Quick Trip to Seattle

 

We made a trip to Seattle for husband to see where daughter and her husband live. We flew there!

Daughter's husband got us into the Sphere! What a special place with plants and creatures from the Rainforest. 

We also got to see Amazon's neighborhood with its interesting art work.

We explored Fremont neighborhood, ate lunch there, and got to see the waterway. 

After Fremont, it was two hours of a surprise treat, a unique spa.

It is one private spa area that you shower off first, then soak in the wooden hot tub, Japanese style. After a long soak, you are prompt to move into the sauna area. The sauna had no seating and the floor was hard. One is to wait for the room to get hot and then wait for the ceiling to turn red and the room to get light again, but we got too hot waiting. Next bath is the cold plunge in the tiled tub. It was so cold, that I needed to cool down a wee bit before doing a super quick plunge to my shoulders. After that it was the warm stones. While lying on our backs, we watched the clouds forming in the blue sky above us. 

We even hiked the beautiful, but noise Snoqualmie Valley trail. It was noise because of the rifle range down in the valley, just below the trail. The trail was once a railroad bed. this is a photo of the Tokul Creek trestle. 

Just one of the many lending libraries found around the neighborhood.

This one was interesting and clever! To open the door you pull the handle, the cup handle. This is my favorite of all the lending libraries that I have seen. 

Not a Total Fiasco Trip

 First trip to see McArthur Burney Falls with a bit of excitement! 

Since it is a six hour drive to the Falls, we stopped at Red Bluff Recreational Park just off of I-5 for an overnight and rest. The park is right by the Sacramento River with three miles of trails and a California native botanical garden. 

While hiking the trails, we saw this California King snake, a non-poisonous snake.  There were lots of birds at the campground too. 

Next day, we drove to Burney Falls to see the wonders of such a beautiful falls. The Burney Creek flows over the top of the falls and continues down to Britton Lake. All the other water flowing down is spring waters. 

There are two layers of lava formation. Where the spring waters comes out defines the layers. 

You could even see springs flowing on one of the hillside across the creek, next to the falls.

The other slope was a complete hillside of lava rocks. 

We took the trail down to Britton Lake, which is a very large man-made reservoir. We were the only people hiking on the trail. The campground was very quiet too with only five campers, mainly retirees. 

After a peaceful and restful night, we decided to hike a portion of the north-bound PCT.  The trail starts out in a grove of Ponderosa Pines with some firs, then the trail pararells a road that goes by the lake. 

The road had a sign saying no trucks. We saw a large semi driving down the road and shortly afterwards we heard the beeping of the semi and then saw the truck slowly backing up to get back off that road.

 The road leads to the dam, which doesn't allow trucks over it. We walked across the dam.

And down to the Pit River, where during high waters kayakers can put in. The Pit River flows into the Sacramento River. The PCT continues on from the top of the dam, but we had gone three miles and it was hot in this area; so, we headed back to camp.

Now for the FIASCO!

While settling up camp, we noticed one of the trailer tires was loosing its tread.

Luckily, we had no major blow-out while traveling. We replaced the bad tire with the 13 year old spare, but didn't feel comfortable driving on a spare that old. While changing tires, we discovered that our car jack isn't designed to be used with the travel trailer; so, we were again lucky that a fellow camper had a jack that worked. We were also lucky that in Burney was Les Schwab Tire Center, just six miles away. So the second day before hiking the PCT, we headed into town to get a new tire and a jack for the travel trailer. Now, we aren't done yet! With new tire on and 13 year spare back in where the spare sits on the travel trailer, we decided to cut our stay short and head home. We had seen everything and done all that was planned. While hooking up trailer to car, I noticed that the other tire was showing signs of failure. Yup, back to Les Schwab for two more tires, the spare got replaced too!