North Cascades National Park

I thought that there were only three (US) national parks near Seattle - Olympic National Park, Mount Rainier, and Crater Lake.

The other day I stumbled the North Cascades National Park online. According the its website it is very scenic and has lots of camping and hiking with mountains and glaciers. It's only two and half hours away from Seattle too. I going to drag my friends there in the summer to go camping.

Travel Plans

I don't really have much vacation saved up at work, but my plans for this year are:

• Costa Rica - go and see the rainforest and do something a bit different than my past two vacations (which were to Europe).
• Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons - Crater Lake was an awesome camping trip. I want to go to camping at Yellowstone next and Grand Teton is right beside it.
• New York City - I have a friend who's moving there, so I figure I can invite myself for a visit some weekend and see the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Times Square, and all that good stuff.
• Chile - There's a ferry that runs along the coast, which has scenic fjords, and after a few days you end up in Patagonia, which has great hiking at Torres Del Paine. Being south of the equator, the seasons are "backwards", so the best time to go is November-April, which means I would go next winter.
• Portland - I've been to Vancouver and Victoria, which only leaves Portland as the nearby major city that I still need to visit.

I want to go hiking/camping at Mount Rainier and Olympic National Park this year too, as it's been two years since I've visited either place, but they're close by, so it's not really travelling.

Crater Lake

Lots of lots of photos from last month's camping trip to Crater Lake.

To Do List

I can't believe that 2005 is almost over. With work being so crazy busy, I doubt I'll be able to do anything big outside of work before Christmas. So, here are some things that I want to do in 2006:

• Learn how to ski: I use to live where there was lots of snow, but no mountains. Now I live where there is no snow, but lots of mountains. So I should take the opportunity to go skiing at least once. I've only been downhill skiing once and that was when I was in grade six and on a ski hill. (Emphasis on hill). Last year there was little snow in the mountains, but this year is suppose to be a good winter. (Some of the ski resorts are open already).


• Visit Europe: I haven't really gone on vacation this year. My masterplan is to visit Europe again next year. Probably Copenhagen, London, and a couple other cities.


• Learn how to scuba dive: One of co-workers goes scuba diving and gives lessons once in a while. I should join one of his classes.


• Go to another chess tournament: It's been a while since I've played in a chess tournament. (Although I'm playing a game every week or two at work and doing well).


• Visit Crater Lake: I read that Crater Lake has the deepest blue water in the World. It's in eastern Oregon and I'd like to going camping and hiking there some weekend during the summer.

Olympic National Park

I'm terribly slow, but I've finally put up some photos from my camping trip to the Olympic National Park.

A Long Anticipated Weekend

It's been a long and tiring week. I'm glad that I have a long weekend to rest.

Last weekend I went camping at the Olympic National Park with Nabeel and Suor. On Saturday (after some creative exercises involving getting keys to get other keys to recover keys that were lock into someone's apartment), we took the ferry across Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island then drove to Port Angeles on the Olympic Pennisula. (There is a bridge between Bainbridge Island and the Olympic Pennisula). We hiked up Hurricane Ridge then camped at the Heart O' The Hills campground. The weather was okay, but a little cloudy. There were lots of deer at the top of Hurricane Ridge.

The next day, we went to Second Beach (after a short hike) on the Pacific Ocean. It's a pretty good spot for photos, but it was raining fairly heavily the whole time we were there. (Kind of like last time!). I haven't sorted through all my photos yet, but I'll try to post some later this weekend.

On Tuesday I went to a Lifehouse concert at El Corazón with Suor. The setting was very "intimate". (i.e. Small, crowded, hot, and sweaty). I only recognized a small subset of the songs. (I have their album No Name Face, but have not heard either of their other two albums...well that's a small lie, I've listened to their new album once). Overall the concert was good though. (The opening act was decent (for an opening act) too...but we never figured out who they were).

Since my last post about 30 Days was popular, I guess I'll comment about this week's show too. :-) A (Christian) guy from West Virgina goes to Dearborn, Michigan to spend a month living with Muslim family and observing all of their customs, including, wearing a traditional outfit when he left the airport in West Virgina that made him popular with the airport security. (One third of Dearborn's population is Muslim). It was an interesting story, probably the most interesting of the three episodes that they've shown so far. He struggled with his stereotypes (but was open-minded) and (understandably) had a lot of trouble trying to reconcile the Muslim lifestyle with his Christian beliefs (in particular going to a mosque to pray). Next week's episode sounds very similar in it's approach - a straight guy goes to San Francisco to become a roommate with an openly gay man.

More Photos

I put up photos from my convocation as well as my camping trip. So that brings my photo gallery "up to date".

Camping

I'm back from my camping trip with my friends Darryl, Martin, and Austin at Ferris Provincial Park, which is outside Campbellford. (i.e. North of Trenton). But we had to drive to Kingston first to pick up Austin. It was a good weekend. We mostly spent it just hanging out, but we also did some fishing. I've never been fishing before. (Darryl and Martin were the fishers in the group). We caught a lot of small bass ("panfish"). Some of them we ate and some of them we threw back.

I've added photos from Florence, Pisa, and Monaco to my photos page over the past couple days. The only part of my Europe trip left to add is France. Afterward, I'll add some photos from my Convocation as well as from the camping trip.

Ferris

We finally started organized our camping trip for the long weekend. We make a reservation for the Ferris Provincial Park as it was the only park south of Sudbury that had campsites still available for Canada Day weekend. It sounds like an okay, but the boating/fishing/swimming might not be quite as good as we had hoped as there is just a river going through the park.