9/27/21
We woke up to a light rain though it had been raining almost all night. The river next to our campground was raging quite full. Ryan said that he watched a 4-5 foot piece of land just fall into the river a few feet from where he was standing! We all piled into Molly's car and then drove to Seattle to meet up with Amos and explore the city. On our way we saw an oversized truck carrying a giant boulder...not sure why but it was an interesting sight. Our first stop was the REI of Seattle and boy was it an interesting experience. First of all, the REI has its own parking garage for their customers. Secondly, they have a bike path to test out any bikes you are interested in buying and it looks like a miniature park that you could walk through with trees, a creek, and all the works. Thirdly, the store is two stories with a climbing wall that you can pay to use! The climbing section was amazing and kept me dreaming for quite a few minutes. The trip to REI was an overall success with Ryan, Amos, and Molly buying climbing shoes in preparation for future parts of the trip and anytime we may go in the future in Kentucky, if Amos and Molly come to Kentucky. We then went to lunch at Lunch Box Burgers Laboratory. It was a snazzy little place with a bunch of fun burger and shake combinations. I got The Smoker's burger and a Drunken Elvis milkshake. Highly recommend the spot for the shakes! We then drove to Pike's Place and met up at Miners Landing for a few photos before exploring the fish market and the gum wall. We then chilled at Amos's hotel by all of us showering, watching a movie, and resting before driving back to our campsite for the night.
9/28/21
Today I woke up kind of early and boy was it raining. Everything was super wet and we were not really wanting to hike in the rain so I started hooking up some ropes and tarps to have a cooking area before we figured out what to do for the day. All in all I am pretty proud of this set-up and have a deeper appreciation for the difficulty that I will face if I make it on Survivor someday. After we ate breakfast we decided to check out a coffee shop that was only 30 minutes away and see if we could stay there for most of the day.
So, we drove to Darrington, WA and walked in to Moe's. In Molly's words, "My brain threw up in a coffee shop!" It was a super quaint design with a good variety of food as well as coffee. They even had fire pits out back and a grassy field for games. The afternoon was spent playing cards, mostly Hearts, and then a few rounds of Nertz. We stuffed ourselves on pizza and loaded tater tots. It was nice to be really full for the first time in a while. We also finished it off with some ice cream. We then went around driving for a few hours and listened to random songs that we would que. It was a nice day in spite of rain and hopefully we get some more beautiful skies soon.
9/29/21
Today it was raining yet again so we had a slow start to the morning. It was rough making it to the makeshift shelter and then having to prep everything for breakfast but it could always be worse. After breakfast we went back into town but this time to Mt. Vernon, Washington. It was a pretty spread out area with a good variety of things to see and shop for. We stopped at a knock-off tractor supply and all got Carhartt beanies. We ended up spending a decent amount of time at a coffee shop catching up on different things. I worked on my blog and finances while other people journaled and read. We then decided to have dinner at IHOP because I had never been! I will say, it was exceptional. I got the BLT and the special Reese's pieces pancakes and those things were amazing. We played cards while we waited for the food and we have been on a run of playing hearts. After IHOP the girls went and got pedicures to take care of their poor hiker feet from the summer, each of them did close to 250 miles, while Ryan and I went to Wal-Mart to resupply for the next few days. We then met back up and made our way back to camp. The day ended with very little rain so we were hopeful that there wouldn't be any in the morning.
9/30/21
Of course when we woke up today it was raining the most that it had our entire time in the North Cascades. This made it quite the experience when we tore down camp. Everyone's tents, thankfully I was sleeping in the van, were completely soaked through and all of the tarps were soaking wet as well. Also mud had splattered onto anything near the ground so almost everything we had including chairs, tents, the table, and any other gear was muddily soaked. We had prepared just in case by buying some large garbage bags so those came in handy when we packed everything up into them. On our way out of the North Cascades, Ryan wanted to get a sticker for his guitar case so we stopped at an information center. It was still pouring so while waiting for him to find a sticker Molly, Alex, and I decided that we should just book and AirBnB for the night rather than dealing with wet gear. Luckily, thank the Lord, there was an AirBnB that was available for one night that wasn't too expensive and had a great location. We just drove straight to the spot because we didn't feel like getting soaked in the rain. The AirBnB was a flat above a coffee shop in Morton, WA. The flat was super nice, having just been remodeled, and we all were so grateful to have a space for showering and easy cooking. Later that night maintenance Nick from Swiftcurrent finally caught up with us to join for the rest of the trip. Now we have 5!
Quinn, we went to an REI store just like that when we took Rachel to Colorado. It was incredible! Hope your tents eventually got dried out. Guess you know what the folks on survivor deal with when they have rain for days except they have no where to go get dry. Thanks for sharing your pics and stories!
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