White Pass, Cayuse Pass, Chinook Pass

 Rimrock Lake, starting point for White Pass.

 Site of the glorious Clear Lake/White Pass XC Camp!

 ki areas in the summer are sort of like wet cats.

 Mt. Rainier with her head in the clouds.

 Not bad for views!

 Looking back up at Chinook Pass. Apparently there used to be a ski area in that bowl! Also the Nat'l Park Service doesn't do elevation signs.

 Cayuse Pass. Scenic.

Snoqualmie, Sherman, Wauconda, & Disautel

Pretty unpleasant.  Long, boring, and I got a flat tire.  Boo.

No elevation sign at the top so I took this from my car.

Top of Sherman Pass - nearly 20 miles of climbing.

 Wauconda, on Hwy 20 near Sherman. I parked the car in Republic (between the two) and did them both in a hard afternoon.

 Looking back toward Omak on my way out to Disautel.  I don't think I can recommend the fairgrounds RV park in Omak either... yikes.

 Nice pass, bad dogs in Disautel (the "town"/group of Arky-style houses a few miles downhill from the summit).  And no people in sight to call them off.  I was so scared of the dogs that I hitched a ride back down the pass with a really nice Canadian family on vacation in Washinton.  They even gave me melon pieces!  I like Canadians.

Coming back down from Disautel.

Southern WA Passes

Knocked off Manastash (why is this even on the DOT's list, I wonder...) on my way down 97 to Satus.  I had wanted to hit the Greek Pastry shop while riding Satus after seeing it in passing (closed) this summer, and was not disappointed.  Baklava & coffee!! 

I stayed the night at a State Park along the Columbia Gorge in Hood River, OR with the intent of going mountain bike shopping the next day.  

Loup Loup Pass

Loup Loup was an easy check-off: only 2:15 total, and I got to pass a gravel truck on the way down.  The weather was lovely coming back into Twisp as well!

"Suffering"

Just for the record, here are some delicious things I have cooked in the last week. "Suffering." Bah. Kelsey exaggerates.

Chocolate chip cookies
Cheese and potato and egg and vegetable thing x 2
Tuscan Cannellini Bean Soup with Cavolo Nero
Lentils and rice

I think today I will make Ugly Homemade Bread. And possibly some more cookies.

Madeline is going to win

Even though I bought an ancient grain for 2 units of demerit forgiveness if I cook it and blog about it.  She will win because I have been unwilling to suffer for the contest and keep buying food.  I made my own refried beans two days ago and they were delicious!  So Mads, you can start thinking about what you'll buy at TJ's... :)

Back to the Basics!

Hi, I eat loser of contest for snack. Also I'm copyright Madeline. I live in Kurama, Japan

...my cooking basics, that would be. I more or less learned to cook when I moved to Japan after college (thank you, dining hall and parents, for feeding me till I turned 22...). Japan is full of food in a box. It's like extra points are given out for every layer of packaging involved in the food-boxing process. Sometimes fresh fruit even comes in a box. Food in a box, however, loses its charm when you can't read the box. There was that time I thought I was buying little pink sweets, and they were actually shrimp chips...

So when I moved to Japan, I not only learned to cook. I learned to cook without food in a box. Even after I started to be able to read the boxes (and after a Japanese-speaking friend told me to just put Cook-Do eggplant sauce in everything), I wasn't sure what to do with the contents of the boxes. Eventually, I did discover the foreign food store, where I began buying things like $12 boxes of garden burgers. I also ate a lot of mochi, ice cream, and roll cakes because I knew what they were. However, I also made stuff. From scratch. Gaijin food that I would normally have just bought in a box in the US. I even tried making peanut butter once, with limited success (I made peanut powder somehow).

For example, the only kind of recognizable breakfast food I could find at my grocery store was All-Bran. All-Bran is weird. Japanese breakfast traditionally consists of fish and rice and pickles and miso soup. I miss it now, but I missed Western breakfast then. So, I learned to make very basic mueslix: mashed up banana, plain yogurt, oats. Other fruits optional. I made myself some mueslix tonight for the first time in ages...now I have a big jar full in the fridge to eat for breakfast for the next several days. And I am happy.