The Schweet Spot Climax!

Greetings!

And now, to wrap up our adventures with the Schweet Spot…

So, it was all well and good that I didn’t have to sleep on a slant that night. However, that really didn’t factor much into the long-term relationship I’ve got going with Insomnia. Yeah, we’re really tight… Got a lot of history together… I’ve tried to leave a bunch of times before, but I just keep getting pulled back into our dysfunctional little relationship. WOO!

ANYhoo – I couldn’t go to sleep. I wrestled with it for a while, but the sleep thang just wasn’t happenin.’ (Even though I supposedly snored a bit that night… >:-) Oops! But anyway, sometime in the early morning, I decided to get up and move my slumber party out to the hammock.

For the record, kickin’ back in a hammock and watching the sun rise through the trees and over the lake RULES. Yeah, I highly recommend it. The only caveat, however, was that because it was so beautiful, I couldn’t go to sleep! HA! Oh well, it was worth losing a few hours of sleep to see that sunrise.

I also took a bit of time to go down to the lake and watch the sunrise from the shore. Wow. That was truly beautiful. The skies were completely clear and the sun was starting to rise, but it was still pretty cold. The sand was basically frozen on the beach and there was ice extending out a couple of feet into the water. Since the water was warmer than the air, there was steam coming off the lake. Between the purpley-pink hues of the sky and the dark, grey-blue of the water, it was pretty amazing to see. It makes packing in a big-ass pack and sleeping on a slant for a few hours allllll worthwhile.

After I checked out the lake and spent some more time in the hammock, Pauly got up and joined me outside. We made some coffee and contemplated what we were going to do with the day. We were taking off that afternoon, so packing everything up was unfortunately looming in the distance. Sigh…

After we kicked back for a while, we decided to eat a little breakfast. Since we STILL had some dinner leftover after my little spill debacle, we decided to heat things up and enjoy the morning. I gotta say, it was good the night before and it was just as good warmed up the morning after. I’d definitely make that again… However, if there are ANY leftovers, I’m not touching them. In fact, I think I should pretty much be put on restriction from ever moving or making ANY sort of contact with open food containers. Hey – you gotta know your limitations…

After we got breakfast cleaned up, we decided to play a little more Frisbee. Since it was a beautiful Sunday morning in a fairly popular hiking area, there were a few more people in the area than the day before. While I was again amazing Paul with my Frisbee prowess, quite a few hikers were traipsing around the area. Ohh, it’s all well and good – I’m totally down with people checking out the trails and respecting the outdoors, but *not* while I’m floundering at Frisbee. It’s cool that people are out and about, but since it was so quiet and secluded the day before, it was just a bit of a bummer to see so many people. But it coulda been muuuch worse, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. Okay – maybe I just don’t want a bunch of people seeing my sucky Frisbee skillz…

Since we had gone down by the beach to play Frisbee, we decided to hang out for a while after I’d exhausted all of my mad Frisbee moves. While we were sitting on the beach, we noticed that there were an awful lot of hoof prints in the sand. Like a herd of elk had been hangin’ out by the shore… Yeah, and they were probably bugling… And then we noticed that there was a rather large and assorted display of elk droppings in the water around the shore. Hmmm…

It was at this moment that something dawned on us. We were basically sitting in an elk toilet! WOO! We were totally sitting right, smack dab in the middle of a giant, elk crap fest!! But come on – how were we supposed to know? I mean, it’s not like there were any elk magazines strewn about or any elk air fresheners lying around… All we saw was a lovely, sandy beach! Yeah, I bet the damn Duck Posse LOVES that gag… Little bastards… (Don’t tell them I said that.)

After relocating ourselves out of the elk crapper, we found a nice spot just a little bit further over on the beach. While we were hangin’ out, just minding our own business, these two dogs just came running out of nowhere! They were hilarious! There was one dog, a golden retriever that would run up to us, check us out for a couple of seconds and then race into the water. Then, he’d flop down into the muddy water (make that, crappy water…) and just sit there, staring at us. Then, he’d jump up and run off like he had somewhere REALLY important to be. He did that a few more times before his owner finally came onto the scene. It was at that time that he was tasked with finding some sort of stick he’d accidentally buried too deep in the mud. It was a total doggy comedy of errors…

When we grew tired of our lakeside view, (our lives are rough) we decided to go revisit the tiny lake. Since we had seen some cool boulders over by the lake the day before and because I had actually REMEMBERED my climbing shoes, I decided to bring them along. We also put together some goods for lunch and decided to go have a nice picnic on this cool boulder that we’d seen. A little over halfway over to the lake, I realized that one of my climbing shoes was missing from the outside of my pack. (Where I thought I’d securely tied them on…) Sigh… What a DORK! Crap.

Okay, so one of my shoes was now missing. Yes, I’d remembered to actually bring them this time and there were some actual cool rocks to explore, but now I’d LOST one of them! ARGH! Yeah, so around we turned to go back and find my stupid shoe. I felt dumb that I’d actually lost my shoe and was totally cool with heading out on my own, personal search party, but Pauly was nice enough to offer his assistance. When we’d basically almost returned back to the other lake, we finally saw the shoe… Yeah, I held them in my HANDS as we turned back around towards the tiny lake. What a loser… Literally.

When we got to the tiny lake, we located the cool boulder and set up shop for a lovely, afternoon picnic. The water in the tiny lake was SO clear! It was this beautiful shade of greenish blue and you could tell that it was actually a lot deeper than it looked. It would’ve been a great lake in which to go swimming… NEXT year! Also, the brush and shrubbery around the lake was absolutely gorgeous. All shades of orange, yellow and red – beautiful! Paul got some great pictures of the area and was even lucky enough to get shots of some grouse. Cool…

As it was actually starting to get kind of late, we decided to head back to camp and pack things up. I had wanted to check out the boulders, but there wasn’t really a good approach on the one that we’d been hanging out on and it was generally getting late… I almost lost my shoe for nothing! HA! Oh well, one of these days I’ll actually do some climbing while we’re camping. Oh wait, that is if I don’t get into another car accident in the freakin’ meantime. WOO!

Back at camp, we got everything packed up and sadly decided to head for home. It was a beautiful day, however, so even though we were leaving, it was still great to be out on the trail. Even if we DID have heavy-ass packs on… Hey, but I guess they were a lot lighter without all the food and water… Always a bonus about packing out of a site.

The hike back to the trailhead was very nice. The view into the valleys was awesome as we got to the top of the ridge. I just love that part of the state… I’ll never get tired of it.

When we got back to the truck, there were a coupla beers still waiting for us. However, as we wanted to check out the sunset, we decided to leave the area and try and find a spot further down the road from which to view the show. As we chased the sun, we just weren’t finding that perfect viewpoint. Crap! And because we weren’t finding the perfect viewpoint, it meant that we weren’t enjoying our traditional, post-hike beer! Not good! What to do?!

Well, since we’d be driving down highway 410 and that goes through Greenwater, which is home to the Naches Tavern, it became our ‘Plan B.’ The Naches Tavern is a great, old tavern, located in the heart of bustling Greenwater, WA. – right off the highway on the way back to Enumclaw. (The Claw.) During the first few years of my residence in the area, I was underage. Yeah, ummm, but that didn’t stop us from trying to infiltrate the innards of the Naches Tavern. (Don’t tell…) However, I will say that I also enjoyed some nice LEGAL outings to the Naches Tavern as well – after turning 21…

I love the Naches Tavern and I hadn’t been there for years. Sure, we both wanted to see the sunset and have a beer, but I will admit to being pretty happy to visit the ol’ Naches Tavern, as well. When we got there, however, I was a bit disappointed that everyone in the place didn’t turn around and blatantly stare as we walked in. It’s a tradition in this bar to do so and I guess I was a little disappointed that tradition was holding out that day. However, in all fairness, I guess there weren’t really a lot of people there at that time… Maybe NEXT time everyone will rudely stare at us! A girl can dream…

So, we hung out at the Naches for a bit and had some food and a couple of beers. Specifically, we had nachos. Nachos at the Naches… Good stuff.

The ride back was nice and traffic didn’t really seem to be an issue. We made pretty decent time getting back to Seattle and while although I always love to see the Seattle skyline, it always makes me a bit sad when I’m returning from a camping/hiking adventure. Oh well – at least we live pretty close to future adventures… And what will those adventures be named?! I’m gonna start thinkin’ about names riiiiigggghhhttt now.

But in the meantime, I’m off to a rehearsal! WOO! Hope ya’ll are having a good one! Until next time –

See ya!

TRJ ™