Olympic June

Apologies for the delay as this adventure was actually the first weekend of June. We made another day trip to the peninsula as soon as we heard that the Hood Canal Bridge was reopened.

Our first stop was the visitor center atop hurricane ridge. To our delight, a new surprise awaited us at this oft-visited spot. The clouds only rose to around 5000 feet, and as we broke through the thick rainy cloud bank (the visitors center/trails are at around 5300 feet), a brilliantly bright perfect sunny day greeted us.

As you scan the horizon, you see prominent peaks piercing the tempestuous stew of clouds, which hundreds of miles away flows into the blue sky.

Unfortunately, the trailhead parking was snowed out, so we had to add a few extra miles on our hike. It was worth it – I’ve never seen the Hurricane Hill trail so empty. We only saw a handful of other folks. We felt as though the majestic views were all for us alone.

Afterwards, we visited some new spots: Lake Mills, Elwha River, Madison falls, and some new scenic driving.

At work the next week, many wondered how I got sunburnt from a rainy Northwest weekend. You can imagine my grin as I explained how my weekend was perfectly sunny - above the clouds.

The delay of posting is that our aging camera couldn’t handle the beauty of it all. The brightness of the sky/clouds contrasting with the mountain tops and forests was too much for it and yielded us a slew of under/over-exposed images. The brights are too bright, and the darks are too dark - evidence of the weak dynamic range. So, I employed my amateur photo editing skillz and tried my best to fix them. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. I didn’t add anything that was not there; I just messed with brightness/contrast/saturation/color balance/levels.
Before

After

More pictures here. They are all similar – clouds, blue sky, deep valleys, towering mountains, forests – but how could you ever bore of those? And if you don’t think the mountains are actually that blue, come visit and I’ll prove it to you.

Jury Duty

Everyday this past week for me included a lengthy visit to the King County Superior Court Regional Justice Center in Kent, WA. Instead of daily solving software design problems, I was to sort out an escalated insurance claim dispute. I showed up for jury duty Monday morning and by that afternoon the case had started.

Queue to the “oh, what a drag, I hate jury duty sorry you had to go through it” comments. Also, queue to the “let’s rejoice for our wondrous blessing of living in a country where we can be selected to serve in the judiciary system” comments. Maybe neither of these professors has ever served on a jury.

Allow me to share my own comments and observations. (Now that the trial is over I can say anything I want)

Over a year ago I performed jury duty by sitting in a waiting room for two days doing nothing of importance (and yes, that was quite a drag). This time, almost everybody was chosen for a jury panel for a trial. My group had 32 potential jurors of which 13 must be selected and the rest excused back to the waiting room. The judge introduces the plaintiffs/defendants and then starts a discussion/QnA session with all the potential jurors, with the intent to locate those who would not be fair and impartial.

I thought I would be excused because I serve on the Home owners’ board and we are in the middle of lawsuit against two insurance companies. The judge and attorneys questioned me about this and determined that I could still be objective. I was disappointed in one potential juror who was very obviously trying to get the boot by spouting off a bunch of vitriolic nonsense and empty progressive rants about individuals versus large companies. What an embarrassment of a citizen, I thought, as the airhead strutted out of the court with her nose in a fashion rag.

With the 13 selected, the trial begins. Witnesses are brought forth and questioned. The cross-examinations are particularly interesting and at times intense. It may be preferable to be a juror with the burden of deciding someone’s fate than to be on the witness seat with sharp attorneys drilling you, throwing out objections, with the judge’s careful eye scrutinizing everything. I would say though that the whole thing went very professionally.

Deliberations took about 4 hours, spanned across two days. I really wanted to take all the evidence and facts presented and construct an undeniable logical proof for the best verdict, but the truth is that you as a juror do not have all the information necessary. Instead, you have to put it all together with imperfect information – and that can be tough for a numbers and logic guy like me who needs all the data. When witness testimony directly contradicts another witness, you have to decide which to believe. I was worried that jury deliberations might be scattered, illogical, and ineffective, however, I was glad to be proven wrong. All the fellow jurors were well-spoken, objective, insightful, and respectable despite the fact that there were some great arguments and debate going on. It was a pleasure reasoning with my fellows to reach a verdict we felt was right.

I will help my country by periodically serving as the most objective, fair, and impartial juror I can be. How about you?

Quick post

I've spent the morning uploading pictures to facebook, but know that not all of you have an account, so here is a sample of what is there that's not here already in backwards chronilogical order
Our spinach and lettuce are being very productive. June 16


A sunset view in Goldendale, WA where we spent this past weekend, June 11-14


Goldendale Observatory


Stonehenge, 15 miles south of Goldendale overlooking Columbia River Gorge


Geometric Shadows at Stonehenge


Maryhill Art Museum, about 18 miles out of Goldendale


Multnomah falls in Oregon on the Columbia River Scenic Byway


More Multnomah


Bridal Veil falls, along same highway in OR


Huge stump in Elwha, Olympic National Park, WA. June 6th


Hurricaine Ridge, Olympic National Park WA


Hurricaine Ridge, Olympic National Park, WA.

More pictures from Goldendale and the gorge are in our "online photo gallery" link.

Bridal Veil Falls, WA-style

While living in Utah, I would often ride my bike on the Provo river canyon trail (or whatever it was called) when the weekend was nice. That trail passes right in front of the Utah version of Bridal Veil Falls. Taking a break there to touch the cool water was very refreshing for a roasting sweaty bike rider.

This week, we decided to check out Washington’s Bridal Veil Falls. As with most of our other hikes, we didn’t know anything about it beforehand and I just pick it randomly from a map.

The forest part of the trail seemed different than those of our other hikes – many aspens and other deciduous trees were dominating instead of the evergreens. I’ll have to come back in autumn when the colors change.

Eventually, the trail forks to either a Bridal Veil Falls viewpoint or a much longer switchback-riddled climb to Lake Serene. Since we didn’t have my hiking poles with us, we decided to save my knees and instead go to the viewpoint. After a brief climb, we unfortunately discovered that the trail was impassable due to snow. So we went back and instead walked along the start of the Lake Serene trail and got some great views of some of the many falls before turning back.

We intend on returning with my hiking poles sometime so we can make it all the way to Lake Serene. Many people on the trail mentioned how beautiful it was and how it truly lives up to its name – a smooth alpine lake surrounded by incredibly sheer and tall granite cliffs. We’ll be back.

More pictures at the picture album

3 years of the Evergreen

This past week brought with it the completion of our third year in Bellevue. Although we come from starkly differing origins (Texas/Nevada), we delightfully consider Washington to be our home now. Enjoy these three lists of three’s -



Some loves we have here in WA:
• Biking to work
• Limitless quality outdoor activities
• My sweet job

Disappointments
• Pikes place market
• Washington state flag. Who would want to fly that ugly thing around? I'm keeping my Texas flag.
• Condo Repair bill

3 things we’re looking forward to here
• Finishing the horrible floor project
• Summer adventure every week(end)
• Departing for the Alaska cruise!

Gratitude

This week has been a roller coaster for me: not getting enough sleep, spending hours doing "business" (phone calls to patients, emails, printing stuff from blackboard) for school rather than getting assignments done, deep cleaning two quadrants in one appointment-let me tell you, that's exhausting!, worrying about this weird rash I have, not having the time or energy to clean the house before Friday when Katie and Anthony were coming over, not getting my part of the group project done, having the weight of a talk for sacrament meeting tomorrow looming in front of me, and not preparing for the midterms and research paper I have due next week-ahhhh!


I could not have gotten though this week without the support of my gem of a husband. He left me a tender message on Thursday when I did the deep cleanings and went to the doctor about my rash. Incidentally, the rash is pitoryasis rosea, which is of unknow cause and will go away on it's own in a few weeks. On Friday I got out of class a bit early, so I was planning to clean the house and start dinner then before our friends came over but when I got home, everything was done! How he had time to do that, I did not know, but he had cleaned the whole house. I realize how much I needed his help, when I thought I had to do all of this stuff myself, after all, it's my school work, my social planning to invite people over, my rash. I get emotional just thinking about it. He is my best firend, and continues to amaze me with how well he knows how to take care of me. Thank you!!

Birthday Hike

View from "Rocky outcropping #3" Usually we stop at the first (here dotted with people) or second one.

Since one day of celebration just wasn't enough, and since it was high time to try a new hike, we hit the trails this past Saturday for a birthday hike. We were hoping to hike a 10 mile trail from Rattlesnake Lake off of exit 32 to Snoqualmie Point off of exit 27. The first part of this hike is not new to us, but the 8 miles beyond Rattlesnake ridge were new. Unfortunately, around mile 3 or 4 the trail was way too snowy for us and we wimped out. There were other people hiking it, but I was having a really hard time keeping my balance and not slipping. So yet again we were defeated by the snowy trails. (In February, we tried to hike Mt. Si and had to turn around because of slippery steep slopes--dan-ger-ous!) We'll have to try this again in a few months or get come crampons. We had a great time anyway and certainly felt the burn yesterday morning. You can see more pictures here.

At our stopping spot to eat lunch before turning around. There wasn't even anywhere to sit :(