cool evening air through the parks that are built along the river. In the morning, before it got too warm, M and I went on another walk through the same park. It was lovely! 

MWRT part 6: Flathead Lake Breakfast

We left Kalispell on Saturday morning, packing the tent and the rest of our worldly possessions into the Rav4 and pointing it South towards Utah. On our way, we stopped at a state park on the shores of Flathead Lake. It was beautiful. The water was warm (except where a stream poured into the lake!) and almost tropical looking.

MWRT part 5: West Glacier

After our hike on Highline Trail, we piled back into the Rav4 and headed down the long switchbacks of Going to the Sun Road. We came level with the mountains to the west, then dropped down below them into the valley. We had thought to hike Avalanche Lake on our way, but parking couldn't find a parking space...

MWRT part 4: Highline Trail

I got to check a trail off my bucket list! The Highline Trail opened a few weeks before we got to Glacier, and after hearing about it for years we finally did it. Okay, so we only did the first 3-ish miles of it, but it was beautiful. We were eye level with glacier-peaked mountains, cool rocks, and a fearless marmot!

MWRT Part 3: Going to the Sun

It was nearly too hot to sleep at Many Glacier, but we woke up in the morning ready to hike. Since we had such a solid dinner the night before, we decided to hit the road as soon as the sun hit our 3rd story window and head for the St Mary Lake. 

Good morning and goodbye, Many Glacier!

MWRT 2: Many Glacier

 Sunday afternoon, we continued the Mountain West Road Trip into Glacier National Park. We rattled up over rough state route roads and between grazing cows to the Swiftcurrent Motor Inn, where we refilled our water bottles and started hiking. We walked past family groups on afternoon hikes along and above the river. Finally, the sound of rushing water got louder and we reached Red Rock Falls.

Mountain West Road Trip part 1

M and I spent last week road tripping. It was so much fun! We loaded up the Rav4 on Saturday morning with borrowed tent and camp stove, Chaco sandals, and a week's supply of Cliff bars and pepperoni sticks (thanks, friends and Costco!). Then we drove south and west to our first range of mountains, and onwards from there... 

L’été à les fortifications

June means another trip to Quebec! A significant amount of work has been done on the fortifications in the past year, and I spent a warm, sunny afternoon checking them out. 

Montréal, rapidement

Normally in June I post about Quebec City, since we have annual update training sometime in the early summer. I almost always stop in Montreal en route to Quebec City, since there are no direct flights from Vancouver, but I rarely leave the airport. This time, I came up with a way to squeeze a visit in without extending my trip past 6 days. A friend from college had recently moved to the city with her husband, and offered to share their couch. I flew out a day early for the meetings, caught the bus to their neighborhood, and spent the day that the rest of my co-workers traveled exploring a new city! 

the Basilica

Deming Logging Show "for Busted Up Loggers"

This last Saturday we had an afternoon with no plans and sunshine in the forcast. M suggested that we go check out the Deming Logging Show, an annual event put on "for the benefit of busted up loggers." It was somewhere between a county fair and redneck truck show. Campers and trailers lined the soggy field around the fairgrounds. Driving up, we could see lines of spit-polished, impossibly chromed Kenworth, International, and Mack dump trucks. Boom spars lifted sky high pointed us to the parking area as we pulled in. We followed the echoing speaker and found seats in the grandstands...

The first day of summer (in Tacoma)

The local high school team was at the state meet in Tacoma this weekend. Sister #3 is a star runner, so we headed down to watch her run! After she PR'd by 2 seconds in the 800m, we had a few hours until the next event, so we took Sisters #4 and #5 and headed downtown for an adventure in the sunshine. 

leaning slightly left at the Glass Museum

a Hike in Southern WA

My last class was scheduled the week before Memorial Day weekend 200 miles south of home just off I-5. Looking at the option of driving vs flying, I realized I could get there lickety-split on a turboprop from Bellingham directly to Portland. So I did!

Mt St Helens peeking above Iron Bridge

In the meantime

After two months of running around like a crazy person, I've had a wonderfull, continuous 3 weeks at home. Next week it's off to the south end of the state, but here's what we've been up to in the meantime... 

Sunset view from Rock Ridge

A few thoughts from the Oregon coast

Before my friends left the Pacific NorthWest, we had two things to do: shopping, and a visit to the Coast. The Coast took priority.

2 days in Vancouver

Let's say, hypothetically, that you have a spring weekend to spend in Vancouver, BC. What should you do with them? Here's what I did with two of my friends last Saturday and Sunday.

North and West Vancouver from Stanley Park

Bishop Arts District (Dallas, TX)

The week after my Quebec trip, I immediately had another trip scheduled for a training in Dallas. Oofda. Nevertheless, I headed south in search of sunshine and coffee. While it turned out that Dallas is a coffee wasteland, there was sunshine and chaco weather!

Everything's bigger in Texas? 

Second Quebec weekend (more snowshoeing!)

I've run into a bit of a bind. Mumsy took nearly all of the photos on her birthday, since I spent the morning "ice canoeing." Mumsy hasn't shared her photos yet, so I'm going to break the time sequence of my posts and jump to the end of the week.

Two of my co-workers, who are about my age and started at our company about the same time as me, invited me to go snowshoeing with them after our week of training. Of course I said yes! So Friday, while most of my American teammates were flying home, LC and I loaded our gear into JD's car and headed down the St Lawrence. (After a quick stop at Tim Hortons, of course!)

Morning sun in Petite-Rivière-Saint-François

Mumsy Arrives in Quebec City

Mumsy came with me to Quebec this past week. I have three days of training here, she had a birthday to celebrate and very much enjoys the city. It seemed like a perfect plan! Flying in on Friday, we immediately launched into a weekend of food, history, food, outdoor adventure, and more food.

We found the costume closet... 

28

Around the time of his birthday (in January), M asked me what I wanted for my birthday. Thinking along the lines of our weekend in Seattle, I said "a memory." A few weeks later, M said "How about snowshoeing?" An afternoon in the trees on the side of a mountain!? Yes, please! How about someplace new, like Grouse Mountain? Wearing our snow boots and passports in hand, we drove up to Vancouver to find our way above the snow line. 

Tacoma

Work sent me down to Tacoma for a week of training, so I explored a little bit... here are a few shots from downtown. It's a way cooler city than we up north give it credit for!

There is a great Anthem Coffee in the State Museum just to the right of the old train station 

Flat land adventures

A few weeks ago, I took a trip to the mid-west. Specifically, to two states I don't think very highly of, largely due to their lack of differentiation in elevation between any two points: Ohio and Indiana. GM had a training scheduled in Indiana, so I bookended the trip with visits to friends and family in the area to make it more fun. First stop: Columbus.

(http://www.curvemag.com/Visit%20columbus%20postcard(1).jpg)

A second round of snowshoeing

White Salmon was so much fun the first time, I thought I'd take Dad back for a second round!

White Salmon Snowshoeing

A couple of weekends ago I tagged along with M's dad and sisters, who were heading up to Mt Baker Ski Area for some downhill fun. Instead of buying a lift ticket myself, I headed in the opposite direction from the lodge; right back down the mountain. I discovered a snowshoe path that leaves from the last hairpin before the lower lodge. We had driven past it dozens of times, this time I went to explore it!

Christmas, round 2

It used to be that each year we would alternate which grandparents we spent Christmas with: my dad's parents on Whidbey Island, or my mom's parents in British Columbia. After so many back-and-forths, swaps, Christmas eve road trips, and opening stockings in the back seat of the car, I can't keep track of which one we're on. In any case, a few days after Christmas we loaded into our respective cars (because we're somewhat adults now coming from our somewhat adult homes) and trekked up to the Kootenays for a second holiday with Nana and Grandpa.

The ridge above Canyon/Lister