Mt. Si, Golden Gardens and Rainbows

Hello to all our dear family and friends that take time to check in on us and the blog every once in a while. Hope you all are enjoying some warmer weather now that Spring has sprung and summer is well on it's way!

Seattle has been wet, rainy and cooler than normal this past month and we've been longing for some good weather to go on a hike. We finally got our wish last weekend with sun and high 60's-70's. It was gorgeous and we decided to tackle Mount Si (pronounced like sigh). This is one of the busiest, most popular hikes in the area. It's no wonder with the great view you get from the top, you'll see the view soon. It is not the easiest hike, though, and we were surprised at the many different people who were hiking all the way to the top. It is an 8 mile round trip hike and you gain 3150 ft in elevation. We took about 2 hrs to get to the top and only about 1hr on the way back down. Here are some of the best pictures from the day.

View of the surrounding mountains from about 2/3rds of the way up. 99% of the hike is in the woods until you pop out on top

Mt Rainer in all it's glory! Isn't she beautiful?!?!

Views to the west. The thin white line is the snow capped Olympic Mountains on the Olympic penninsula. Seattle and Bellevue are somewhere in the haze.

Me and Rainer, oh and all the other people at the top. (you can see them hanging out the the rocky outcropping behind me.)

Erik on the trail. Do you like the nice lush vegitation? That's from all the rain!

The next day we drove our car into Seattle near Lake Union. Then we rode our bikes out to Golden Gardens Beach via the Burke Gilman Trail. It was a great day for a ride, not too hot and nice and sunny. It was about 13.5 mi round trip. A good way to get out and loosen up the legs after the hike/climb the day before! Here's the map of our route if your interested: click here.

Two unlikely beach bums!

Views from our little spot of paradise.

View of Lake Union and the Aurora Bridge from the Freemont Bridge.

Silly me with the Fremont bridge behind me. We just missed getting a picture of it raised for a boat to go through.

Overall a great weekend. Then it rained again.... but what comes after rain? You guessed it.....RAINBOWS!! We saw this FULL rainbow (sorry don't have a wide angle on our camera to take a pic) the other night right from our deck. Do you see the little bit of a double rainbow?

Spring

Ahhh, Spring! Love it! Love all the green popping up everywhere, of course out here there is green yearround. But gotta love all the colors and the flowers. We've had some very nice weather, warmer than average, but then we've also had some colder than average weather. I just take the days as they come and I'm learning to wear or bring layers cuz you never know how it will be in a couple hours!

I took this picture crossing the bridge between Seattle and Mercer Island.  Mt. Rainer was showing it's pretty head that day! A little bit of cloud cover just makes her all the more interesting!

We've been having a good spring. I went to a ladies retreat in April with the covenant church where I've been attending bible study. It was a blast and I LOVE all those wonderful gals who have just scooped me up and become my friends!  I miss then now that I'm working and can't go to the bible study!

Scrapbooking with Joanne

Me and Yukon after my first trail ride in at least 25 yrs.

My awesome roomates that weekend!

The best carpool I've everr been in!

We also broke down and got a new TV!!! The one we had was over 20 yrs old but still worked good.  But this one is soooo much nicer!

We've been doing a lot of biking since we are so close to many great bike trails. The island we live on has a road that goes around the perimeter. From our apartment all the way around is about 14 miles which we can do in one hour. It's a nice ride with some good hills, both up and down!  I took this picture before we went out one day.  We've been having trouble with our battery charger so that's why I don't have a lot of pictures to share of any of the rides. 

We also went to the UDistrict Streetfair and hung out with Monika for a couple hours. We ate a little fair food and then took the bus back home.  I didn't get any great shots there but here's a few.

I know we haven't been doing tons of outdoor stuff like we were used to but we are both working pretty much full time right now. I started a job at University of Washington Medical Center and I am loving it so much. Plus, now the weather is starting to get better and better so I'm sure you'll start seeing hiking pictures soon. Hang on!! :-) 

Thanks for visiting!

Tulip Festival

Yesterday Erik, Aunt Kay and I went to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.  It turned out to be a gorgeous warm day! And thanks to Steve and Matt's advice we skipped church and went early and boy were we ever glad we did. When we left around two in the afternoon traffic was backed up all the way to the highway and beyond!    I bet you didn't know that Skagit Valley actually has the largest tulip, iris and daffodil opperation in the world. Holland actually gets tulips bulbs from them!!  This is going to be a picture heavy post. Sorry if it takes a while to load. I think it will be worth it!
Here were the Tulips waiting for us at the entrance to RoosenGaarde where we stopped first. They have all the display gardens there, a gift shop, food, etc. It was a wonderful place to visit. There were lots of people and all of them were focused on their cameras!

Next we went inside the display gardens which are three acres and planted with over two hundred thousand spring flowering bulbs!!

Are you in heaven yet??

Isn't this one cool!! They have a few colors like this with the cool fringe but I liked this contrasting one the best.

There was a cute chickedee that had made a nest in the tree shown above. I got a few pictures of her. This on turned out the best. She would come out and catch bugs, I saw her! and then go back in and feed her chicks!  She her? just a little left of the middle.

Love this color!

Then we headed out to some of the vast fields of plants.  Skagit Valley boosts more than 1200 acres of field blooms!  They give helicopter rides and I so wanted to take one to see all those fields from the air!

Oh yeah, we finally remembered to take pitures of us!

Are you in heaven yet????

A fun one in the wind, can't see the flowers very well!

I have a lot more pictures on the camera. Hope you likes the photo tour of the Tulip Festival! It was really fun to go with Aunt Kay and stop and see Steve, Melissa and Matthew on the way home. We even skored a huge bag of rhubarb from the farm!!

Visit from the girls!

The end of Feb I was lucky enough to have visitors! Marie and Chris flew in for a 3 day visit. We had lots of girly time, hanging out, going to Pike Place Market, eating good food and trying not to bug Erik.
Here we are the first day. You can barely see the Pike Place Market sign in the background.

Inside the Market. The fresh flowers were starting to come back again with the daffodils!

Here we're having lunch at Ivar's Fish Bar. Too cold and rainy that day to go outside and feed the gulls.

But this Guy didn't understand that! He squaked at us the whole time through the window!

Here we're going into the International District/Chinatown for dinner. Erik's actually with us operating the camera.

Fried Chicken feet anyone?

The next day we relaxed in the morning and then walked around Mercer Island dowtown area. I didn't take any pictures until later when we went to the flagship store for REI. It's HUGE and has some great landscaping outside, including this waterfall!

Here the girls are trying to run away with this cool kayak!  

And we saw the Space Needle but no one really wanted to go up in it this time.

The last day was Sunday. We went to church in the morning. The day turned out to be gorgeous, warm and sunny so before lunch we walked all over my neightborhood. We went to Luther Burbank Park and took a picture by that gorgeous flowering plum tree (or flowering apple, or something! It's super pretty anyway.)  You've seen it in a previous post.

Thus ended the wonderful weekend!! Thanks for coming to visit me girls! Come back anytime!