Went out hiking this afternoon off of Highway 12 with a friend I’ve hiked with a couple of other times out here. We tried to go in a different direction by fording this river (Tieton River I think) which ended up being a bit of a dicey proposition, particularly in bare feet, though I was able to snap the self portrait you see below while thigh deep in rapids. Unfortunately after another ten minutes of hiking we hit barbed wire and private property signs and, after a bit more lateral movement, were forced to retrace our steps.

So we headed up the rock in the other direction and ended up having a really fun afternoon of scrambling around on crumbly slopes in a gorgeous area. I always look at my pictures after getting home and they never quite do justice to the scenery. It was a very vertical area, lots of places to feel precarious, rock spires, rock stairways, even found a couple of holes to crawl through (you should be able to see one behind me in the bottom left picture).

Another bedroom painted. Mary did most of the work on this one. The walls are Cornflower Blue (Valspar from Lowes) and I’m digging ’em. We like to keep things reasonably colorful when we can without going too crazy. Nora appears a bit strung out from the paint fumes though.

This past Tuesday was a field trip day at work for me. We rode up to Snoqualmie Pass to tour some of the future project work sites. The first four pictures below are all from around the Gold Creek area. Bottom left is looking at Lake Keechulus and bottom right is Lake Easton.

The more I learn about this project, the more I realize what an interesting project it is to be a part of. Heck, some environmental scientists are busy working on clean-up projects in the middle of some asphalt parking lot.

Other than that, we’ve continued with our weekly Frisbee games (which are now being played three times weekly – we played for thee hours on Tuesday night which was a solid end to a fun day) and are currently resuming painting of the few remaining rooms left to be painted in the house.

A few shots from this morning running Nora by herself at the park.

And then later Mary and I hiked around on rocks. Mary nearly had a heart attack after almost stepping on a four-foot long snake. No rattlers though.

We are a bit picky about what our dogs eat. The cheapo mainstream brands definitely don’t make the grade and even some of the supposedly higher quality foods (think Eukanuba) don’t make the cut. After quite a bit of research and a few different trial runs we were really to happy to find Canidae brand dog food being offered at several stores in Grand Rapids (Chow Hound, Pet Smart). Actually cheaper than Eukanuba/similar and much better in terms of our dogs’ energy levels and coat health.

Sadly Canidae has not yet penetrated the Yakima, WA market. We were kind of bummed about this until I stumbled onto a website, PetPointe.com, offering bulk orders of dog food shipped to your front door. You have to buy at least five 40 lb bags to get the shipping discount, but three hungry dogs I think will keep this a viable option. A little more expensive than what we were paying in GR, but actually still cheaper (including shipping and no sales tax) than what we’d pay for other similar brands in stores around here (plus the convenience factor). Anyway our order processed on Monday and arrived in our driveway this afternoon.

Trammell looks a bit nonplussed in the second photo, but I’m sure he’ll be happy to get his nutrients back.