lauralh | that's that

Friday night, like almost every night, Reg and I were playing with our Droids. Went to bed early so we could get an early start. Well, we didn't wake up till 11am or so, and got on the road by 1pm. It was pouring rain on I90 - actually turned to snow over 2000ft. Very annoying. But whatever, we used the Droid navigation and speed trap alerts to successfully make it to Umtanum Canyon Recreation Area in under 2 hours.

We mostly sat around for a while, since the weather wasn't so awesome, and made fun of people hiking in jeans and clearly-never-used packs. When we finally did go on the trail, a bunch of lousy college students were ahead of us with Tallboys and flannels. We gave them the evil eye, as did other hikers coming up, and walked off the trail for a bit. Found a bunch of clay pigeons, and some old apple trees, and the kids turned around. So we went back on the trail and walked some more. It was raining on and off, so we didn't go far. We did see a few tents - right on the riverbank, ugh. And a Corgi tied up by the tents, ugh ugh, while the campers were nowhere within earshot. A bit past that, we stopped at a fallen tree to sit and eat an orange. We then heard a crying baby further up the trail, so we decided we ought to go back. Also, Reg was worried that the college kids were up to no good, as he had been in college, and would break into our car. They did not.

There's a hanging bridge at the beginning of the trail, and on our way back I grabbed it to steady myself, and got some nasty splinters in my right middle finger. Spent about twenty minutes working on it with a needle and got one mostly out, but it hurt me so much I just didn't want to play anymore. So I just read till we were ready to drive back. I was driving this time. We were under a quarter tank, but the gas in Ellensburg was like $3.10/g so we decided to stop at the Safeway in Cle Elum. Unfortunately, that was even more expensive, so we only got 6 gallons. Plenty good enough to get back. The weather was still awful over the pass, snowing most of the way, but when we descended it wasn't even rain, and the clouds were gorgeous. Reg changed Dead Meadow (which had been playing the whole time) to The Gaslight Anthem. I was sort of sleepy so this was a welcome change. I turned it up and sang along and did not fall asleep, and then we got home, and showered.

Sunday we had a nice walk around Ballard then a little BBQ of spicey hot dogs. We were going to watch the Banksy movie, but the version Reg downloaded was not a real one. So I put on In The Loop, a fantastically hilarious British satire of the pre-Iraq War leadup. Reg found it too painful, but I loved the angry cursing guy.