Rodgers in Seattle Blog: July 2022

Sunday, July 24, 2022

Joseph Completes the San Francisco Marathon !

On Sunday, July 24, Joseph completed his first marathon, a hilly course in San Francisco! He started at 5:40am, and was done just after 9am. Mary Jo and John were able to follow on an app for the race.

Joseph crossing the Golden Gate Bridge around 8 miles in to the race

Running through Golden Gate Park, close to his apartment

Final stretch!

Mega-Hike to Pete Lake and Beyond!

On Saturday, Henry and Dad took what wound up being one of their longest hikes in recent memory, a 15-mile hike to Pete Lake and beyond.

The Pete Lake trail is a somewhat obscure hike east of the Pass north of Roslyn. It was about an hour-forty-five minute drive to the trailhead, and then a relatively flat hike to the lake, which is a big backpacking destination, so most of the other hikers were toting large packs. (We also saw a few horses on the trail, as it's a somewhat popular horseback-riding destination.)

The trail was well-maintained, with several shallow streams to be forded. And the lake was beautiful, with snow-capped mountains beyond it. We made very good time to the lake, so decided to go on beyond it, on to a stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail, which goes from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. We wound up hiking to a nice clearing with some waterfalls coming down that was stunning!

Hike to Talapus and Olallie Lakes

On Sunday, July 17, Henry and Dad took a hike on the near-side of the pass out I-90 to a pair of alpine lakes, Talapus and Olallie. The trail was fairly crowded, but it was a very nice hike as both lakes were nestled in the mountains and were beautiful!

Cougar Mountain Trails Completed !

On July 16, 2022, John and Mary Jo completed their 18-month quest to hike all the trails in Cougar Mountain when they did a final 5.5 mile stretch filling in the gaps they had remaining!

We had started on January 1, 2021, and, with a bit more than 35 miles of trails in the park, expected it would take us a while to complete. Taking a hiatus later in 2021 for MJ's Chemo, we picked it up again in early 2022, with one of the larger challenges piecing together an approach so as to not leave big gaps of trails needing to be done far from trailheads, which would require very long hikes. The last few hikes we did as one-way, meaning we'd park one car at one trailhead, and another car at another trailhead, so we could maximize our hiking miles rather than having to loop back to the car.

We completed all the trails at 'Shy Bear Pass' and took a rare selfie photo to mark the occasion!

Our completed hiking map!

Saturday, July 9, 2022

Europe Train Trip - Part 5 of 5 [Netherlands]

Our final stop on our journey was the Netherlands, where we rented a car and stayed in an Airbnb about a half-hour southeast of Amsterdam on a lake in a town called Loosdrecht. The house we stayed in was wonderful, with a patio right on the enclosed harbor of the lake, a kitchen for us to cook in, and was right across the street from a nice grocery store.

We spent three nights at the house. The first day we got to the house from Brussels, got settled, and had a top-notch sushi dinner right on the lake, a short walk from our house. The second day was a day for us all to catch our breath - no early-morning start and no planned activities. We wound up driving down to Utrecht, a small city about twenty minutes south of us, where we rented bikes and rode out in the Dutch countryside, seeing a pair of windmills. We cooked dinner at our house that night, steaming some local mussels over pasta, along with some Gouda cheese and local herring from the North Sea.

The third day we went in to Amsterdam - we took the train from a nearby town, Breukelen (the origin of Brooklyn). In Amsterdam we took a wonderful guided canal cruise on a small boat with a captain and ten people (and some wine and Dutch cheese!), had lunch at a cafe along one of the canals, and then visited the Anne Frank house. A bit exhausted, we got takeout from a local Italian restaurant.

We woke up on the following day, our final full day in Europe, left the house, and toured a bit more of the Dutch countryside. We went to Kinderdijk, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as it is the best grouping of windmills in the Netherlands, including about twenty windmills along the river. From there we drove through Rotterdam and then The Hague, the de facto capital of the Netherlands which has a nearby beach town where we walked along a sandy North Sea beach and then went back into The Hague and visited the International Criminal Court, where John and Henry sat in the gallery for part of a trial for someone from the Sudan who is being tried for war crimes (though the session was in closed session, so we weren't able to hear any of the proceedings, just watched them). From there we drove by Leiden, which was a fitting final stop for our tour - it was where the Pilgrims sailed off on the Mayflower setting off for America four hundred years earlier.

For us, we would head to American the following day - we stayed at a hotel connected to the airport, had dinner, and then woke up early for our ten-hour flight home! An exhausting but unforgettable journey!

View from the patio at our house in Loosdrecht

According to Jack and Henry, among the best sushi they've had anywhere

Biking to windmills outside of Utrecht

Mussels fest

Our rental car for our final four days of our trip

Our canal boat

Amsterdam

The windmills of Kinderdijk

The waves of the North Sea at Scheveningen, near The Hague

The International Criminal Court at The Hague

Leaving the hotel at 6:30am ...

... and arriving back in the U.S. about sixteen hours later !

Europe Train Trip - Post 4 of 5 [Brussels]

We had a relatively short stop for location #4 - we knew we would end in Amseterdam, but to get there from the Alps was a two-day trip, so we chose Brussels, which was about three-fourths of the way there. So a relatively long journey on Sunday, day eight of our trip, starting with a one-hour bus ride from Chamonix to Geneva (allowing us to set foot in Switzerland; we actually saw the hotel we stayed in nine years ago when we went to Switzerland on our first big family summer trip), followed by a train trip to Lyon and then a longer TGV ride from Lyon to Brussels. We got on the bus at 8am and arrived in Brussels around 5:30pm, so a long day.

We only had the rest of that night and until lunch-time the following day in Brussels, but we stayed right near the Grand Place, which is known as one of the most beautiful city squares in Europe, and it definitely lived up to it! We had a great dinner right on the square, and then the following day walked around the city a bit and also visited the European Parliament building, the headquarters of the EU.

Brussels is known for its beer!

One of the stretch of gilded buildings on the Grand Place

City Hall in Brussels, on the Grand Place

European Parliament "hemi-cycle" - which is the

main assembly room

Europe Train Trip - Part 3 of 5 [Chamonix]

After Paris, we headed down to the Alps to spend three days in Chamonix, a quintessential ski town nestled in a beautiful valley in the shadow of Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe.

From Paris, we took a train to Bellegarde, just outside of Geneva, which unfortunately was delayed a couple of hours, forcing us to miss our connection. They had a bus ready for all of us who were headed to the Alps, and we took that for another couple of hours before getting to St. Gervais a la Bains, from which we took a train to Chamonix.

Our hotel was a charming inn a short walk from the train station, and each room had a balcony overlooking the town and mountains. They served a wonderful breakfast each morning!

Over the three days (really two-and-a-half) in Chamonix we spent an afternoon walking around the town, and then went up to Aiguille du Midi the first full day, which at 12605 ft of elevation is likely the highest elevation we have ever been at, and where we looked down on Vallee Blanche, a classic ski run down a glacier surrounded by sharp-toothed mountains. We followed that by a hike along the "Grand Balcon Nord," overlooking the town of Chamonix, to the Mer de Glace glacier, and we then took a cog railway back down to town.

The following day was luckily the clearest, most beautiful weather day we had on the entire trip, and it was the day we planned our long hike. We took up the La Flegere gondola, and then hiked to a series of alpine lakes, including the Lacs des Cheserys and Lac Blanc. While parts of the hike were fairly crowded, we were able to get some less crowded spots, and all-in-all this was one of the most beautiful hikes we have ever done.