Home of the Huskies

We went for a walk around campus last weekend. The most amazing thing about the Univeristy of Washington campus has to be Rainier Vista.

The campus itself was beautiful too though - lots of interesting architecture.





This building has all these decorative figures around the top. I'm calling them gargoyles - but I'm pretty sure that isn't technically the correct term since I don't think they are connected to the gutters.

I went a little nuts over the gargoyle things.





This is a Monkey Puzzle Tree.




This is the quad.


There was some sort of circus practice going on there.



Well, that's my tour of UW and I think we are caught up on blogging! Just in time too since my camera was full. It's all empty now, which is good because tomorrow I get to go play with puppies!!!

Fo' Shilshole

For Labor Day we went up to Shilshole Bay. These kids were playing in the sand where a little stream made its way to the sound. Doesn't that look like fun? I'm going to have to go back with a shovel.



The ducks were hanging out in a larger feeder stream.

Church camping trip

We went camping with some folks from our new church. (University Presbyterian) The campsite was in the Mt. Baker - Snoqualmie National Forest.

This is where we set up camp - amazing huh?



We took a hike up to Heather Lake. When you get to the top, the trail opens out onto this clear lake and across the way is what I think qualifies as a glacier with all these waterfalls flowing into it. I can't even begin to describe how incredible it was.




Michael doesn't like to have his picture taken.

Harrison!!

My cousin Meris just had her baby. Isn't he just too cute?!



In this one he's thinking "mmm... dinner..."

Great Towns

Our state has some great town names. Here are a few selections:

Acme
Battle Ground
Beaux Arts Village
Bickleton
Concrete
Dollar Corner
Electric City
Enumclaw
Gold Bar
Greenwater
Humptulips
Index
Klickitat
La Push
Medical Lake
Minnehaha
Mossyrock
Nooksack
Oysterville
Puyallup
Starbuck
Startup
Sudden Valley
Town and Country
Tumwater
Vader
Walla Walla


And my own personal favorite:

George, Washington.

Phantom!!

Last night we went to see Phantom of the Opera. Our seats were second row center. Amazing! When the chandelier came down we were right under it. (Hope that doesn't spoil the story for any of you who haven't seen it...) We got our tickets through our apartment building. They said if we went through them we would get premium seats and they weren't kidding.

Random

There are tons of beggars here. It is sort of hard to get used to. I normally go around smiling at people that I pass, but that seems to encourage them. It is also my natural tendency to stop when someone asks for help, but they always just want money and I'm not going to hand out money so that just makes it feel worse. I haven't really figured out how to deal with this, but I don't want to not smile at people or become so hardened that I don't hear someone ask for help. I will say though - so far my favorite pan-handler sign is "Broke Ninja. Please help." And that guy was totally chill. Just hanging out with his sign.

Here are a couple of pics of some of the amazing sunsets we are getting from our apartment.

Wow! Has it really been over a month?

Ok, Ok - I'll post!

Here are pictures that Michael should have posted. He took these hiking with some friends recently.

This is Mt. Rainier from Mt. Pilchuck. I had to mess with the color a bit to make The Mountain show up and it is still barely there. It always get washed out in pictures for some reason.



This is Hester Lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.



More to come!