30th Annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Last weekend we and our friends Arielle and Matt went up to Skagit Valley for the 30th Annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. Its about an hour north of Seattle. There are fields upon fields of daffodils and tulips of all colors and varieties. A beautiful sight to see. Its a bit what I picture the Netherlands being like.

There are several agritourism farms that I suppose exist solely to capitalize on the bustling tourism during this one month of the year.

We also perused through a street/craft fair that goes along with the festival and got a funnel cake.

Here are the pictures of the tulips.

It was a little windy.

Matt and Arielle

Tulips unfortunately don't smell that good, but they sure are pretty. Especially these!

Vancouver, BC and Snowshoeing

A few weekends ago we made our second trip to Vancouver, BC to visit our friend Carolyn. This trip reaffirmed what we learned on the first trip: that Vancouver is a beautiful, cool, fun city. We met up with some acquaintances (now new friends) Caitlin and Martin and hung out for the day. That evening we got all you eat sushi and then went out for a night on the town.

Caitlin and Martin

The next morning we went to Cypress Mountain resort to do some snowshoeing with a whole crew of people. It turns out it was one of the resorts used in the 2010 Winter Olympics for freestyle skiing and snowboarding.

We have been out snowshoeing a few times now and got the necessary gear (poles, snowshoes, warm/dry clothes). It is a really fun activity. It’s just like hiking except you are walking on snow. I guess that doesn’t make it sound that fun, but it’s more novel than hiking because you feel like somehow you are defying physics by not sinking into the snow.  It was a beautiful day full of beautiful scenery!

View from the top!

Raven

Avalanche Danger - "Considerable"

Awesome view of Vancouver from the road up to the resort (only 20 minutes from the city).

After a long day of hiking up and down mountains, we went and got some awesome poutine. This is becoming a tradition for when we visit Vancouver, and I’m fine with that, because it is fantastic. 

Gotta get that squeaky cheese!

and of course we got another Canadian delicacy... Tim Hortons.

The awesome view from Carolyn's primely-located penthouse apartment .

Our Child: Sagan

I thought I would do a post about Sagan, as several interesting things have happened in regards to him recently. 

First, oddly enough, Sagan’s picture has become the Facebook profile picture of a Vet’s office in Richmond, Midlothian Animal Clinic!  The picture was taken by my good friend Luci while her and Ricky were out here visiting. You may remember reading about our journey into the wilderness of theOlympic National Park. Luci does photography work for this Vet and submitted this picture of Sagan to them and now he is FAMOUS.... and he doesn’t even know!  Sagan never checks Facebook….

Sagan is the Posterchild for a Richmond, VA area Vet!

Second, we had a biopsy done on a re-occurring lesion that shows up on the roof of his mouth (towards the back of his throat). We had spoken to some Vets about it previously, and the consensus was that it was Eosinophilic Granuloma Complex, which they believe is caused by an allergic reaction, presumably to food. It is common in cats, but not too much with dogs. Apparently it can be common in Huskies, which is weird b/c the Craigslist post (where we got him from) mentioned he was part Husky, however we wrote that off, as he grew up to have no Husky-like traits. He has been on a special restricted diet for 1.5 years, since we first noticed it.

The lesion came back again, this time about the size of nickel, so we had a biopsy done. The results came back confirming the allergy hypothesis, showing it is Eosinophilic and Neutrophilic Stomatitis, aka… he probably has an allergy. It's NOT cancer…yeah!  So basically we may end up doing nothing, and see if it goes away naturally, or maybe switch his food again in an attempt to find a protein/grain that doesn’t affect him.

Third, a Vet technician mentioned that Sagan looks like a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. I had never heard of it, but I think she may be RIGHT! Upon reading up on it, I think that Sagan is part NSDTR and part Golden Retriever. 

Sagan is gold in color, whereas they are usually are more “red”, and he is slightly bigger/heavier, but other than that, he looks just like them, including the EXACT same white markings, fits the description, and has very similar mannerisms (based on the videos I have seen about them). 

A Google search for “NSDTR” will return some pictures that look very similar to Sagan. It is so cool have some idea what he is!

Here is a drawing I found of a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever that looks EXACTLY like sagan!

Sometimes life takes a shit on you. This is one of those times.

What happened. 

While we were traveling visiting family, a pipe burst in the house we rent.  Our landlord found it relatively early which saved us from further loss. Long story short: the pipes run in the attic (instead of the insulated walls). The temperature dipped down below freezing (a rare occurrence in Seattle). We did have the heat set at a reasonable temperature, but my suspicion is that the pipes were not adequately insulated (if at all).

We were not the only people caught with our pipes exposed in the cold. Many other Seattlites experienced a similar unexpected fate.

So... it was basically like having a hose running in the attic. Luckily the water found several quick paths to pour out of the ceiling, which mostly kept the water from pouring down on the furniture, electronics, etc.  Most of our things were spared. Everything on the floor got wet, and the built-in shelf in the middle of house had water running down it, so we lost a bunch of nice books, and our record collection got wet. 

We haven’t had a chance to take an inventory of the damaged/destroyed items as they have all been haphazardly stacked in the shed and my landlords garage, so that emergency renovations could begin. The entire process of moving all of our stuff out of the house took only several hours, so you can imagine how unorganized it all is. It literally is just a huge pile of stuff. Some in boxes (not labeled), some in piles. No rhyme or reason to the process. Just a bunch of stuff…in a pile.

The aftermath.

Comparing pictures from the post about moving into the Bungalow, to post-flood demolition, you can see the extent of the damage.

Any of those who have stopped by the blog recently, may have seen the reupholstered rocking chair. It was mostly spared, but it has a water spot on it.

Our devoted readers may remember the kitchen shelves we built and shared here. Their purpose has been shelved. (bam! best pun of this post)

A serious inconvenience becomes a minor existential crisis.

You know that feeling when you are moving and you look around and at the crap you have accumulated and say to yourself: “What the $%^*?  Why do I have these things? What is the point of these things?”  You realize it isn't even worth the effort to move the things. You loathe their very existence. You are disgusted by the fact that you have accumulated all of it. Well, take that feeling of disgust and extrapolate it to the N^th degree and you have my feelings for the unorganized heap of my material things; where the perfectly-fine undamaged stuff is intermingled with the completely-destroyed crap in one unifying pile. I loathe it. I loathe it all.   

Many relevant Fight Club quotes come to mind. Thank you Chuck Palahniuk:

"It's just, when you buy furniture, you tell yourself, that's it. That's the last sofa I'm gonna need. Whatever else happens, I've got that sofa problem handled." 

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.” 

What now. 

So far our landlord has been very helpful, generous, and supportive. He is putting us up in a temporary place we found on AirBnB, while our old place is renovated. 

We have all learned many valuable life lessons:

1.       Renter’s insurance. It’s a good idea. And it’s very cheap.

2.       Always turn off the water-main when you leave for extended periods of time. (If you don’t know where the water-main is, (like in our situation) find out!

3.       If you have pipes running through the attic take extra precaution. If you don’t know where the pipes run (like in our situation), find out!

4.       Don’t own things.

Reupholstering a Rocking Chair

Tess and I have had our eye on rocking chairs as they show up at our neighborhood Goodwill, but have resisted the impulse since we have no room for furniture in our house. haha. Well we finally gave into the urge for this steal-of-a-deal. We bought it for a whopping $15 with the intention of making a project of it. We then dropped about $25 on supplies at JoAnns Fabrics to fix it up.

We chose a blue canvas fabric because I vetoed all floral patterns (this ain’t your grandma’s rocking chair!), and all “modern” patterns are too busy with dots and lines.

What is funny is that we picked a color that we thought matched our couch, but when we got back it became apparent just how far off it was. 

It’s interesting how bad our perception of the world around us can differ from reality… 

even for something which we sit on every day!

It is structurally in great shape. It has some worn edges from being rocked into things. The upholstery was a hideous mess and the padding consisted of what looked like a rat’s nest of straw.

I removed all the old fabric and padding in an archaeological dig which revealed that someone had previously made a sloppy attempt to cover up the original fabric.

The coil springs aren’t yet sprung and still have some spring in them, but needed to be retied in place.

I found some useful websites on how to tie the springs in place. It’s fairly straightforward. Here are some nice how-to’s on upholstering, upholstering, and tying coil springs.We didn’t really follow any of these exactly. We got the general idea and used common sense to make it work for our chair. It turned out comfortable and looks pretty good, so I think it all worked out.

I put burlap across the springs for several reasons which I thought made sense: to provide a uniform taut surface to distribute the load, keep the foam pad from sinking into the spaces around the springs and to provide some protection to the foam pad so it doesn’t get eaten by the springs.

I staple-gunned the burlap to wooden frame with a layer of paperboard from the recycle bin. This cardboard helps provide some protection to the burlap from the staples (since the springs are pushing up on the burlap). One day future archaeologists will dissemble this chair and find instructions for cooking a cardboard pizza on the back of paperboard strips. J

Tacking the canvass to the frame was very tedious. These decorative tacks look nice, but are annoying to work with. It takes patience and a lot of extra tacks…

So anyway, there you have it. Not perfect, but I’m impressed at how well it turned out. Overall it was a fun project. And now we have a chair that totally rocks!

Luci and Ricky Visit (and The Olympic National Forest)

Just as summer shifted into fall, we had our last scheduled visitors of a very action-packed summer. Unfortunately, with the arrival of Luci and Ricky, also came the beginning of the rain. And rain it did. They got far more than the normal Seattle rain experience. More on that later.

Luci and Ricky saw all the 'must-see' standard Seattle sights and we took them to all our favorite places as well...

...for example Golden Gardens...

... for a photo-shoot of Sagan...

 ...and then back to Golden Gardens later to view the Olympic Mountains from the beach...

...at sunset.     [if the background of these 2 photos isn't stunning, tilt your screen until it is.]

We also got to hang out with several of their friends from Richmond who have relocated out here. It was nice to meet them, and good for them all to catch up.

Over the weekend the 4 of us rounded out the trip with a car/ferry ride over to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington for a weekend excursion around the Olympic National Park.

Olympic Peninsula of Washington (highlighted in orange)

Olympic National Park (outlined in green). Seattle is shown on the right.

The first night we stayed at the charming ToadLilly International Hostel, in the quaint city of Port Angeles. 

Olympic National Park is 923,000 acre wilderness, complete with 3 main biomes, each of which we sampled: glaciated mountains, temperate rainforests, and picturesque coastlines.

After starting the morning off right with coffee and breakfast at The Oven Spoonful and were off to see Hurricane Ridge, disregarding both the forecast calling for 4-8 inches of rain over the weekend, and the webcam (which showed only a white blur of fog)! Our determination paid off as the wind occasionally would push the fog out of the way to reveal gorgeous mountain views.

From there we were off to the Hoh Rainforest, a place that redefines the meaning of green.  

We hiked the short Hall of Mosses trail, which I highly recommend, as it is amazing.

Ferns everywhere...

...Moss growing on everything...

...Trees growing out of other trees.

Even the moss is covered with moss!

The water in the stream looked like beer on St. Patty’s day!… it is truly a magical place.

Much of the park is made up of beautiful old-growth forests, and dotted throughout the forested parts of the map are labels like "Big Tree". These giant marvels are very reminiscent of our visit to the Redwoods, and often hold the title of "National Champion", the largest living specimens in the nation. 

That's a Cedar.    a "Big Cedar" as the map notes.

This Sitka Spruce is the largest Spruce Tree in the World! 

And although it was POURING rain, (more than usual, even for a rainforest), it was thoroughly enjoyable.  

What isn’t as enjoyable is being completely-soaked-to-the-bone, and returning to your campsite during a monsoon to find your tents in newly-formed ponds, with the outlook of making a fire… dim. 

These were the good times, prior to our tents becoming islands.

So we packed up all of our wet gear, our pruney bodies, and far more rain than our gear should have be able to retain, and drove off to the Kalaloch Lodge to rent an (off-season, discounted) cabin!

And damn was that the best idea ever. The cabin had a kitchen, bathroom, woodstove, and most importantly a roof! So instead of literally sleeping in puddles…we slept in down-comforters to the sound of a crackling fire. And with no regrets, because camping without a fire, isn’t camping at all… it’s just sleeping outside on the ground, like an idiot.

When in the wilderness, it is essential to be wary of potentially dangerous flora and fauna lurking around every corner. In fact, each biome within Olympic National Park has its own specific threats that must be taken seriously.  Throughout our journey there was a series of escalating warning signs to remind us of these threats.

The threats of each biome:    Rainforest -> Cougars.              Mountains -> Goats                       Coast -> Killer Logs !

Luckily we didn't see any of these threatening things...except the killer logs.

The next morning we checked out the ‘haystack’ rock formations on the beach where we saw otters!  ... and then we headed home. 

 

Haystack rock formations and "killer logs".

Otters!

It turned out to be an action packed adventure. It was brief tour of a vast park, but I hope to get back very soon and explore much more. Maybe Luci and Ricky will decide to celebrate their third anniversary out here again with us.  Maybe next time we will see Olympic National Park without the monsoon.  : )

Photos Courtesy of Luci and Tess