I (heart) the Pacific Northwest

Today the New Media department of the Times went out for its departmental picnic to Carkeek Park, which turned out to be unexpectedly cool. Part of it was that we had a raffle with some pretty neat prizes--things like SIX DAYS OFF. Neither spazzkat nor I actually won anything, but we were still pretty impressed that our head departmental person unexpectedly doubled the number of days she handed out (because it was originally supposed to be three), just because New Media has apparently had that good a year. So go us!

But really, the best part of the park was being out in the sunshine and the fresh air with a stunning view of Puget Sound I'd never seen before. I realized that I've been in this city for fifteen years and had never once been down on the actual beach of the Sound. It was very beautiful, a broad and open beach full of huge driftwood logs, stretches of gravel strewn with seaweed that looked (amusingly) exactly like spinach, and a vista of the Olympic Mountains off in the hazy distance. There was a helpful sign along one of the walkways with various significant peaks labelled, so I got to identify The Brothers, Mount Jupiter (is that a cool name for a mountain, or what?), Mount Constance, and others. We saw a couple of herons fishing along the water's edge, and we heard the barking of sea lions, though we didn't actually see them. We thought perhaps that some of the large brown blobs way further down the beach might have been the source of said barking. I am totally using that park in a book at some point--just a question of when and how.

We wound up leaving early, and I talked Paul into walking out to the park entrance rather than trying to bum a ride to it, since it was less than a mile and we cover more than that distance on our morning commute. That let us walk along a trail that ran past a very nice creek and eventually make it up a steep hill to the park's Education Center, and on the way, I promised Paul that he could blame me if we got eaten by bears. No bears consumed us, but we did notice as we reached the front of the park that the winding road leading back out to the surrounding neighborhood was very much pedestrian-hostile. Fortunately, a few other passing coworkers in their vehicle offered us a ride, so we got a lift out to the bus stop we needed to hit to get home. They actually offered to take us back to the office, but it would have taken us about the same time to get home from there, and I wanted to see what parts of the city unfamiliar busses would take us through.

The answer to this was the Greenwood area, which was full of tiny, charming, and doubtless hugely expensive houses with more stunning views of the Sound. The first of our busses dropped us off right at Greenwood and 145th, the most notable detail of which was a pho place named Pho Kim. (If you're not sure why this is funny, note that the proper pronunciation of 'pho' is a lot closer to 'phuh' than 'faux'. Try reading it out loud.) Then, on the 345, we went past Shoreline Community College--where solarbird will be taking classes as of the end of this month. The bus then turned into the 331, took us through the more familiar territory of the Costco by Aurora, and finally onto Ballinger Way to bring us past the Lake Forest Park shops before turning onto Bothell Way to drop us at our usual bus stop.

So a day full of sunshine and fresh air and not a single bear. I love this place.

Wednesday evening miles: 2.9
Thursday miles: 3.0
Friday miles: 3.2
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1344.9
Miles out of Rauros Falls: 35.9
Miles to Isengard: 448.1