…get a cold in June. I don’t know why, but it always happens around this time. Lame. So instead of celebrating the summer solstice by watching the sunset on some gorgeous hike somewhere, I find myself supine on the couch inhaling several cold medications (and, let’s be honest, chocolate) to try to get better before Saturday.

Oh well - at least being sick = being bored = scrapbooking = a chance to try out my awesome new mountain dies from Quickutz. Here is a total scraplift of a layout by the fabulous Moon Ko:

A few days after our trip to Mailbox Peak, the photographer we met sent us this photo - huzzah! By the way, I appear to already have forgotten the PURE HELL my thighs were in after that hike and am planning to go back once the wildflowers start blooming.
I’m stupid.

Happy solstice everyone!

The weather this weekend was fantastic. We celebrated by going on my favorite dayhike so far - to beautiful Colchuck Lake (near the creepy faux-Bavarian town of Leavenworth):

See that pass on the left side of Dragontail Peak? That’s Aasgard Pass, and we have to hike up that thing in order to get to the Enchantments in September. JK could probably run up it right now if he wanted to; I have yet to see him winded on a hike. I, on the other hand, will have to devise some sort of evil, rigorous training plan in order to even entertain the thought of making it to the top (with energy to spare to explore the Enchantments and, horror of horrors, get back down again - all without coughing up a lung).

(By the way, the reason this hike was snow-free (even though it is over 2,000 feet higher than where we went last weekend) is because it is located on the magical, happy, sunny eastern side of the Cascades. But since they also have rattlesnakes and ticks galore, so I would rather live here on the we(s)tside.)

Nothing more exciting to share. I’ve been feeling under the weather and what was left of my scrapbooking mojo has disappeared. Methinks a trip to Norway without access to paper, photos or glue might be just what I need…

On Sunday we braved the gloomy weather and headed to Talapus Lake near Snoqualmie Pass and were rewarded with *drum roll* actual rays of sun!! It disappeared again after our hike, but there have been several confirmed sun sightings throughout the week. The forecast for this weekend is looking ridiculously good, so I’m crossing my fingers that Juneuary might be over for this year (bah, now I’m probably jinxing it)…

Ok, so can someone explain to me how to take photos of snow without it looking either grey or totally blown out?? I’ve read about it several times but apparently my brain can’t seem to process the information.

Take a look at the snow levels - Talapus Lake is only at 3,250 feet!

Bobby’s poor little Italian paws were getting a little cold in the snow, so we tried his booties for the first time. They may look absolutely ridiculous, but they did stop the shivering!

I’m off to plan hikes for the weekend, so I’ll leave you with my layout for this week’s challenge (flowers flowers flowers!) over at Scrappedugnad. Don’t ask me why (uhm, because we’re weird?), but we’ve started calling Bobby Miguel.

The gorgeous paper is from the Norwegian company 3ndypapir

I had never heard this expression before moving to Washington (go figure), but man alive is it ever appropriate. Juneuary can mean one of two things; the freakishly warm and sunny weeks of January or the horrible, horrible, horrible #%@&ing weeks of COLD BLOODY RAIN in June.

I was re-reading The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier by Bruce Barcott last night (because it’s an excellent read and because I appear to have run out of books), and he describes the feeling so well:

The Pacific Northwest boasts a long and honorable tradition of rain-soaked misery. […] The stuff puts you on edge. It feels as if nobody’s showered or shaved in three days. The civility that Northwesterners wear like a hand lotion washes away; some snap at one another, some just snap. About the ninth or tenth day, everybody looks at each other and says, “Goddamn it’s been raining.”

Even running intervals at the gym isn’t providing the necessary endorphins anymore. If anyone knows a better cure than I have found (burrowing under blankets on the couch, inhaling vitamin D, fattening foodstuffs and copious amounts of alcohol), please tell me now. My thighs/liver/friends will thank you.

I seem to have neglected my road trip recap, so here’s part three. After our beautiful hike in Zion, we drove southeast to Page, AZ. The main goal for our stay there was to see Antelope Canyon, probably the most famous (and certainly the most photographed) slot canyon in the world.

Antelope Canyon is located in the Navajo Nation, so if you want to see it you will have to go with a Navajo guide. Unfortunately, there are 5-6 different guide services and they all cram as many people into the canyon as possible. Instead of getting to explore this amazing canyon on your own, you’ll spend most of your time waiting in line and looking at this:

By the time our tour was over, we were so sick of other human beings that we decided to go where they weren’t - the beach! Lake Powell was formed by the damming of the Colorado River and is the second largest man-made lake in the U.S…and apparently it is insanely cold in April. No wonder we were the only ones there :o)

JK captured our looks of horror/hypothermia as we braved the water:

Before driving on the next morning, we stopped by Horseshoe Bend. I have to say, this is one of the most awesome things we saw on the entire trip - even more breathtaking than the Grand Canyon. The drop-offs are insane though - if I ever bring kids here, they’re all going to be on leashes!!

Next stop: Grand Canyon South Rim!

Ever since I started researching local hikes last fall, I’ve wanted to go to Mailbox Peak. It’s one of Mount Si’s neighbors and got its unofficial name from the mysterious mailbox that appeared on the summit sometime during the 1950’s - the mailbox has been replaced several times (and for a while the peak housed a fire hydrant), and the hike has become somewhat of a kitsch training ground for local mountaineers. It’s supposedly one of the hardest hikes in the Puget Sound area…I believe it: 4150 feet of elevation gain over only 2.5 miles. Phew.

Anyhoo, I was feeling cocky after not having a heart attack on Mount Si, so I decided I was ready for Mailbox (hah!). We drove to North Bend, found the trailhead, laced up our boots…and realized there was no memory card in our camera. Gaaaah! Since 99% of the people who read this are scrapbookers, I’m sure y’all can understand just how much this sucked. This is how our photos, taken with JK’s ridiculous cell phone camera, look. Sigh.

Oh well, at least I have the memories. And I’m sure my thighs will still be sore a couple of weeks from now as a reminder of just how freaking steep this trail was. Man alive! Going up wasn’t that bad, you just have to pace yourself (I’m sure I broke the record for the slowest ascent of Mailbox ever), it’s the going down part that sucks. With my rotten ankles, I really had to concentrate with every step I took (I definitely hold the record for the slowest descent) - my thighs are just screaming today.

Anyway, I did it. It was awesome. You’ll just have to believe me when I tell you that it’s beautiful up there…

Speaking of hiking and why on earth I put myself through this stuff, here’s my first layout from our vacation:

Since most of the people who read this thing come here for scrapbook talk, not my incessant babbling about hiking, here are some layouts! Both of them are about JK and his, ehm, maturity level…

This is from the dinosaur track discovery museum we stopped by in St. George, Utah on our way back from the Grand Canyon last year. JK was in heaven and it gave me an excuse to use these freakin’ adorable dinosaur products from BasicGrey:

…and this one is from my SoY entry last year. JK bought an RC chopper and regressed into childhood for about a day or so until the chopper crashed and broke:

Let’s all hope he never stops being a boy (*aaaaaaaaaawww*)!

Wow. May just totally flew by, didn’t it? Methinks a recap is in order.

May 17th, also known as Norwegian Constitution Day - I had hoped the parade in Ballard (the “Norwegian” part of Seattle and home to what is supposedly the biggest May 17th parade outside of Norway) would calm my homesickness, but alas - it just made it worse. The parade really doesn’t feel like the parades back home. Next year we should just climb some little mountain and plant the Norwegian flag on top

Speaking of mountains, we’ve been able to do some hiking this month. Mark, a flickr friend (I know, we’re such nerds), took us along on one of his dawn patrol outings up to Rattlesnake Ledge. Our goal was to watch the sunrise, and this entailed getting up at THREE IN THE MORNING. It was worth it though - even with a rather lacklustre sunrise - because I have never had a better start to my day.

Oh, and I confirmed once and for all that I am the slowest hiker on the planet. Not that it really matters, but it was just a wee bit embarrassing that Mark could run up the whole trail, leaving me wheezing in the dust. I am very grateful to JK for having the patience to walk at a snail’s pace with me.

Even though I am slow, I am finally starting to get in better shape - so we decided to finally hike Mount Si. I absolutely love this mountain. Not only is it absolutely gorgeous, but it was used in the opening credits for Twin Peaks (my all-time favorite show).

I had heard a lot of negative things about the trail up Mount Si (mainly that it’s crowded and boring), but I loved it. A lot of people use Si as a training hike for climbing mountains like Rainier, and it’s cool (if a bit intimidating) to watch them speeding past you with full packs and ice axes! Anyway, I had thought it would be really challenging for me, but I did surprisingly well (meaning that my lungs didn’t explode).

…and finally, for Memorial Day we headed over to Eastern Washington for some desert hiking! We ended up hiking around the Yakima Rim Skyline Trail for two days, surviving rain, hail, the blisters from hell (I got nine..bah!) and seemingly endless road walking, but it was all good fun and a great personal challenge.

Bobby came along and after 19 miles and 4200 feet of elevation gain, he finally proved to Tom and Amy that he is, in fact, a “real dog”. He is also the best sleeping bag heater ever.

While everything is still snowed in here on the westside, the eastside is in full bloom:

I (and, heh, the people around me) have realized that I absolutely NEED those lovely exercise-induced endorphins to function as a human being - so JK and I joined a gym. I haven’t had a gym membership since I lived in Trondheim, so it was about time. The best part is that it is within walking distance of our house, which fits perfectly with my car-less existence.

I am loving it so far, thanks to a) a freaking awesome Zune playlist full of deliciously embarrassing workout music and b) the focus on sport-specific training (namely being physically able to hike to Camp Muir (Rainier “base camp” at 10,000 feet) this summer) instead of that ever-elusive goal of “getting skinny”. So there

When JK and I visited Zion National Park in September, we only had time to do a really short hike. This time we got permits for the Subway, supposedly one of the coolest hikes ever…unfortunately though, hiking the Subway requires walking through water almost the entire time, and the ranger we spoke to told us the water was 45 degrees - eeep! So we quickly abandoned that idea and decided to hike up to Observation Point instead.

The hike is 8 miles round trip with an elevation gain of over 2,100 feet, so needless to say it begins with a seemingly endless row of switchbacks out of the main canyon - luckily we got to do those in the shade, so we didn’t start dying just yet. The fun started once we were done with the switchbacks and entered the beautiful Echo Canyon:

The sun started toasting us just as we hit the white slickrock area, so we decided a potassium break was in order (we had to make up for a lot of sweating…) before hitting the next set of ruthless switchbacks:

We kept looking for rattlesnakes and other exotic wildlife our entire trip, but we had to make do with good, old-fashioned lizards. At least they’re really cute

I don’t know why I keep going to high places when I have such an insane fear of heights…or, ok, yes I do - it’s because you get views like this:

We had lunch on the cliff, then turned around and hiked back.

Zion is such and amazing place, I’m sure this won’t be our last trip - after all, we have to go back and hike the Subway some day (when the water is muchmuchmuch warmer). Anyway, we drove on and reached Arizona just in time to enjoy the sunset on the Glen Canyon Dam by Lake Powell:

Next stop: Page, Arizona.

If you’re interested in hiking in Zion, Joe’s Guide to Zion National Park is a fantastic resource - it has descriptions and photos of all the most popular trails in the park.

…I made a layout! You know that you haven’t scrapbooked in a while when your dad who lives on the other side of the world starts nagging you about it! So, to get back into things I made it easy for myself and scraplifted…myself. I made one of the cover options for the June issue of Creating Keepsakes:

I ended up really liking it, so I wanted to make one for myself with the leftover scraps. It looks decidedly less cool without Maggie Holmes’ amazing photography, but at least it still has a handsome little devil on it…

Speaking of the June issue and great photography, have you seen the Nikon giveaway? Whether you’re a scrapbooker, a photo nerd or just someone who wants a new camera, you should head over to CK and enter your name to win a Nikon D60 kit!