Beginnings

So...here's the basic story of why this blog exists. My husband and I have had a few friends pick up hiking recently and their adventure stories made us want to give it a try. After taking a bajillion photos on the first hike I realized that I would need a place to record our attempts both for my faulty memory and as an easy way to look back at where we've gone.

Going even further back (once upon a time...), my parents are avid hikers and raised me to be the same. With them, I have trekked over much of Washington state and parts of Oregon. These were mostly day hikes, but we did go on one 3-day backpacking trip to Enchanted Valley in the Olympic Mountains when I was 11 or so. As a kid I was very much gung-ho for these trips, but by my early teens I was a sulking monster who had to be dragged along against my will each weekend. By high school, my parents had all but given up (who can blame them). That rebellious attitude toward the activity seems to have stuck, unfortunately, and I now only go occasionally on a short hike when asked to do so as a "present" for some family birthdays.

My husband and I go car-camping annually, but never really the "roughing-it" type that many consider real camping. And we've hiked the short trails near our house in Kitsap county on rare occasions. There's something really sad, though, about living is such a beautiful area and never seeing any of it beyond the weeds along the highway on the way to work each day. This site will hopefully motivate me to move beyond that and better appreciate what a wonderful place I get to live in.