Volunteer Park & Crystal Mountain

A sunny Friday evening in town called for an adventure, and between Lance, Val, Matt, and myself, only one of us had been to Volunteer Park before. This is rather pathetic, because it's right here on Capitol Hill, and pretty cool.

We grabbed blanket, frisbee, snacks, vino, football, and games and rondezvous at the park. We lounged, snacked, played, and explored. There's a neat water tower, and a conservatory. Go Seattle.

And from Val:

After that, we went to a delicious Ethiopian Restaurant on Cap Hill. Ethiopian food is great, and Val and I had just finished reading Cutting for Stone, so we were inspired.

Saturday, Matt and I made our way up to Crystal Mountain. Despite it being the nicest winter/spring in my memory, the mountains had record breaking amounts of snow, and Crystal is still open. The weather was perfect (sunny and warm) and the snow was pretty good - top half of the mountain still had great coverage. We enjoyed a short day on the slopes and some lounging in the sun afterwards. After all my years at Crystal, I never knew you could see Mt Adam & Mt St Helens from there in addition to Rainier, but you sure could!

Among other weekend activities, we hiked Mailbox Peak Sunday morning - one of the steepest I-90 climbs, logging 4000ft of elevation gain in 2.5 miles. Unfortunately it started raining about a third of the way up, and never left off so there are approximately three photos of the whole adventure. And really, it's almost entirely in the trees. Good training though, otherwise, skip it.

All from Val:

Sunday evening we had a little birthday celebration for Matt and our friend Danielle.

Portland & Willamette Valley

This past weekend was bookended by birthday parties on both Friday & Sunday evenings for some fabulous friends. In between, we snuck off to Portland, OR. Matt's aunt & uncle Diane & Barry live there and we thought it would be fun to pay them and their city a visit. Weather was clear skies and 83 and 89 over the weekend so we couldn't have asked for anything better!

Saturday after the drive down we wandered town for a bit and met up with them at a food cart Pod. If you're not familar with Portland, they're very well known for their food cart culture. This is no sketchy taco truck, this is the good stuff. This time we settled on El Cubo de Cuba, which was quite good, though (naturally) a bit disappointing compared to our memories of the real thing. After that we took a long walk along the riverfront, and then hopped on the tram that goes between two of the OHSU campuses. The tram is only a couple years old and it felt funny being tourists in a city we'd been to a million times, but the views were fantastic. Not only was it a pretty unique perspective on the city itself, but we had perfect view of both Mt. Hood & Mt St Helens, and a peek of Mt Adams. (Hoping to check the last of those, Hood, off our list next month!).

St Helens back right

Hood

We had dinner at AquaRiva on the riverfront which was quite good, and then headed back to the house for desert and beverages on the deck.

Sunday we packed up a picnic basket and made our way to the nearby Willamette Valley wine tasting region. It's kind of a tradition when we hang out with Diane and Barry. We've spent a good amount of time in wine areas the last few months, but one of the reasons it continues to be so much fun is the wineries are typically paired with sunshine and some great views. We were treated to some really great ones on Sunday and took our time at each of locations. We visited Bergstrom, Colene Clemens, WillaKenzie, and Elk Cove. We actually enjoyed their wines in the order too, Bergstrom being the best. Colene Clemens had the best views.

Bergstrom