Mt Ranier on a Cloudy Day

Mt Ranier is the highest, most stunningly beautiful mountain in Washington. It's the most heavily glaciated mountain on the US mainland, and it's only visible from Seattle and the surrounding area about 100 days of the year. It's only visible in total clarity about 30 of those days. My favorite place to see it is above the clouds when you're in an airplane, like in the picture above. Since Mt. Ranier national park is a couple of hours away, we had to plan the trip in advance and Oscar needed to have the day off work. But since you can't always predict the weather, you never know if you're going to be able to see it or not. We picked this day since weather predictions had been saying it would be sunny every day we checked it of the previous week. However, the day arrived and accuweather.com claimed that it would be party cloudy. But, since it said the sun would come out by 2:00pm, we figured we'd time it so that we'd arrive during that sunny, clear time. Unfortunately, it never cleared. It was very cold, and we got brief glimpses of sun. We could not see the mountain at all, even though we were incredibly close to it. But, we still saw a lot of pretty stuff. The fog and mist gave the area a pretty dark green and blue color, the waterfalls were flowing heavily due to recent snow melting (the snow doesn't start melting there until June!), and we saw some pretty frozen lakes. Eventually we went back on a sunny day, but I think the pictures from this trip are still worth sharing. Here we are at the first lookout. We still enjoyed the pretty trees and hills. The sun was trying to come out. But it never did. At least the fog and clouds still look cool. Oscar and I stopped off for a short hike at a nature preserve. This stuffed mountain lion they had in the visitor's center was a bit scary! You can see this waterfall from the main road. The second lookout was quite pretty, and it's a cute shot of me! There were a lot of short waterfalls on the side of the road we were driving. They looked really good despite their size because the flow was so rapid. There was still plenty of snow while we were there. Here I am at the next hilly lookout. And I love this picture of me at the next waterfall.

Oscar enjoyed seeing the endless rows of trees. It was pretty to look deep down to the water coursing through the ground and shaping the rock along its way.

These are some more of the many small waterfalls we passed. Oscar takes good waterfall pictures.

This was the beautiful frozen lake we passed. It wasn't nearly as pretty when we saw it again on a sunny day. Narada falls is the most impressive waterfall in the park. We had to hike a short but super steep trail to get this view of it. You can see from the comparison picture that the flow isn't typically as intense as it was the day we saw it.

Oscar thought it was hilarious that this lady parked her walker between the cars as if it were a vehicle requiring it's own parking space. And these final pictures are of the area that used to have an large river running through it. Now the river is very small due to large sediment deposits occurring as late as 2006, but it's still interesting to see.

Cute Nibbler!

I just had to include a few cute shots of Nibbler making himself comfortable in the tupperware container,





somehow making himself comfortable on a turned over chair while we were cleaning,



and playing with our shoes. It's his new favorite spot to sleep.

Oscar's First Half Marathon

This past May, Oscar took on his first half marathon. Here he is driving in the car the night before on our way to Olympia, Washington's capital city. Oscar's comments in italics. I was thinking about the terrible traffic we had on the way more than I was thinking about the race.



On the morning of the run, we saw this line and assumed it was the check in line for the racers. It turned out it was actually the bathroom line! I guess you need to empty the tank before the race. I knew this was the line for the bathroom and I timed it a little early. I would have liked to use the restroom 3 minutes before the race began rather than 20 minutes before.



These were some of the decorations they had up along with a live band. I enjoyed being in the main square while we waited for the race to start. I didn't even notice this stand.







I took this shot of Oscar right before the race began. I was wearing a heart-rate monitor and was going to use it to gauge my maximum sustainable intensity. My goal was 2:00 hours and my "I'll be happy with" was 2:10.



And the front of the line. Oscar was hanging out somewhere about halfway back. This is the only time I was nervous.



I went to the 6 mile point to cheer him on. This was at about 58 minutes, which put me a few minutes behind where I wanted to be. I blamed this on the scarcity of water which was provided at miles 1, 2, 4, 6.5, 9, 11, and 12. Nearly all my training I had water whenever I felt like it, so I was not ready for rationing. All I could think about was "got to go faster."





I tried to find him at the 8 and 10 mile points, but unfortunately, I barely missed him at both of them. I was unfamiliar with the city, and the GPS kept leading me back to the closed roads that the race was being held at. I waited for him at the 10 mile since I saw people who'd been ahead of him at the 6, but apparently he'd passed them by that point. As I mentioned, my only thoughts were "must go faster" and by mile 8 I had completely abandoned my adherence to the heart rate monitor. My original plan kept me near 165 bpm, but by mile 8 and 9 I was passing people going up hills I didn't know were there. 175 bpm became the normal by mile 9.

By the time I got back to the finish line, Oscar had crossed it about a minute before I got there. He sprinted to the finish line, they announced him "sprinting to the finish" over the megaphone, and he nearly ran into the guy ahead of him since he couldn't slow down fast enough at the end. I waited for him at the finish line, and he actually came up behind me in a big, sweaty embrace. I snapped this shot of him. He sweat so much it looks like he peed his pants. Fortunately I did not pee my pants. I did however receive a kiddie cup full of beer at mile 11 which I thought was water until it was half way down my throat. For 5 minutes I didn't think about running- instead I thought of all the horrible things that beer would do to me during the race. Fortunately I did not feel any physical effects. With a quarter mile left I sprinted with all my remaining energy and my heart rate peaked at 198 bpm- higher than I thought possible. I finished in 2:03:52, right on target and much faster than I thought I would finish when I has half way.