On this trip, Byron and Christine were generous enough to let Sam and myself sleep in their bedroom. Christine and Byron had an air mattress in the living room. On Saturday I woke up to find them both “plugging in” together.
After Sam and I made a quick run to Top Pot we all poured into Christine’s car and headed southeast towards Mt. Rainier. Our first stop was Snoqualmie Falls. The waterfall is quite beautiful. It kicked up a similar amount of vapor as the big falls we had seen in Thailand and made photography over the edge questionable. However, unlike Thailand, I didn’t have the opportunity to break another toe as the access to the foot of the falls was closed.
We headed to the adjacent Salish Lodge for lunch. Our window was about as close to the falls horizontally as you could get in the restaurant. The look down over the cliff was both breathtaking not just from the beautiful scene, but from fear of falling.
After eating we headed to The Summit for snow tubing. We’d planned to go tubing about a week earlier when Christine squashed our snow-shoe plans by telling us just how dangerous it could be to do that this time of year. In my head I jumped at the idea of snow tubing because I had such great memories of doing it on the hill across the street (and other places in the neighborhood) when I was a kid. Unfortunately the Summit runs were very cut and dry compared to the ups and downs (ramps and cliffs) we piloted our tubes over in the “old neighborhood.” It was still fun, though, especially for Sam who had never seen more than a tiny sprinkling of snow in person.
Back in Seattle we stopped by the Farmer’s market to pick up some things for the dinner that Sam, Christine and Byron would prepare (I was the only non-chef in the group I guess).
A little while later dinner was served. This surf n’ turf meal consisted of a large salad, vegetables, a plate of sauteed mushrooms, two grilled steaks, six oysters, fifteen grilled shrimp, two steamed dungeness crabs, garlic butter, rice and white wine. It was impressive, for sure, this was about three meals in one for Sam and myself.
After gorging on all that and trying to help clean up (I felt bad that I couldn’t aid in the preperation of this meal) I snuck away to try and take some night shots out of the many windows of their apartment. The shot below is the best I could get out of their bedroom window looking southeast toward the downtown area. There were many tchotchkes on the window sills, so stabilizing the camera was an issue and it became impossible to get a clear shot from inside the bedroom (the window without the netting wouldn’t open).
Shooting outside on the balcony was a much better experience since I could wrap the gorillapod around the railing and set up a long exposure. The shot below is looking northeast from the balcony outside the dining room.
The shot below is looking northwest from the same balcony.
The shot below is from across the street from the balcony looking due west.
Byron and I walked down to the end of the street that ends perpendicular to the 5 freeway.
