Laurabelle's Blog

I didn’t know it then, but yesterday was Mountain Day. Mountain Day is a traditional holiday at Mount Holyoke College; on some beautiful fall day, students wake up and find out that it’s Mountain Day and classes have been cancelled. Traditionally one climbs Mount Holyoke, but whatever the activity, the holiday is always better for being a surprise. Even alumnae are so attached to the holiday that the Alumnae Association sends out emails every Mountain Day.

I didn’t know yesterday was Mountain Day, but I climbed a mountain anyway. Mount Holyoke hardly deserves that name, actually (it’s only 878 feet tall), but Jeff and I climbed the mountain, Mount Rainier. We neither started at the bottom nor reached the very top, but we climbed more than three times Mount Holyoke’s height.

This weekend Jeff and I hiked a section of the Wonderland Trail at Mount Rainier. The Wonderland Trail winds a 93-mile circle around Mount Rainier, and some day (maybe soon) I hope to do the whole thing. (But not yet!)

This time we planned to start from Longmire and hike northwest along the trail with Mirror Lakes as our eventual goal. We were to spend the first night at Pyramid Creek, then hike up to Mirror Lakes the second day and come back down to spend the night at Devils Dream. On the third day we would hike back out. We thought it was a pretty good, conservative plan. It’s only about 3.5 miles from Longmire to Pyramid Creek and 2.2 from there to Devils Dream. Mirror Lakes are another couple of miles beyond Devils Dream (but they’re relatively level miles—relatively).

That was the theory, anyway. As we all know, practice is always its own creature.

You can find our proposed route on the Mount Rainier National Park Trails Map (look toward the lower left-hand corner). Also see another hiker’s description of traveling essentially the same section of trail. Finally, the Seattle Times has a nice set of pages about the Wonderland Trail.

A few days ago I gave you the holiday bullet points. Today you get the slide show.

I knitted Christmas presents for a number of people, but I only have pictures of those I sent to Ralph and Lori. These I finished and mailed at the beginning of December, so I didn’t even see them at Christmas (even though I saw Ralph and Lori). Lori’s birthday present was a pink, flower-shaped cotton chenille washcloth. I made a number of these in various colors, but I trust that the partial duplication has not bothered anyone so far. I gave a bar of scented soap with each washcloth.

Lori’s Christmas gift was a hat and scarf in a brioche pattern, with blue and white Lamb’s Pride bulky wool yarn. In some respects it was a pain to knit, since the pattern is effectively double-layered and thus takes twice as long to knit. However, it was easy enough once I got into the rhythm, and I am very happy with the results. I hope it will keep Lori warm in the cold Pittsburgh winter.

I knitted a checkers set for Ralph. This includes a checkerboard, a bag for the pieces (plastic buttons), and a bag to hold the set. The checkerboard is double-sided and reversible, which was interesting to knit. I also included a rule and strategy book for checkers, since I wasn’t sure whether Ralph played checkers.

Snow-bound Mount Rainier is spectacular from the air. I took this photo from my window as the plane passed by on the western side of the mountain.

This cute little house is on the grounds of the Gruene Homestead Inn, where my family stayed in New Braunfels this December. We have stayed there several times while visiting my grandmother, and I have fond memories of it.

This is my grandparents’ headstone. The date of my grandmother’s death has yet to be attached to her side of the stone. The inscription reads:

Fred Burdette Curry
US Army WWII
Jan 31 1912 – Mar 13 1998

Mary Baker Curry
Loving wife and mother
Apr 23 1912 -

I’m feeling a lot better this morning than I was last night. I woke up in the middle of the night, needing to use the bathroom, legs screaming—but Jeff woke up when I whimpered in pain, and he brought me a glass of water for my aspirin. The aspirin made me feel much better, and this morning I’m almost back to normal (though most emphatically not ready to get up and do it again!).

I’m too tired to blog right now, even though I really want to. I’m too tired, and sitting up is too painful. (Note to self: 1700 feet of elevation gain in 5.5 miles, round trip, is not good when one hasn’t been hiking in over a year, and that somewhat mild.) But I remembered my camera, and it took glorious pictures, so I will share them with you tomorrow.

That is, if I can pry myself out of bed in the morning. Jeff wants to go to church, but I’m really not sure I’ll be able to make it. The day was perfect, the hike was absolutely spendid… but I wish I weren’t feeling such severe consequences.

Last October I went hiking at Mount Rainier with Mary Messall (of AFP fame) and a group of her people from UPS, and it was absolutely gorgeous. I blogged about it, and with Mary’s permission I uploaded a couple of pictures that she took with her digital camera, but I lost the entry when the server died. I thought I had lost the images too, but luckily I found them still sitting on the iSchool server. (Lesson: don’t delete stuff in random places on different disks. Backups come in very handy, even if they’re inadvertent.)

So I’m reposting the pretty photos. Jeff, these are for your benefit too. Rainier was blazing that day! Thumbnails link to the full image; be warned that the mountain is about 90 KB (and worth every pixel!).