Green Mountain

I promised to write a separate blog post about our hike up Green Mountain.

If you are local, you have to hike there, you hear me? It's so worth it, albeit a little gnarly with 3,300 feet elevation gain and a total of 8.5 miles. But our seven-year-old daughter did it (hint: pack lots of treats for bribing), and our tiny Shih Tzu doggie did it as well. There was lots of panting involved, but both humans and dogs are allowed to do so when you climb up to 6,500 feet.

It's not only the exercise that takes your breath away. It's the view. Look.

We hiked this a couple of weeks ago, before the wildfires around us (one in Canada, and one right up the road where we hiked) obscured the views with haze and smoke.

On top of this mountain sits a historic lookout with a 360 degree view. It was originally built in 1933 and used for years to house seasonal fire lookouts. In 1987 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. 

On the way up, there are billions of wildflowers, a few small mountain ponds, and large expanses of meadows. 

Let me show you some of the flowers. By the way, my 12-year-old son Luke took most of these pictures, so thanks, dude.

The little lake was cute, and a breeding ground for a trillion mosquitoes and black flies. Did I tell you that the bugs were terrible? There's a reason we love hiking in the fall, when colder temperatures kill those suckers.

Kai's girlfriend came with us. If you want to get to know a person, take them on a hike and see how they deal with pesky bugs, heat, tough elevation, and blisters. The verdict is in, and I knew it even before the hike: I like her a lot! Which is fortunate, because I've never had a teenage child before, and I was dreading the whole dating thing. 

She didn't complain once (as opposed to my little daughter, who whined incessantly about the bugs and steep trail). 

She loves handling snakes, which freaked me out, but more power to her! 

Here's what the Washington Trail Association has to say:

"Once at the lookout, the views are world class. Mount Baker is visible to the north, Buckindy, the Ptarmigan Traverse group, and Dome Peak rise above the Downey Creek valley to the east, with the top of pointy Mount Sinister peeking out behind Dome. Glacier Peak dominates the southern skyline just west of the Suiattle River valley, along with the usual Mountain Loop suspects: Mount Pugh, Sloan Peak, Del Campo, Three Fingers, White Chuck and White Horse.

WTA Pro Tip: Traveling to 6500 feet on mostly exposed slopes warrants more attention to packing than many other similarly proportioned dayhikes might. Bring lots of water, especially in the summer (all the more if traveling with a dog), wear base layers you can strip down to if it's hot but pack something windproof and something warm and puffy if it's cold up high. In the summer you will want bug spray, and on any sunny day, sunscreen and lip balm should be on hand. Don't forget your dog's nose and upright ears, though check the ingredients: zinc oxide is toxic to dogs. Leave time for berry picking if they're in season and more for photo taking. Bring a headlamp."

I hope to see you out there!  And if you're not local, I hope I am enticing you to visit our beautiful corner of the world!

In fact, if you want to hang out with us at our homestead, we have two more spots open for our Homesteading and Wilderness Retreat August 19 and 20!

Mountain peaks, blueberries, goat cheese, and wild rivers

If I really were to document our summer, I would have to post a new blog every single day. So much is happening here on a daily basis, I can't keep up with the pictures. It's marvelous and magical!

The picture below sums it up well, since it contains so much of what's going on.  See my dirty feet?  That's because I weeded the garden barefoot, since I don't mind stepping on slugs.  Except we don't have any slugs right now because it hasn't rained in many weeks.

You see the laundry hanging on the line in the background?  Yup, lots of that going on. I do a load every day, just about.

And the chicken poop on the patio?  Although we try to shoo them off, one chicken in particular thinks she is entitled to live on the patio, since yummy morsels of food get dropped on it regularly.

One day, I decided to tackle the weeding in the garden, which explodes with vegetation this time of year.  Most of the green explosion I encourage, because it's all about veggies, but lots of it consists of weeds (some edible, like purslane and chickweed).  The upper half of the picture below is "before", the lower half is "after".

Here's a before and after picture.  It literally took me two hours to free four of the paths and garden bed from weeds.

So much bounty is coming out of the garden!  It's a grocery store out there, and we gather meal ingredients outside every single day, often multiple times.

Blueberries are cranking, too, and the pesky chickens like to steal some from the low-hanging branches.

I am so happy about the large volume of food being produced on our homestead.  Much milk is flowing, too, and I make lots of chevre and yogurt at the moment.  

Since I'm only milking one doe, I haven't accumulated enough milk to make Gouda or Cheddar yet, but that's okay with me.  It's a nice break, not making ten pounds of cheese every single week like I used to.

We love cookouts by our fire pit in the back yard.  Honestly, almost all of the food comes from the homestead, including the sausages we make with our pork and goat meat.

Our lady duck is broody.  She hides in the Sweet Cicely and lies on her eggs all day, with short breaks to eat, drink and visit with the boy duck.

So far, there are four eggs in the little nest she made.  Our dog Raka has found some of them and eats them, which pisses me off more than I can say, but I don't know how to protect these eggs.

The chance of real baby ducklings might be slim, I'm sorry to say.  Between Raka and other predators, I just don't know if it can happen.

I wish I could wrap the mama duck in bubble wrap as she so patiently incubates her eggs.

Talking of eggs:  Look at the picture below.  Which egg do you think is store-bought?  Hint: Look at the color and texture, and you'll know.

We are finding time for hiking, hanging out by the river with friends, and sleeping out in the forest.  These things are so important to us...

Here is last night's scene, where Steve took all three kids to sleep in the woods without a tent.  I joined them for dinner but walked back home to sleep, because I like my soft bed where there are no mosquitoes...

I am blown away how lucky we are to live in a wild place, where we walk five minutes and get to the best huckleberry picking spot ever by the creek.

Also: weddings!  For July, we have three weddings on our calendar!  And at all of them my little singing group trio is singing for, which is so fun!  I'll put our singing in July's Homesteading in Paradise movie, so keep an eye out for it if you want to hear us sing.

That's us, and we call ourselves "Kitchen Sync", because we usually practice around the kitchen table.

Last but not least, last week's hike was mind blowing, full of granite slabs and high peaks, waterfalls, and awesome company.  Squire Peak (or eight mile creek) is sure worth the sweat to get up there.

Have you gone hiking lately?

One more day... and then it's back to 50 degree colder weather...

We have one more day left, and then our vacation is over, which means we are swapping one paradise for another.  Our own paradise in the Pacific Northwest is 50 degrees colder than this one on Maui, but both paradises are lush, that's for sure.  And Maui has better sunsets and waterfalls.

Still, I am very much ready to go home.  I really miss our dog Raka, and whenever I see a dog at the beach or on the road, I try to entice it over so I can pet it and baby talk to it.  The owners usually give me dirty looks, because I'm quite desperate in my need for a dog fix.

I also miss our amazing drinking water at home.  Here on Maui, we have to buy water in yucky plastic bottles, and it tastes terrible.

I miss eating lots of vegetables and food that we put up in summer and fall.

And I miss hanging out with my goats at our beautiful homestead.

Honestly, I get a little bored doing nothing.  I'm not complaining - I like to relax, reading at the beach, sleeping in, watching buff surfer dudes and hot chicks... but enough is enough.

On this vacation, I've been happiest when we were hiking.  The landscape here is so gorgeous, lush, colorful, delicious-smelling and different, and I'm most blissed out when I get to be in the company of nature.

We went on several hikes to amazing waterfalls, through mind-blowing bamboo forests and palm trees, past hundreds of plants we can't identify.

Nature is surely showing off here.  Luke and I have been taking hundreds of pictures of flowers, and since I can't possibly upload them all and do them justice, I'm sticking to trees here.

Let me show you:

Even with all the hiking, relaxing and swimming, we get some work done.  I am teaching Eva how to read, and by golly, a vacation won't get in the way of that.

I've also been having coaching sessions with clients on the phone, which is really amazing - working on the beach!

The whole family is tanned, sunkissed, or sunburnt.  We will enjoy the heck out of our last day, and then we'll hop on the airplane and wave goodbye to Hawaii.  It has been beautiful.

Without any more words, let me sign off with pictures to send some Aloha  your way.