Deluxe week

Oh wow, it was a crazy week. I’m only just recovering. And I’m talking about last week, not the one we’re in now.

It started off Friday with a bachelor party. Me and some dudes went up to Vancouver BC to send Dustin off with style. It was a good time, we ate, wandered, laughed, drank, and did some obligatory bachelor party things. Good times.

Sunday night after the baseball game, I got dropped off at YVR (Vancouver’s airport) where I caught a flight to San Diego (SAN, in case you’re checking). My bro (brother) picked my ass up sometime after 1am, we went back to his place, “caught up” (read: drank beer and vodka drinks), and got the rest of his crap packed up the next morning. Then we drove to Portland, stopping to lunch with the grandparents and to crash at our mom’s pad in Modesto.

After spending a day in Portland getting Ryan moved in, we drove up to the northern Olympic Peninsula to go backpacking with pops. Dad chose the spot, we got our permits, bear box, tackle, and grub, and made our way to the trailhead in the Elwha Valley Friday morning.

We stayed at Boulder Creek campground Friday night. We’d been looking forward to the natural hot springs that evening after the short hike in, but they turned out to be pretty shallow and fairly gross. So we skipped the hot springs and made a few fruitless casts into Boulder creek. It’s fun to have steak the first night, so we did, and I made up some couscous to go with it.

After breaking camp Saturday morning, we began what was expected to be a relatively light climb to Boulder Lake. Reality frequently chooses not to reflect expectations. It was several miles straight uphill. Not a terribly difficult hike, but at least two of the three of us were in pretty mediocre shape, and it was fairly tough. But we made it, and once there we found a gorgeous pair of campsites on a small peninsula on the lake. It did snow a bit that night about 100ft above us, but my little Hubba was impervious.

We also caught a bunch of trout, so there was no need to eat the freeze-dried chicken we brought.

Dad cooked’em. Notice the Pasta-Roni. We had the noodles, then cooked a couple trout in the leftover sauce…it gave a nice italian sorta seasoning to the already yummy fish.

We hiked back down Sunday, had lunch at Boulder Creek, and headed back to dad’s to take advantage of the hot tub, since the hot springs were less than satisfying. I think Friday I wasn’t sore anymore.