We placed some new flowers at the wall at church for Dad, attended the service and then headed over to Yea’s Wok, which is apparently an institution in the Newcastle area. The food was great, and Mom ended up with leftovers that would last for days. My last chore was to rip apart the wreath…
Probably the highlight of Natalie’s visit last month was taking Mom to the Cat Cafe in Kirkland. It is run by a local humane association with the intent of adopting out all the kitties. I scheduled an hour session, and Mom certainly got her fix!
On the way home, I surprised Mom and took her to the Westport Winery/Sea Glass Grill. Seafood again, and it was excellent. They also had a distillery and a great gift shop, a mermaid museum, and were hosting the upcoming Mermaid Festival. It’s a bit of a detour, but a great stop. Mom did a…
I was able to sneak in a trip up to see Mom and was also able to book a cabin at Iron Springs for a couple of days so we could spend some time at the ocean. We planned on it raining, so we had all the appropriate rain gear ready! When I arrived, Mom…
Here it is a month later and it dawned on me that I hadn’t finished the posts on my Mexico trip – OOPSIE! On the way off Orizaba, we stayed for the evening again at the little compound of the Orizaba Mountain Guides. On the way back to Mexico City we had a great stop…
Pico de Orizaba (Volcán Citlaltépetl), commonly known as Pico de Orizaba, is the highest mountain in Mexico and third-highest in North America, reaching 18,491 feet. After climbing Sierra Negra, we headed back into town to eat lunch and pick up our gear for the 2 hour drive up to Piedra Grande where we would be…
Sierra Negra is a subpeak of Orizaba and was our next acclimatization climb. Sierra Negra is located within the Pico de Orizaba National Park. The mountain is the site for two of the world’s premier astronomical instruments, the Large Millimeter Telescope and the High Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory. We drove from Puebla to the little…
After climbing La Malinche, we dropped back down to the colonial town of Puebla at 7,100 feet. We stayed in a really cute boutique hotel. And had more mole for dinner! The next day we packed all our gear in the van and then headed off on foot for a walking tour of Puebla and…
Joel and Alison's Excellent Adventures Part 2 