"Do you have a bucket list before you leave Seattle?"

This is a question I have gotten a few times over the last month. And the honest answer is, no, not really. Sorry Seattle, but there isn't really anything you have to offer that I have not already seen or done. There is only one thing I wanted to do before I moved back to the East Coast, and it actually had nothing to do with the city.

I wanted to see the Pacific Ocean.

Now before you say "Katie, you live in Seattle, the ocean is right there!", NO. The Puget Sound is not the Pacific Ocean. Not the same.

Anyways as a final hurrah and a trip to say goodbye to the Pacific Northwest, my friend Hilary and I went on a trip into the Olympic Peninsula for three days.  A lot happened in those three days, some of which I want to share, but that is for later. This is about the ocean and me.

The second night of our trip, Hilary and I set out to make my dream come true. We were staying at Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort in the Olympic National Park, which is roughly an hour and a half drive to our destination: La Push Reservation. That name might be familiar to you if you ever read a Twilight book. My 16 year old self would have been very excited to visit this place for very different reasons than I am now.

Getting to the reservation involved driving through a series of very dense pine forests. That seemed to stretch on forever. We knew we wanted to have dinner at this restaurant in the main town, but we also wanted to make it to one of the beaches in the reservation.

It should be noted we had absolutely zero internet signal this entire trip, so it was mostly us wandering around with a vague idea of things were.

We eventually managed to find the entrance to the trail to make it down to Second Beach, which is the most famous in the area.

You have probably seen pictures of this beach before, an arch in one of the rock formations there is one of the most photographed stone arches in the world!

*cough* This is the arch.

The trail was short and pleasant. It goes through the woods and had a lot of interesting trees that had magnificent root structures growing above ground. There was a steep hill going down to the beach, and when you emerge from the woods you have to immediately climb over enormous drift wood. I am talking fully grown massive trees.

Then there is the beach.

Sand beaches are pretty rare for the Washington Coast (or so I have been told), and this one was absolutely perfect. The wide expanse of glittering sand stretched fairly far in either direction, and just offshore were massive rock islands (not sure that is the right word for this) that jutted far out of the sea. It was, quite simply, stunning. It was a clear and sunny day, and the sun had just begun its descent, meaning everything was very bright (and the rocks in the my pictures are very dark).

There were quite a few people on the beach, but it wasn't crowded. It seemed like people were gathering to watch the sunset.

I was taking as many pictures as I could, but mostly trying to take it in. I was finally at the Pacific Ocean, and was overwhelmed with that feeling you only get when standing on a shore looking out into the endless expanse of an ocean, knowing that there is absolutely nothing but water for thousands of miles in front of you. I felt very small, like a child, absolutely in awe of what was before me. I had to touch it. It's not enough to be there, I had to feel the water in my hand. Spoiler alert, it was cold, but I was absolutely delighted. I ended up chasing the waves back and forth like a little kid, taking pictures of sea foam and otherwise just being a goof.

Very important sea foam

Weirdly enough I am not a water person per say. I am not a strong swimmer, and I hate being on boats, but being near the water gives me energy and puts me at peace at the same time. Living away from water, whether it be a lake, river, ocean, what have you, makes me pretty miserable.

This beach centered me, awoke that deep connection to the land beneath my feet I have always felt and often lose when I spent too much time in a city. I didn't want to leave. Unfortunately, Hilary and mine's stomachs had other ideas. Because of our need to feed, we could not stay as long as we would of liked. However my brief time with the Pacific was not over. As I mentioned, the restaurant we wanted to go to was right on the shore, next to the town harbor.

They had beautiful large windows overlooking the ocean, and we managed to get the last table of the night. The sun slowly made its way towards the horizon, and by the time we were ready to leave, it was a full blown sun set.

A sunset over the ocean. This is something that doesn't happen on the east coast. It is something I have always wanted to see, always longed for. And now it was there, lighting up the harbor I stood in.

I am very lucky to have stood where I stood, and seen what I have seen. I am very grateful to have been able to have this experience (Thank you Hilary for driving me out there), it is one I will cherish forever. When everything is crazy, the world is falling to pieces, and change is rocking my world, these are the memories I cling to, that keep me balanced.

I hope to see the Pacific again someday, but for now, this brief acquaintance will have to do.

Well it has certainly been a while since I wrote here! I took a backpacking trip recently, and wanted to recount my experience as it very well may be the last one I ever do.....

My brother's girlfriend (Emily) managed to win the lottery and get a one night pass to camp at Snow Lake in The Enchantments, a section of the Cascade Mountains (yes, there is an actual lottery for these passes that you have to enter). I was told over and over that this was one of the most remarkable hikes, and that many backpackers dream of getting this opportunity. I was excited, but very nervous. I was also told it was one of the most difficult hikes around. Because of reasons, I was not in the best shape going into this, so I knew it was going to be a challenge...

We left bright and early at 5:45am to get to the trail head, 2 hours away, before the sun was too high in the sky. The drive was nice. We got to watch the sun rise over various parts of Washington as we drove, and we made it to the trail head on schedule. It was a lovely cool morning, and the beginning of the trail was very flat, which gave me the opportunity to get used to having a heavy pack on my back. I have to say the worst part about that thing was unexpected. The grinding into my hip bones throughout the entire trip left bruises that took days to go away.

Eventually the elevation began to climb, and I started to get more and more anxious about what was coming: Aasgard Pass. I had not heard of Aasgard Pass before, but it is a well known feature of this particular trail. 2300ish feet in one mile. This is a quote from the Washington Trail Association about it:
"Thiis “shortcut” to the Enchantments Core Zone refers only to mileage. As far as miles per hour goes, Aasgard may be one of the slowest hikes you attempt. Achieving the pass is a thigh-burning, chest-bursting, eye-popping endeavor that offers as many extraordinary views as beads of sweat that will fall from your brow as you ascend nearly 2000 feet in just three-quarters of a mile." x
This mountain pass is what makes this hike so formidable...for the most part. There is some other stuff I will get to later that also made it very difficult.

We made it up to a beautiful lake, Colchuck Lake, and could see Aasgard pass on the other side. (Sorry for the crappy photo quality. I did not bring my nice camera on this trip as A) my brother high-jacked the battery for his camera and B) it was too heavy/bulky to take with.)


 My brother thought it would be easy going around the lake to the pass....it was not. It was..interesting. There was a lot of up and down over little mounds and rocks, but right before the pass there was the remains of an avalanche. This resulted in us literally scrambling over MASSIVE boulders. It was unexpected, and turned out to be preparation for what awaited us on the pass.
After finally making out of the field of rocks, and briefly getting lost and winding up on a sandy beach, we made it to the bottom of the pass.

My strategy was to go my own pace, and not worry about trying to go the same speed as Matt and Emily. Matt told me if I fell, to scream loudly. Sage advice. On the Washington trail website, it recommends not doing this pass if you have a poor center of gravity and have a heavy pack on. This is for a good reason. It was basically another avalanche field with massive rocks and boulders, but at a 80 degree angle.
I started out pretty confident. Yea it was hard, but I felt I was doing well. I was pretty sure I was gonna make it through this without any problems. As long as I didn't look at how far we had to go, I would totally be fine.

Not to mention the scenery was INSANE. The mountains were being bathed in just the perfect light, and next to us was a ridge called "The Dragon's Tail". If I were to name mountains, they would all be dragon themed, but this one was particularly accurate.

It was shortly after this, and my over confident thoughts of making it through this okay, that we encountered our first mountain goats. I had never seen a mountain goat up close before, and had been warned that they could be aggressive for human urine because of the salt (They crave the mineral...vintage memeing), but no one warned me that they would just be wandering along the same paths that we used. This was my reaction to the first mother/kid pair we saw...


Our strategy for the goats was to group together and move to the side as much as possible so the goats could pass. They seemed to be pretty used to humans, and would just walk right on by like we weren't there. We ended up seeing 5 goats on Aasgard pass.

After the 5 goats, not gonna lie, I was fading fast. We were only half way up and I was exhausted. I had never climbed anything for this long in my life, and was not ready for the quick wall of exhaustion I hit. My brother took to shouting out how far we had left, but the last 500 feet every single step was a fight with myself. The last 200 feet, I could barely move. I would take two steps and had to rest. It was pretty awful. I was sweaty, my hips were on fire, and I felt like I had nothing left in the tank. Eventually, we made it to the top (Matt and Emily several minutes before I did, let's be honest). I was rewarded with this view:
And THIS is an expression to sum up how I felt about the view at the time:

So yea, that was...not fun. We stopped pretty shortly after that to have lunch. I have never tasted anything better than the Clif bar and peanut butter in a packet that I had for lunch that day. It hit the spot in a more satisfying way than any food ever has. It was during lunch that we spotted two more goats, and my brother snapped a photo that enabled me to make my very own meme about the aggressive urine drinking goats of the Cascades...
You can check out my brothers far superior photos at his Flickr HERE. I really recommend you do that, because my photos taken with my phone do not do the landscape justice.

At the top, it was pretty cool. If you think of the words alpine and tundra, that is pretty much what this was. Small snow lakes scattered in a granite wasteland with snow patches and very little vegetation. Throw in the glaring sun and I felt like an idiot for thinking I wouldn't need my sunglasses (or sunscreen for that matter, a choice I would deeply regret later that night).


Blissfully, this part was pretty flat, although the sun was really giving me a headache. We saw a lot of cool things. Water was flowing everywhere, and we had to scramble through snow a number of times.The coolest thing, and I still can't get over this, WE SAW A BADGER. An honest to God wild badger. I was so excited, the little dude was just sitting on top of a rock. I shouldn't say little, he/she was huge. Before I could snap a picture though, they ran off into a hole. A bit more camera shy than the goats...

Eventually we started to make our way down the other side of the mountain and upon a bunch of lakes with names like "Lake Perfection" and "Inspiration Lake". Yea someone was a little too literal with the naming here.
There started to be actual trees, and some shrubs, and lots of good old fashion mud. You can't tell in this picture, but the shallow water in this lake was crystal clear. It was actually kind of freaky how clear it was. I wanted to go into it so bad, but as we still had like 5 miles to go and the sun was not going to wait for us, that would have been a poor choice.

Just an FYI, we were hardly the only people on the trail. Even though you need a permit to camp in this area, it is completely open to day hikers. There was TONS of people. One group was headed to the same place we were, and we had the (dis)pleasure of following them almost all the way there, until we managed to pass them with a few miles to go.

This strip of the trail was actually quite lovely. We were walking on relatively flat land and there was the most gorgeous lakes and ponds in every direction. The bluest water you had ever seen, and the moon was shining over head.




We saw so many more goats, bringing the total to 10. Then we entered a fresh new hell, as we got to the other side of the mountain and had to head down to Snow Lake.

When I say down..I mean down. This part was actually kind of frightening. The "trail" was extremely steep down a cliff basically. We had to have complete concentration with every single tiny step we took, which was mentally and physically exhausting. It was very painful on my knees and my jaw because I was clenching in the entire time.


After to Aasgard pass, this is the part that took the longest. As Emily put it "There is no photo or way you can describe to people to make them understand how intense this is". She said this as I was trying to take pictures to do just that.
The sun was setting, so that added to the drama of it all, as we needed to set up camp before it got dark. Eventually we made it to the bottom, and the trail leveled out. We could walk like human beings again, and I was ready as heck to be off my feet.

After what felt like from here to eternity, we made it to the lake, and after hella more walking to find a camp site, we set up camp quickly, refilled our water, and SAT DOWN. We actually had a really nice campsite, minus something that I would discover later. It was a little piece of land that jutted out over looking the lake. We had gone 11 miles that day. It felt like a lot more.
After we had stopped moving and were digging into the burritos we had brought with us for dinner, I started to feel...off. Near the end of my burrito I started to feel really sick. Matt tried to force me to finish it, for obvious reasons. You don't want food smelling up your camp site and attracting animals, but after admitting to him it was making me sick, he let it go. I decided that maybe what I needed was to lay down, so I head into the tent.

Emily and I were sharing the tent while Matt was in his hammock a few feet away. Emily and I listened to podcasts on her phone for a few hours, and I did not feel better. I eventually decided I needed to walk it off a little (ironic since that is what I had been doing all day), and got up to wander around the camp in the dark.

That is when I saw them. MICE. MICE EVERYWHERE. We had unknowingly set up on top of a mice colony. They didn't go into our stuff, just were running around. They stared at me and I stared back. Little monsters.
 Even though I felt awful, being out gave me the opportunity to see the stars. Emily, from inside the tent, asked me if there were "crazy stars". Well, there were not crazy stars, just a little bit more than I was used to back in upstate NY. The new additional stars were not super bright, they kind of looked like white twinkly mist with the closer ones. The mountain next to use was glowing white (presumably from the moon light although I could not see the moon anymore), and the lake was a perfect reflection pool. In the distance I saw a rotating search light from the nearby town of Leavenworth. (Something Emily looked up after, and was apparently for a man who had been missing for months. A man who's body they found a few days after our hike. ugh)

It was other worldly, and also ccoolldd, so I eventually went back into the tent. I got up two more times to try to walk off my misery. The last time I got up, Matt had woken up. He had fallen asleep quickly and easily hours beforehand, and was startled to see me wandering around. He scolded me for not drinking more water. So I went back to the tent to get more water, and then became 100% certain that I was about to vomit. I very quickly got my shoes back on, darted out of the tent, and walked briskly away from the camp behind a large rock to throw up, which I did...all over my shoes.

Yup kids, I had sun poisoning. Sun poisoning side affects (including vomiting), can sometimes take hours after you have left the sun to occur. After it was over I felt ssoo much better. Poor Matt walked by me with a little shovel in hand to bury it. Bless him. I stayed out in the dark for a little bit longer to make sure I was fine, then went to bed. I wish I could say I slept like a rock, but that did not happen. I was tossing and turning all night. Needless to say I was the first one awake in the morning. It was nice though, I got to see the sunrise...

 Having lived in actual forests, I understand, but having this amount of foliage in the middle of a city is nothing to turn your nose up at either! There are certain cities I could think of...not naming any names....that could benefit from green space like this.
 There were tons of people with their dogs there. One man and his German Shepard walked by and he said to me "Isn't it wonderful having all this nature in the city?" It really is. Plus any opportunity for me to stalk other people's dogs is awesome.
 It is the middle of January, and although there are no leaves on the plants, massive ferns and bright green moss was growing everywhere. I thought winter in England didn't feel real, this was another world!
 The few bridges that went over the ravine were pretty impressive. I really enjoyed this large green one. It had that old time feel that had character; not some giant concrete monstrosity.
And of course, RUNNING WATER. I love visiting places like Utah or Texas, but I could never live somewhere where running water like this is not abundant. I grew up in a flood basin where streams, bonds, creeks, and rivers were everywhere. Back home you cannot go 400m without running into a body of water it seems. In England I lived in the city with the most canals in the world. I am glad Seattle has so much water around, and it is one of the many reasons I wanted to live here.

Although there was plenty of people wandering the paths, there was a delicious feeling of solitude. You couldn't really hear the street traffic, and the air was so fresh and cool. It is a great place to be alone with yourself, and just listen to the stream trickle along. I expect to be spending a lot of time there in the future. A little haven in the midst of my crazy life!

One of the great things about living in the country are farmers markets! And up in my area there is one that is still going through the fall season. They have all their fall harvest goods out, and plenty of pumpkins to go around! It was exciting to get out of the house and be around people, and to see all the things for sale.
By the time we got there I realized I had forgotten to eat anything that day, and bought a blueberry muffin and a fruit and cheese danish from one of the local berries. Both were absolutely delicious!
Outdoor markets are always so atmospheric. I visited so many all over the world in the past year, it was great to be able to come back to one I have visited almost all my life. And it was the perfect time of year for it as well.
If fall wasn't the last state before the eternal death and misery of winter, it might be my favorite season! Fall in the Northeast is the best in the country, in my opinion. I will try to enjoy it while I can, and enjoy the absolute beauty that has been this fall. However it may be a bit hard, it SNOWED all this afternoon! Bundle up everyone! Winter is coming....

 I managed to get to New York Comic Con this year! I went for the first time two years ago, and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. So when I realized I would be in the area for NYCC this year, I immediately bought a ticket. Unfortunately, there was only Thursday tickets left by the time I bought them, so I wasn't able to go to the big panels that happen on the weekend. Still, it was completely worth it. I had an AMAZING TIME.

For anyone who has not gone before, NYCC is nerd heaven. It is larger than the much more famous San Diego Comic Con. Several tens of thousands of more people attend it every year. Every single one a devoted nerd. For those of us mega nerds who often have trouble finding people in every day life who share the same level of passion for our nerdy interests, comic con is home. I was on my own this trip, so I did whatever I felt like doing. The first thing I saw when I walked in was the Weta Workshop booth. For those who don't know, Weta Workshop is the company that was created for the first Lord of the Rings series to manufacture all the costumes, sets, miniatures, ect....I was PSYCHED to see them there. They mostly had costumes from the new Hobbit series, but they had a few things from the original LOTR.
 Really the only thing from The Hobbit movies I was interested in was the War Pig, the true hero of the last hobbit movie :D
 One of the many other things I came in contact with was the USA distributor of the one and only manga/anime that I am a fan of, Tokyo Ghoul. I was quite pleased to see this GIANT poster of the main character. (yes, it is as disturbing as this picture implies)
 NYCC can be very overwhelming, especially for those who are unprepared. I tried to move through the show room floor pretty quickly to avoid an overload. One thing that caught my eye was this giant Iron Man statue. I think it is connected to a Marvel tv show or something. Honestly I didn't pay much attention to Marvel at NYCC, because it seems they didn't care to pay attention to it. Their presence was barely felt this year.
 There was a booth showing costumes from different films as well. They were just reproductions, but still very cool to see up close. They had Marvel and Star Wars stuff.
 I really really wanted to buy one of these Captain America propaganda posters. How cool are they??? This stand was selling Captain America trading cards, covered in fake blood like in the Avengers movie. I seriously considered getting those.
 One of the odd things about NYCC this year was that it was the descent of insurance companies. Nerds need insurance too I suppose. Progressive stepped up their game though. They had their poor employees dressed like THIS (below). You could also tweet them and they would send one of these employees to stand in line for you. I am not sure how that worked exactly, but it was a delight seeing them around. Good on you Progressive.

 My other big event of the day was making it into the Game of Thrones panel. Now, I have some serious mixed feelings about the Game of Thrones tv show, but actress Natalie Dormer was going to be there so I put those feelings aside and decided to go. I made a friend in line for Grumpy Cat who was also on her own, so we went to the panel together. We made it into the room two panels before the GoT one, and after watching a panel for a Star Wars tv show while standing, we got really good seats. Unfortunately we still had to sit through a Walking Dead panel, which I had no interest in. It was worth it, however, because the GoT panel turned out to be amazing. They spent most of the one hour panel taking fans questions, which turned out pretty well. The actors were super funny, it was interesting, and overall I had a lot of fun.
 Natalie Dormer was of course charming and lovely. Someone asked her about her role on Elementary (one of my favorite TV shows), and she talked about that for a while. The cast was very careful to avoid spoilers about the upcoming season, but she may have let slip that her character on GoT, Margaery Tyrell, may perform a "walk of shame" in the next season. Here is (approximately) what was said.
Fan: "My question is, how do you think Margaery would handle doing a walk of shame like what Cersei had to do last season?"
Natalie: "I can't answer that without giving away spoilers"
Audience: "OOOOOOO"
So yea. Probably the biggest hint about Season 6 that came out of the panel.

 I want to finish up with some general views of NYCC. Below, for example, is the line for the Main Stage. Now, the first time I went to NYCC, they did not clear the Main Stage after every event. That meant that people could sit there all day taking up seats at panels they did not care about waiting for the most popular panel of the day (basically exactly what I did for GoT). This is actually a pretty frustrating practice for everyone involved. However they have started handing out tickets for panels at the beginning of the day, and clearing out the stage hall after every panel. So the good news for all these people is that they are all going to get into the panel they want to see.
 When I wanted to get into a panel on the Main Stage two years ago, I waited in this line, which encompassed that entire large room, FOR TWO HOURS. Pressed chest to chest with the people around me and not able to sit down, all for the Agents of Shield panel. I was one of the last 16 people let into the panel. It was rough.

The other main attraction of any comic con is, of course, COSPLAYERS. What are cosplayers you ask? Well they are basically amazing fans who create costumes for their favorite characters and wear them to conventions. Here are a few of the ones I really liked...

 Sally and Jack Skeleton from A Nightmare Before Christmas
 Sexy V from V for Vendetta and Maleficent, I think.
 Esmerelda from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame
And Kaneki Ken from Tokyo Ghoul.

A lot of people ask me if I am ever going to dress up for a comic con and my answer has always been, and always will be, NO. I have no interest in becoming a cosplayer myself, but I do enjoy seeing other people do it.

After the GoT panel, it was getting later in the day, and I had some time to kill before I had to go meet my cousin in Manhattan, so I spent almost an hour standing at a charging station charging my phone. In that hour I met around a dozen people charging their phones, and had great conversations with all of them. That is the great thing about comic con, particularly NYCC. You can grab any random person and know that you almost certainly have a passion in common with them. It is seriously a sense of community that cannot be explained unless you are there yourself. NYCC is one of my favorite events ever and I would love to be able to go every single year.

In the meantime......I have my eyes set on Emerald City Comic Con, the comic con that takes place in Seattle. I am coming for you Emerald City.....coming.for.you.