We started out at the Watts' house. The Watts, for those who don't know, are our good family friends. We drive up to see them or they drive down to see us, or both, pretty much every year. We spent the time mostly hanging around on Lake Washington, where they sail, swimming and sailing all day. It was great. There was a rare heat wave in Washington at the time, so it was in the 90s the whole time - perfect weather for hanging out on the water.
my mom and Margot
Dill
After spending a few days in Seattle, we drove to the ferry and boated across the water to Vashon, the island my grandparents live on. We started off that visit with a hike, chosen by my Grandpa, on the Olympic Peninsula. We hiked about 7 miles, up a mountain and then back down. On the way up, my Grandpa told us a story about the native mountain goats: apparently, a few years ago a couple were hiking on the same mountain and the man saw a mountain goat. Hoping to protect his girlfriend, he moved towards the goat, I guess in an effort to get between it and her. Wrong move. Feeling threatened, the goat ran at the man and gored him to death with his horns (actually I think he bled to death following the attack, but I'm not entirely sure). Well, after hearing that, and seeing a warning sign about the goats at the trailhead, we weren't too keen on meeting any of these fuzzy white creatures.
Not long into the hike, my Grandpa came across this bit of white fur. Goat fur. The soft stuff makes a great substitute for hair!
Once we got closer to the summit, we were lucky enough to see even more goat hair - an abundance of goat hair attached to a family of the animals scaling a rock face. They were right in our path, so we adjusted our trail so as to give them enough space and continued up the mountain. We stopped for lunch near the top, and one of the goats bleated at us from a distant rock until we packed up and moved on - I guess we were in his space too.
those two dots under the black lines are goats
mountain meadow
at the top!
we hiked to the point marked by the black arrow
alpine flowers
bird on a branch
the view from the top
As well as climbing the mountain, we did another small hike to the beach on Vashon and hung out around the town. Vashon is a very sweet little island, and one I would high;y recommend visiting!
river rock
on the beach we hiked to