Adventuring

Last weekend, Ari, Patrick and I drove east into the Cascades to find snow and sunshine. I told Patrick I wanted to get out of the city, and we were considering making the five hour trek to the ocean, or driving north to Deception Pass, but the mountains are so close by, and Ari's house was on the way, & the allure of two puppies was too much to pass up. We drove east and east and east, past the summit, past Snoqualmie pass and the skiers, past wet trees and shrunken piles of old snow.

Until this last weekend, it hadn't snowed in Seattle yet this winter. Even the mountains were dry. The slopes were sparse and the snow was probably that terrible type that is hard and crunchy--the kind that PNWers complain about, but the kind that East Coasters cut their teeth on. Possibly literally. Ari & Patrick & I drove out to one of those weird lakes that line I-90 East, the ones that have old growth tree stumps sticking out in the middle of them, one of the ones that you see on a hot day stuck sitting in the traffic over the pass and want to get out and jump in.
But we found snow, and sun--and I don't mean that heavily filtered kind that we get on winter most days in Seattle. The sun was bright and huge and fierce, that cold warmth that we got on the sunny days in New England. The kind where you need sunglasses, but you don't put them on because it's cold and you're cold and it's been grey for weeks and you turn your face into the sun to feel it in your eyeballs.

We spent a good while at the lake, trying to toss snowballs into a hollowed out tree trunk some distance away, and mucking around in the wet earth underneath the thin layer of snow. We drove to Snoqualmie Falls afterwards, to stand and watch the waterfall for a minute or two, and then headed back to happy hour at Tutta Bella in Issaquah.
This weekend, Patrick and I drove north and then east on Highway 2 for a ways, impatient for the snow and hoping to catch some flakes before they came to Seattle. We found it--somewhere between Monroe and Sultan--and got out of the car for a minute, before the cold and the cows chased us back west. I've been itching to get out of the city recently, wanting a break from city restaurants and bars and drivers and people. For now, while I'm broke (and still reeling from the 520 toll), short drives will have to do. I'm hoping, soon, to turn them into thrifting trips. If there are furs and vintage dresses to be had in Madison, AL, I'm sure to find at least a good coat in Verlot, WA, am I right?