Sunday Strolls

It’s been a pretty wet and rainy weekend. But you take what you can get and since I already had campground reservations at Iron Creek in the Washington Cascades, I just rolled with it. I played around with my new tarp, worked on some various apps and web-based side projects, and just tried to enjoy the sounds of raindrops on tree leaves.

This morning it was actually dry, with bits of sun here and there, so I forced myself out of bed, which was a little difficult since I was so warm and comfortable. I wanted to try to get in one of my target bike rides, which was the main goal of the weekend. The Northwest is littered with fantastic forest service roads, just waiting to be explored. I moved away from the Northwest before I got into the biking thing (growing up here, I was mostly just into hiking and backpacking, and my sights were always on the higher mountains and wilderness, not the “boring” lowland forests and road-accessible places).

So, I got my bike all ready, and even skipped my morning coffee to give myself more time before the campground checkout time. I rode a short distance to my road, only to find it closed and overgrown with trees. It’s always a bit of a gamble on these roads. From the map, it’s hard to tell – I want a rarely used, pretty rough road, but it still needs to be somewhat open. This one was definitely not that road. But I did get in a moderately decent climb to get there.

So I turned around, rode back to the campground, and decided to just take a nice Sunday stroll along the campground’s loop path. It was only 1.5 miles, but pretty enjoyable. I forget how green it is up here in mid-June, so I tried to take it slow and soak in as much of it as I could. I even had enough time before that noon checkout time to make a pretty nice breakfast, and to sit and enjoy that delayed cup of morning coffee.

I’ve actually gotten out on two consecutive solo weekends. Last weekend was a little more work-heavy (I’m not really behind on work, but there is more than plenty on the list), but it was actually a pretty perfect mix of work and play. It sounds odd, but I love mixing in work time with play time. Being able to take breaks and just wander around, looking at flowers and interesting leaves. And then get back to working on whatever I was working on.

Last week I hung around Snoqualmie, and camped overnight at a great little dispersed spot that I know of. The weather was much better last weekend, so I was really able to enjoy wandering around camp, and I made it a couple miles out the Rachel Lake Trail for last week’s Sunday stroll.

Hopefully someday, I’ll be able to string together a full summer of work and play out random backroads. But for now, I’ll enjoy little bits of it here and there.