Lake Serene, Baseball, and Missing Kitty Shenanigans

Can rainbows redeem my lack of blog entries in a couple weeks?
At Camba's recommendation, Alan and I hiked to the scenic Bridal Veil Falls and Lake Serene yesterday. It was a gorgeous day for it, and in keeping with my promise to myself to rein in my schedule, I had a whole day off to enjoy the outing. Good thing, too, as it being the last day of ski season at Stevens Pass made Highway 2 an absolute mess to get back on in the evening. Alan and I wound up stopping in the tiny town of Gold Bar for post-hike burgers to try and wait out the traffic jam heading back west - an effort that helped mildly, but which we supplemented with GPS navigation to make our way back on winding, county roads rather than sitting in standstill traffic on Highway 2. (Appropriately, Cake's "Long Line of Cars" came on my stereo's IPod shuffle during all this.) Overall, the drive back was more or less a trial effort in our plans for summer of 2011 to drive Alan's 1968 Chevelle from Ohio to Seattle, avoid interstates and chain restaurants, taking scenic state roads instead and exploring Mom-and-Pop places the whole way.


Bridal Veil Falls.
But back to the hike itself. We had a phenomenal time on the mountain - gorgeous, sunny weather that greeted us at the trailhead with spring warmth, but rewarded us with cooler breezes in the denser, shadier forests toward the top.


The route we hiked, about 8 miles roundtrip, traversed everything from scenic valley overlooks off the sides of sloping mountains to dense old-growth forest, from picturesque, cascading waterfalls to deep, slippery snowfields.




Understandably, there were many others out on the trail, but we also had large stretches to ourselves, including a quiet, secluded bench by the side of the still-snow-covered Lake Serene at the top.


In other adventures of late: We went to our first Mariners game on Saturday evening, and watched a decent victory over Detroit. (Sadly, I had to work until 3 p.m. and so missed out on the Sounders' triumph over Kansas City earlier that day.) We walked to the stadium from our apartment in the pouring rain and even soaked as we were by the time we got there, felt lucky to not have to mess with stadium parking.


Although I still maintain that soccer games are approximately 300 times as exciting and exhilarating to watch as baseball games, I nevertheless enjoyed the novelty of what was probably my second professional baseball game ever :)

And, in misadventures of the week...Chloe has been getting herself into all kinds of reckless trouble. Two days ago, we returned home to find that she'd somehow managed to more or less strangled herself with a plastic bag (notably, with a "Keep away from infants and small children" warning label on it...but what of cats?)


And this morning, we slept in and had a conversation a bit like this:

Alan: Hey, did you hear that racket Chloe was making in the kitchen last night?
Me: (Laughs) Yes...she's crazy.

Then it slowly seemed to dawn us both that it was late in the morning and no kitty had come pawing at our faces for breakfast (a daily event that almost always chronologically beats my alarm clock.)

Me: Chloe?

And...nothing. I got up in horror, searching the apartment high and low, before realizing we'd left a tiny window in the bedroom just barely cracked to let in the breeze last night - and sure enough, there were tiny kitty pawprints in the dust on the ledge outside of it. My heart sunk.

I can write about it now with some lightness, but let's be honest - I was a serious wreck this morning, walking dejectedly around the block with Alan, shaking some food in a tupperware bowl and imagining all the miserably, lonely mornings ahead without my beloved kitty cat. Our neighbor across the hall saw us poking around behind the apartment and mentioned that Chloe had jumped up on the ledge of their bedroom window at about 6:30 this morning, scaring the living daylights out of their dog, Lucy. They hadn't seen her since.

After several laps around the block and no hope in sight, Alan and I returned to the apartment. Plodding up the staircase to our back porch, with tears just on the verge of pouring out my ducts...there she was: Chloe, wedged almost completely out of sight, down between the back stairs and the adjacent trellis. There were leaves and twigs all over her face, her claws were out, her body taut and shaking slightly. Not a motion had been made on her part when we'd shaken her food container multiple times within a few yards of her. Our best guess is that Lucy must have barked up a storm this morning and scared Chloe so badly that she'd stayed frozen in hiding there until we found there.

Here I'd been imagining her having all sorts of adventures in the big city, feasting in dumpsters, nuzzling strangers' ankles and trotting off down to Pioneer Square without me...but there she'd been, about eight feet away from our back door, waiting in frozen terror for God knows what. Regardless, I'm relieved to have my kitty back home safe again, doing somersaults all over my lesson books as I attempt to prep my tutoring lessons. I can only hope her kitty shenanigans will mellow back out in the coming weeks...


Postscript: Trees in the Northwest are awesome.