Anyways, I just went back out to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and I grabbed some cameras to shoot video and timelapse the whole time. It was a lot of fun. We hiked out to Rachel Lake and then the Rampart Lakes. It was a pretty challenging hike, especially since we inadvertently went off trail and hiked up the side of the cliff instead of taking the normal trail up, but the scenery made it SO worth it!

Here’s a look at the trip.

Airbnb Yacht on Lake Union in Seattle

So sitting in Portland we decided to rent a yacht from Airbnb. One of the fun parts if you’ve never done that before is that they actually have several different ones to choose from which gets you to think of all sorts of fun questions you’d never thought of before. It’s not if you want to stay on a yacht, but moreso what kind of yacht you’d like to stay on. How many bedroom would you like? Would you like wood trim or lighter white interior? Would you like something luxurious? What part of town/the water would you like to be in?

Of the ones available I picked this one because it had a lighter white interior rather than a wood grain interior because it looked more appealing. Funny to see the reasons that you’d decide on one or the other. Amusingly enough, this wasn’t even the place that we spent the majority of our time in the end.

Upper deck of ship, looking out the back

The ship is docked in a great location on South Lake Union. It’s got a great view of the city and the lake as well as a bunch of other cool watery stuff.

Sunny view towards downtown

Ahead of the ship is Bill Gates’ mobile helipad. It’s docked here and when he needs it, it floats over to his house to pick him up and take him home.

Bill Gates’ mobile helipad

This is at the next dock over. In the foreground you’ll see a few of the dragonboats docked. They’re these long paddleboats with 20 paddlers, a drummer, and a steering person, and they have these big races out on the lake. At the end of the dock you’ll see a float plane.

The planes like to land literally right next to us at the end of the dock.

Float plane landing near the boats

The way they land, they come in really hard, almost like they’re dive bombing into the water. It’s pretty awesome. Here’s a look at one coming in when we went up to a coffee shop to get wifi. (No internet on the boat unless you tether off your phone.)

The pilots here are ex Alaskan bushplane pilots so they’re well trained and can place the planes exactly where they want. The landings are really cool. They come in steep and at the last second pull up to drop down more gently. Really fun to watch, especially when they come in in rapid succession.

Our boat is on a private gated dock. Open the gate and there she is.

Gate

You have to kinda jump from the dock onto the ship, heh.

Entrance to boat

Brand new this ship cost a cool million dollars. It was built in 2000 and apparently boats depreciate even more than cars so I’m not sure what it’s worth now, 14 years later.

The ship is billed as a luxury yacht, but I think it’s more of a party yacht. A lot of people who come and stay bring food and drinks that they can’t take back due to going to sports games, hopping on a plane elsewhere, and so on, so you get tons of the remainders of all sorts of drinks. A few more shots worth of various liquors, assorted beers with everything including lousy cheap beer and higher quality microbrews, some hard ciders, and so on. Because it’s all left behind, you’re able to enjoy whatever you like which is pretty sweet.

When you enter from the rear you find the living room area and the galley, aka a kitchen.

Galley

Things are a little different on the boat. If you want to go enable the stove, for example, you have to go over to the AC and DC fuse panels to start enabling the stove, fans, lights, and heating elements. Both panels were a hodge podge of switches that look like this and you have to call up the owner to walk you through it.

AC switches

The stove light shorted out and tripped everything off so we weren’t able to use that and had to troubleshoot that issue to be able to cook.

The fridge has these special locks that’s designed to make it really hard to accidentally open so that when you’re out at sea, they don’t just flop open and everything falls out. What this means is that they’re incredibly hard to close and often get accidentally left open (we had to hip bump the door to give it enough force to close) and you have to pull really hard to open them which is harder than you’d think considering the handles are hard to get a grip on.

Fridge and freezer

(It also didn’t help that someone before us had left the door open which messed up the temperature management stuff and caused the fridge to leak, hence the damage and towel under the fridge.

When I first got there I went out the side door to check out more of the ship and when I went back in, the door refused to close. Figuring I was just missing something obvious, I called the owner about that and apparently it was an issue that his handyman didn’t fix properly. He guided me to a wrench set tucked behind the couch so that I could go and fix his door for him so it was close. This was pretty early on so I was pretty enthused about getting to fix things on the ship and get to see what the experience of being on a boat is like. Little did I know that it was just the beginning… :p

I remember someone joking years back about the word “BOAT” being an acronym because it stands for “Break Out Another Thousand.” Things break a lot and when they do, it’s pricey. Everything is more expensive on a boat than it is on a house.

The boat has three different levels. The bedrooms and bathrooms were all downstairs.

Downstairs

The master bedroom had its own private bathroom and laundry.

Master bedroom

(Due to the fast turnover he didn’t have time to get the sheets on the bed before we came so we had to do that ourselves.)

Above the master bed you have a mirror which is pretty cool.

I stayed in the secondary bedroom which looked like this:

Secondary bedroom

You’ve got two portholes on either side (you can only see one on each side because I couldn’t back up enough to fit everything in).

On top you have a translucent hatch. I’m sure it’s cool if you wanna stick your head out like a gopher sticking his head out of the dirt or something, but it because a skylight right over your face that wakes you up when the sun comes up in the morning so you’d naturally wanna get up when the sun rises. It also shines in from one of the side windows and is extra bright thanks to the reflections off the water.

The second night water started condensing on that hatch above the bed and started dripping down, even though it wasn’t raining or anything. What this meant is that when you lay down in bed tired and ready to go to sleep, your pillows were wet and it’s constantly dripping right on your face. I didn’t want to bother fixing this so I just moved over and slept on the side of the bed while droplets fell a few inches from my head.

Hatch at sunrise

The temperature had dropped significantly overnight so it was COLD. The heater broke while we were there so we put on plenty of clothes and blankets. The sheets I had in my bed smelled like urine. Awesome. Fortunately there were other sheets available.

One great thing about the beds is that while I felt kinda woozy from the rocking back and forth, occasionally stumbling and hitting furniture with my legs and wondering why I’m having trouble standing and then remembering I’m on a boat, you don’t feel the movement when you’re laying down. Sitting down is in between. You feel it less than standing and don’t get as much motion sickness, but being horizontal on a boat is ideal.

Lots of the door handles were broken and not working properly and apparently it’s been that way for months based on the reviews online. In fact Glenn got stuck in the master bedroom at one point and couldn’t get out. Luckily after playing with the door for a while we were able to free him before I had to break the door down to get him out.

Other than all that minor stuff, most everything else seemed to work alright. lol…

Some things I simply had to learn. The toilets on a yacht are a bit different than a normal one. They’re smaller and the water goes up higher so there’s a much higher likelihood of splashes. There’s also a pedal that you use to flush and refill the toilet.

Yacht Toilet

Press the pedal down for 2 seconds to flush, lift it back up for 3 seconds to refill. Down 2, up 3. If you don’t refill it it’ll actually burn out the motor in the toilet so you definitely have to refill it. When you flush, you actually hear this suction sound in the walls over and over. It’s called a vacu-flush I believe, not a normal toilet.

One evening I tried to use it and it wouldn’t actually flush. It would just continue to fill up higher and higher. Given that it’s a small toilet, you only have so much room before it overflows. Turns out there’s a button on the wall that turns off the toilet’s vacuum suction thing. It’s designed so that at night it doesn’t make noise and wake someone up when they’re sleeping. I hit the button from “Run” to “Sleep” when searching for the light switch in the dark and didn’t realize that I turned off the toilet, or that that was even possible, lol.

Toilet run and sleep buttons

Good times…

When the sun comes up from the east, you can get a view of the ship aglow from one direction.

Yacht at sunrise

Midday, the sun is up in the sky and up ahead of the boat which also created some nice light.

Yachts in the early afternoon

As the day progressed and the sun set over the horizon (note how the land rises up in the distance. This happens in every direction.), we got some sweet orangey light in the skies.

Yacht at sunset

At night after the sun had set, the moon would rise up in the distance. It was quite beautiful, way more beautiful than I could get from an iPhone photo.

Yacht at night

There’s plenty more that I could say, but hopefully this is headed in the right direction of shortening these posts. Maybe not.

On a fun final note, after finishing up our stay here and letting the yacht owner know about the issues so that he could fix them, he kindly offered to give us another night for free. Gotta save that one for when our trips aren’t already being paid for!

Over and out.

Glenn, Kai, and Emily dancing at the Portland Saturday Market

Embassy Suites

The first night in Portland was going to be just a quick stay. Glenn would be arriving late that night from Seattle and I’d be coming over after meeting Chris Hadfield. We were gonna stay there and then head out the next morning so not a long stay. That evening when I got back I immediately wanted to start processing and uploading the video of Chris Hadfield’s Q&A, mostly just uploading the whole thing as well as individual questions.

They had a room service menu and I thought, “ooohh! I haven’t had room service in ages! That sounds like a fun experience!” The prices were very reasonable too which made it all the better. Since drinks are almost always a better deal from a grocery store than any bar, I found a small one a block away and went over to pick some up for now and for later. The grocer was very friendly and kind. I went back up to my room, ordered a burger (hooray no sales tax in Oregon!), and sat down to get a little work done while feeling really grateful for all these fun little experiences that keep stacking up.

The room itself was quite fancy shmancy. Here’s the living room area.

and here’s the two queen sized beds we go. Again, fairly standard for a nice hotel.

The following morning we got up to treat ourselves to one of the best parts of this hotel… the breakfast!

So you know how many places offer a continental breakfast that’s basically cereal, muffins, OJ, and coffee? This… wasn’t that. You were in this gorgeously decorated area with a friggen fountain right in the center. You had loads of fresh fruit (even avocados!), tasty scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and oodles more. One of the best parts? A custom made-to-order omlette filled with whatever deliciousness your sweet little heart desires.

She was an absolute pro! Cooking multiple at the same time, adding just the right amount of ingredients, flipping the omlettes in the air absolutely perfectly, making them so delicious and cooked just right… She was amazing. This was absolutely the highlight of the breakfast and they tasted incredible.

Bopping Around Portland

Emily and Kai came over and we all went down to the wonderful Saturday/Sunday Market going on downtown. It’s even bigger than the weekend markets we have around Seattle. The weather was stunningly beautiful, fall colors were everywhere, and we checked out lots of different vendors, tried some really delicious ciders (my favorite ciders I’ve found so far and I usually don’t really like them) as well as found some really good wines and desert wines. One of the malbecs and some of the creative desert wines were especially delicious.

There were lots of street performers around and Glenn and Emily who are wonderfully free dancers started cheering and dancing in front of one guy playing a trumpet and an accordion and Kai jumped right on too while people walking by started watching and smiling.

We also found one really talented guy playing several different types of didgeridoos and the dancing continued there too, this time with more adults a kids jumping aboard too.

Didge player at the Saturday Market

Hotel Monaco

After Emily dropped Kai off, we went to go check in to our next hotel, the Hotel Monaco. I was a bit confused by the name at first. Monaco? Morocco? Which one is it? Ah, Monaco. What’s someone from Monaco called? A Monacan?

Anyways, this hotel was awesome. Great idea, Emily!! Thumbs up.

From the street it’s fairly nondescript, just like the last hotel.

Hotel Monaco from the street

You’ve got friendly people outside who, when you’re ready to walk in, click a clicker in their pocket and the doors automatically open for you. Pretty sweet.

Their lobby is pretty fantastic. I couldn’t really get a good pic of it that encompasses everything, but it’s wonderfully decorated.

Hotel Monaco lobby

Beautiful, isn’t it? There’s lots of fun things here which I’ll get into in a bit.

This hotel is very pet friendly. It’s even animal-themed. There’s animal stuff everywhere and they have a resident hotel dog, a friendly puppy named Daphne.

You’re welcome to bring your own pet too. If you didn’t or you don’t have one and you’d like a goldfish companion, all you have to do is ask! lol…

Goldfish companion

A short while later there’s a knock on your door and here you go! I named this guy Little Poseidon. Because even a goldfish companion needs a goldfish companion, we asked for a second one.

Anchor and Little Poseidon

Little Poseidon liked to swim around quite a bit. The second one who was lighter in color liked to hang out at the bottom of the bowl so I named him Anchor.

One of my favorite parts of the room was actually the robes. At Hotel Ballard in Seattle they had normal robes which were insanely pleasureable to wear. I get now why people wear robes. They feel amazing against your skin.

The ones at this hotel were heavier and thicker. The awesome part of these is that they were animal print robes!

Animal print robes

The room came with two, zebra and leopard print. We wanted a third one so we all had one so Glenn called down and asked for another animal. Since he’s taller, the tall option was a giraffe robe, lol… It’s actually designed for NBA players. On a normal person it goes down to about your shins instead of your knees.

(We were gonna get a pic of all of us wearing the robes but didn’t get around to that.)

You’ll see there’s also a yoga mat there. In addition to the regular live TV, adult movies you can buy, new movies you can rent (for $17!!!!), you could also roll out the yoga mat and watch the yoga channel.

Yoga channel on TV

This hotel liked to charge for lots of stuff. Snacks and drinks from the minibar they’d charge quite a bit for. Valet parking? $38. Even the Teddy Bear that was on the beds, $35 if you wanna take it home.

Beds & Teddy Bear

Even the water bottle on the desk between the beds you had to pay for. Quite a bit in fact. However, this water bottle actually has a name! Meet Fred.

Fred the Water Bottle

Fortunately though, not everything you had to pay for. Some things, like the goldfish companions, were totally free! For example, one nice free thing was that they had a power strip right on the counter between the beds. Sounds silly, but it’s way better than pulling furniture out of the way and unplugging lamps so you can plug in your phone!

Power plugs by beds

Speaking of this piece of furniture, it was actually really weird! It was built like it had several drawers in the front, but they don’t open! They’re fake drawers we found out!

Glenn trying to pull the fake drawers open

In addition to the free fake drawers, there was a bunch of other free stuff that was far more useful. For example, want a bike and helmet to go bike around the city! Just ask! They’ve got ’em!

Free bikes

In the evenings they would offer free drinks in the lobby. Wines, ciders, and beer, along with some nom noms like crackers and spread, along with some goldfish crackers! Surprise!

In line for drinks

They also had a warm fireplace going and a bunch of games like massive Connect 4, Mario Kart Wii, and ridiculously oversized mega Jenga. You could also paint and they’d provide the paint, canvas, and easel. One great part was having a piano that anyone could play so people would regularly walk up, sit down, and start playing. It was wonderful. It’s amazing how people can just sit down, totally ordinary people you’d pass on the street without a second glance, and they’d start producing this beautiful music. What a treat to see people’s gifts come out, everyone from little kids learning to adults who’d been playing for years. Naturally Glenn and Emily came up and started dancing to the music some more.

Glenn and Emily dancing in the hotel

While they were dancing, there was a facepainter there offering free face painting! I felt like doing something a little silly so I went over to get my face painted. Since it was an animal themed place, I asked for an animal and decided on a tiger. Given that I have a beard that takes up most of my face, I actually no idea how it was going to work out. It was fun to talk with her about what I wanted. She had some samples and I really liked some of the asymmetrical ones. She said that one of her favorite things to do is to just be creative and try new things. I figured that was a bit risky considering that she was going to try something brand new on my face, but it sounded like fun and I wanted her to have fun trying something new too so what they hey, let’s do it!

Ariel facepainted as a Tiger

It actually felt fantastic to feel the brushstrokes against my face. You can feel the big brush for the base colors, the thinner brush making swirls and wisps of black, and even the brush that dropped yellow under my nose and into the mustache area.

I went to Matt and Julie’s Soul Gathering right afterwards, face paint and all, which was the main reason we came down to Portland this weekend. It was a spectacular talk, as always. This weekend’s talk was all about pain. A really great approach towards it.

I gotta admit, going to an event with lots of people with a bunch of facepaint drew WAY more attention than I liked. heh… I prefer things being pretty chill and low key in general, especially in social situations, and it was quite a bit more than I was wanting.

(For Halloween I went flash mobbing through town dressed as Bacon. I didn’t do a photoblog post about it, but everywhere I went I kept hearing “Bacon!” “It’s Bacon!” “I love Bacon!” It turned out to be a really popular costume, far more attention grabbing then I ever anticipated. The past few weekends have definitely helped me confirm that I have no interest in becoming famous and very recognizable. )

Ariel flash mobbing as Bacon for Halloween

So anyways, back to Portland, after the soul gathering we went out to grab some food and take a stroll around town.

Glenn and Emily out for a walk and admiring the scenery

We also went over to check out the Portlandia statue since I hadn’t seen it before. It’s the one they feature in the TV show.

Portlandia statue

It’s actually huge in person and pretty startling at person when you see it. It almost jumps out at you when you look up for the first time and it’s towering overhead.

The next day Glenn and Emily went out to bike around the city and I went to go watch Interstellar with a friend of mine who I’d met online years ago but as of yet hadn’t had a chance to hang out with in person much. Good people, good experiences, good times.

If you haven’t seen Interstellar yet, it’s AMAZING!! It’s got a lot of space travel type stuff like Contact with Jodie Foster, and this goes beyond. Not only did they consult lots of scientists and physicists to go into things like Einstein’s theory of relativity, illustrating our understanding of wormholes and theoretical physics, and showing space travel on the big screen, but they even started exploring higher dimensions and more evolved beings, even going so far as to discuss how the guidance at higher dimension comes through love. Are you kidding me!? This stuff is being shared on the big screen now!? So cool to see this stuff come to light.

It’s definitely worth watching!

After the movie I headed back to the hotel and we all met up again, made some new friends, went out for tasty pasta and deliciously creative ice cream, then came back to play more games with our new friends. By this point we were all pretty tired though so we headed off to bed shortly thereafter, heading back out to Seattle the following morning.

What a great trip.

Chris Hadfield speaking on his book tour on Nov 7th, 2014

So one of the things that made Chris Hadfield famous and got him in the public eye is that he picked up a camera and started posting onto Twitter photos of the earth from space. They were epically beautiful. You can check out some of them here.

He also started shooting short videos of everyday stuff that becomes incredible when it happens in space. Check out some of those videos here.

(Seriously, if you haven’t seen the photos or any videos, pause reading this blog and go check them out in those links above.)

Here’s a music video he shot from aboard the ISS.

He published a book called An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything which I pre-ordered and read as soon as it came out. It’s an incredible read about his take on life, what it takes to deal with risk and fear, about having a positive outlook on life, stories from his experiences, and just generally cool bits of wisdom that come from his life experience.

He recently released another book that featured his best photos that he shot from space, along with quick blurbs sharing what you’re seeing and why it’s so special, and hearing him share his take on life only makes you fall in love with our beautiful planet and with humanity that much more. He was in town this weekend for a book tour and book signing for this new book, titled You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes: Photographs from the International Space Station.

Chris Hadfield is coming to town? I’ll get a chance to meet him and see him speak in person? I GOTTA DO THIS!! He was going to be in Portland Friday and Seattle Saturday. However, I was going to be in Seattle Friday and Portland Saturday. haha, hmmm… Since this obviously wasn’t gonna work, I decided to take the train down early as I mentioned in my previous post so that I could make it in time for the Friday evening talk. Glenn was going to drive down later that evening when I was already down in Portland.

I get there into town about an hour and a half before the event starts (plenty of time) which turns out to be a great decision for a variety of reasons which I’ll get into in just a moment.

Since I get there was some extra time I had available, I grabbed a bite to eat and then went over to my hotel to drop off my bag. Well, unlike all the other places that we were staying in, there was some issues and the person that’s saying for our hotel trips form the company that flooded my home hadn’t actually paid for the room yet so I couldn’t actually go up. Unbeknownst to me, this turned out to be fantastically beneficial and again I’ll share why in just a bit. A little annoyed by this at the time but figuring that everything can have cool benefits, I decided to just head over to the event way early and grab a seat.

I get there about 45 minutes before, thinking the place would be pretty much empty, but it was PACKED! Seriously. There were chairs everywhere but at this point it was already standing room only. Pretty stunned I start making my way over to the other sid eof the room to find a place to stand when I see a seat in the very front row that doesn’t have a jacket or a book on it, holding its place. I walk up to the seat and ask the people sitting next to it, “I’m sure this is a ridiculous question being that this is the front row and there has to be someone sitting here, but I gotta ask. Is there anyone sitting her?” Turns out the answer was NO! OMG! SCOREEE! A few chairs down in the front row there was another seat available, lol…

If you’re ever at a jack packed event, go try out the front row. It may unexpectedly work out in your favor.

A friend of mine who initially told me about the event arrived shortly thereafter, about 20 minutes before it started, and sadly she wasn’t able to get in at all. By that point there was a huge line leading out the building and they’d stopped letting people in altogether. WOW… Keep in mind that this is at Powell’s, the largest independent used and new bookstore in the world, with something like 4 floors or something crazy. A bookstore!!

Because there were so many people, they were actually handing out tickets. The sooner you got there, the lower your ticket number, and the sooner you could get in line for the book signing. That way the people who got there sooner would be able to get their books signed earlier and benefit from having gotten there earlier.

While waiting for the talk to start, I chatted with the people next to me and we shared stories of watching rocket launches, stories we liked from Chris’ books, the unfolding of the space program, some of our favorite photos from space, and so on. Great people.

Periodically a guy would make an announcement about the tickets and make sure that people who’d entered recently had picked up a ticket as well.

Once it was finally time for everything to start, holy shit, there’s Chris!!

Chris Hadfield speaking in front of the Space Shuttle and Soyuz

He’s actually more slender in person than I figured. You must have to be to be able to fit into the space suits.

If you’ve never watched any videos of him speaking, it’s absolutely worth doing. Not only is he downright hilarious, but he is incredibly inspiring with his take on life. His stories in training, what he experienced in space, all that stuff just makes you fall in love with life that much more.

He has a gift for taking something very ordinary and mundane and making it incredible, especially when you go to space. One example that comes to mind is what happens with your feet when you get up into space. He shared in one of his books about how on earth the bottoms of our feet are tougher from walking. They hold our entire body weight on top of them. In space it’s the opposite. The bottoms of your feet really don’t do much, but it’s actually the top of your feet that do the most work. You see in space one of the big goals is to stay in place and not float away, so what you do is you hook your feet behind these poles mounted on the walls so that you can stay put. What happens it that the tops of your feet which used to not do anything start to become kinda raw from suddenly being used so much and the bottoms of your feet start to actually get softer and almost atrophy a bit because they’re not doing so much work anymore.

That’s one of my favorite things… just hearing how different ordinary stuff is once you go up into space. Things like even walking and what happens to your feet. There’s an endless list of things like this that are different in zero G’s.

He shared a story about one of his spacewalks and how something like the way gravity impacts your tears can have a huge impact on your spacewalk.

See what normally happens when you’re on earth, when you get something in your eye, your eyes tear up and gravity pulls the tear down your cheek or down your tear ducts. Your eyes keep producing tears and your eye eventually gets flushed out. In space if you get something in your eye your eye tears up, but without gravity to pull the tears down, they stay in your eye and the tears just start to ball up into bigger and bigger globs of water on your eyeball.

This happened to him on one of his spacewalks while he was out working. He was out on an EVA (extra-vehicular activity, fancy name for spacewalk) when suddenly his left eye started to sting and naturally clamped shut. His eye started to tear up and he tried opening and closing his eye over and over to flush it out while he continued to work but nothing was helping. The eye kept tearing more and more and there wasn’t anything he could do. At first he instinctively brought his hand up to his eye to try and clean his eye out, but because he was on a spacewalk, his glove bonked off his facemask. He jokingly admitted that he was kinda embarrassed that that happened and was glad that no one was around to see that and we all started laughing.

Eventually the tear got so big that the glob of water actually crossed over the bridge of his nose and hit his other eye which also then clamped shut. Imagine that… with one hand you’re holding onto a spacecraft. The other hand stretches out into the blackness of infinity. You’re totally blind and you’ve got no way of fixing it yourself. What do you do?

He radio’ed down. “Houston, we’ve got a problem.” lol… Turns out that some of the solution that they use to keep their visors fog-free had gotten into his eye. From earth they suggested that he actually start venting air out of his spacesuit because the loss of air would actually start to dry out the solution and thus his eyes. He’d practice this technique many times on earth in case he needed to do this so he reached up to the side of his helmet, released the switch, and starting attempting to reoxygenate the universe.

Eventually it started to work and one eye cleared up enough to where he was able to see again and continue working on the ISS.

Whew.. story after story and I could go on and on…

Actually, here’s a TED talk with him sharing about this story and what he learned:

After he spoke and shared a few stories, he opened things up for Q&A. Midway through the first question I decided to start recording the Q&A. I put the whole thing up on YouTube so you can watch too and listen in to the man. He’s a guy I could listen to talk for hours. It’s SOOO incredible…

Once he finished up with Q&A’s, it was time for the book signing. Since I had gotten there “only” (heh) 45 minutes before and the room was already jam packed by the time I got there, I was nowhere near the front of the line. However, one of the women next to me that I had been talking with at the very beginning said that she got a ticket when she got in but didn’t actually want to get a book signed and that I could have her ticket! OMG! Thank you!! That one kind little gesture probably saved me a good hour or so of waiting. Wow…

So I got to go right up in the very first batch of people to get a book signed. Honestly I didn’t want to get a book. I prefer having as little physical stuff as possible. His other book I bought as an eBook and loved always having it with me without having the physical book needed. Both ebooks and physical books have their pros and cons. Even though I had an opportunity to get a book signed, I didn’t actually want a book. I just wanted to meet him in person, extend to him my gratitude, share how much he’s touched my life, and simply get a picture with him.

One of the girls who worked there offered to take the picture. Normally I joke around and show people what button they need to press to take a picture with a phone, but she was pretty young too so I figured she’d know so there was no need.

I got up and had a chance to meet him, shook his hand, thanked him immensely, and got a picture taken with him. Yayyy!! He was very grateful to hear how much his work and sharings had benefitted me too.

Giddy and overjoyed I started heading out of the bookstore. As I was heading out, I pulled out my phone to look at the picture and… wtf… Where is the picture? She didn’t take it! There was no picture!

I stood there a little shocked. What just happened? How did she not take it? Do I go back and get another picture? Do I share a funny story about how I got to see Chris Hadfield and took a picture with him but that I don’t actually have a picture with him? Do I need to go to the end of the line or is my ticket I still had still good? I decided that there was no way I could just walk away without getting an actual picture with him so I got back in line with others who were also there. I told them the story and we all started laughing, so we promised each other we’d take pictures for each other, and not just one picture but oodles of them just in case, to make SURE that it worked. So a girl took a bunch of pics for me and I took a bunch of pics for several other people standing nearby me in line.

Ariel and Chris Hadfield

Needless to say, after getting a picture with him, I was monumentally thrilled, to the point where I was skipping down the road and giggling as how overjoyed I was to actually get to see and meet him in person.

When I finally got back to my hotel, everything was paid for and I was able to check on in. Only then did it dawn on me that what had just happened was even more incredible than I had initially realized.

You see, every other place that we’ve stayed at, the lady has been awesome about making sure everything was paid for before we got there, that way we could stay in our rooms. This time, even though we’d contacted her several times about it, mysteriously it didn’t happen this time. Now one of the perks that this hotel offered was free drinks. I was initially planning to drop off my stuff in my room before leaving to the book signing, grabbing a drink, and then heading over. I figured that I had plenty of extra time and it was all closeby. However, because I wasn’t able to check in, I didn’t lose time going to my room or grabbing a drink. Had I done this, I wouldn’t have been able to get in to see Chris at all! It would been too packed and they wouldn’t allow anyone else in. So not only was it beneficial to leave with WAY more time than I thought I needed (being punctual is a big deal for me and I’d rather be way too early than even a little bit late because something you really need it), but not having the room paid for in advance turned out to actually be incredibly beneficial in the end. Even though it seemed like something was “going wrong” at the time, it turns out that things were actually going very very right.

So I basically got to go to an event that filled up beyond capacity, I rolled in when it was standing room only and got a seat in the front row, I was surrounded by wonderful people in every direction, I got to see one of my heroes up close and in person, I got a free upgraded ticket to see him even earlier than I would have gotten to otherwise, and I got to give him not one hug but TWO when the picture didn’t work out the first time, lol… I mean what else can I say but THANK YOU!! Seriously, I’m just overflowing with gratitude for life and how COOL it really can be.

People are amazing. Chris is one shining example of how incredible people can be. Not only in following his passion and sharing it with the world, but living life full on, being an amazing human being, caring deeply about people and the world, and having such an eloquently beautiful way of sharing his perspective on life with others that really inspires them to open up and love that much more. It’s the very same thing I’m passionate about in life too, and seeing him be such a brilliant example of this only lights me more and more too.

Thank you so much Col. Hadfield. You’re amazing.

Tree house in Capitol Hill

Sometimes the Universe decides that it’d be a fun idea to let you go travel around and live wherever you want and in all sorts of cool new places free of charge. It may not happen when you expect or in a way you expect, but I just discovered that it definitely does happen!

A few weeks back our upstairs neighbor’s hot water tank leaked and some water came down through our ceiling, down the walls, and onto the floor. To check the damage they cut the ceiling away around the water sprinkler that the water travelled down and around.

Initial ceiling leak cutaway

Since then our place has been a bit of a construction zone with floors ripped out, walls torn out new drywalling having to be put in. Walking to my bedroom involved walking over the concrete under the carpet and pad, turning the bottom of my black socks white from the dust.

Concrete floor that turns my black socks white

After a few cancellations due to emergencies elsewhere in the neighborhood, they finally came back this week to start finishing things up… installing the new carpet and flooring we picked out, and texturing and painting the walls. Well as they were getting started in the morning, they bumped a water pipe which cracked a joint in the piping, setting off this waterfall-like blast of rushing water, and flooding my condo/apartment. Awesome… We were SOOOO close to being done!!!

Flooding by front door, trying to vacuum away the water to minimize the damage

There’s a water cut-off valve inside my place that you can use to stop any waterflow in situations exactly like this, but the way they broke the pipe it didn’t help so they actually had to go outside and cut off water for the entire building, lol…

Turning off water outside

Soooooo… my place has water damage now. Currently they’ve basically ripped out the carpet for my whole place and put fans and dehumidifiers everywhere to dry everything out.

Fans in living room

So now that all this is going on, the company that was doing the repairs and then caused the flooding is having to do way more repairs and it’s going to take a lot more time than it would have otherwise. In the meantime, they’re paying for us to stay in a hotel while they do the work.

We figured that instead of just picking some random nearby hotel just because, we could go stay at all sorts of really cool different and fun places in the area. You know? What’s the best way we can experience this whole situation? What awesome things can we make of this?

Night 1: Hotel Ballard

For the first night we got a room on the pavilion, the top floor of this sweet hotel in Ballard. Check this out…

Hotel Ballard, entrance to our room

You actually enter the room from the deck outside. It’s pretty sweet.

When you first walk in you actually arrive in a living room that looks all upscale and fancy. Love it!

Hotel Ballard, living room

Head into the next room and you’ll find a wiiiiide king size bed. This bed has the longest throw pillow ever. I have no idea if you’re actually supposed to sleep on this thing and share it between two people. We wound up using it to joust and javelin back and forth American Gladiators style.

Hotel Ballard bed

Back beyond the bedroom you’ll find the bathroom with its own standalone tub!!

Hotel Ballard bathroom

Isn’t it beautiful? Stand up shower, beautiful countertops, big mirrors, one of those closeup mirrors with a ringlight so you can get a closeup view of your pores, coffee (booyah), yeah, awesome stuff.

This part of town has lots of restaurants and bars to check out which makes it great to grab a burger, some drinks, meet people, and do whatever you like.

At one point I was walking down the street and saw a bar that said they had over 200 types of scotch available. I’d never had scotch before and wasn’t even sure exactly what it is, so I went in to learn and order some! Turns out scotch is basically the name for whiskey from Scotland. It’s actually quite different from normal liquor. It’s best enjoyed being sipped little by little. When he brought it out I was surprised that he brought out barely a shot! You definitely don’t shoot scotch though. You really savor it in really small bits.

Scotch bar

Friendly people to chat with at the bar, fun bar games to play while you’re there, and we went over to grab some BBQ afterwards… good times.

The next morning sunrise wasn’t all that special. Kinda cloudy and gray. No real color. A little while later though once we got up there was a little more color outside so we went to check out the view from the top.

Hotel Ballard, view from the top

For breakfast we decided to go to Portage Bay. It’s one of my favorite restaurants in the area.

Leaving the hotel and taking advantage of the free parking they have available, we decided to walk to grab some breakfast and enjoying this fun little part of town.

Along the way I saw a woman who was about to lift a desk into the back of her SUV. I asked her if she needed and help and then we put it back there. She’d taken this big huge bouncy exercise ball out to fit the desk in and Glenn asked her if she wanted this too. She said that she actually didn’t want it and Glenn said that he did so she flat out gave it to him, lol…

There was a house that Glenn was wondering where it was and Glenn asked her if she knew where it was. She didn’t, but a guy walking by with his daughter who overheard us stopped and let us know exactly where it was. Awesome.

Shortly thereafter we finished making our way over to Portage Bay.

I think the one actually on the bay is a little bit better than the one here in Ballard. Perhaps it was just that it’s busier so the food is constantly being prepared, but I think the food we had had been sitting out for a while and we could kinda tell by the time it got to us, but when Glenn brought it up they brought out some more recently made food. Nice.

Nights 2 & 3: Tree House in Capitol Hill

For the next two nights we decided to head closer into the Seattle area and Glenn found this tree house type place in Capitol Hill near Fremont.

Tree house

It wasn’t so much a treehouse built up in the trees like you’d normally think of, but a more traditional house in a densely wooded area of Capitol Hill in Interlaken Park. It’s one of the few houses allowed in the park in fact.

It was quite a beautiful home. The owners live upstairs and they rent out the lower part to people who’d like to stay here as well.

You can park either along the street or on this wooden bridge that basically functions as a driveway. lol

Tree house parking bridge

The wood is pretty slick when wet so you learn to walk by lifting your feet up and placing your feet straight down on the wood so you don’t slide around. Walk over to the edge and you get a view of the entrance to the home.

Tree house entrance

The guy who lives here lives at the bottom of the brown stairwell. Drop down the spiral staircase and you get to the entrance for the airbnb room you can stay in. You can enter via the bedroom or the main door which has this cool wooden pattern that matches and blends in with the wall.

Tree house door

Enter inside and you’ll see a wonderful little gift left by the owners. What a nice touch.

Tree house wine

Free champagne and wifi as soon as you walk in. Alright!

The home, as you can see, has a beautiful wooden look to it which fits right in with the location. Here’s the rest of the kitchen and living room area.

Tree house kitchen

That couch pulls out into a queen sized bed and was a great place to relax, get some work done, watch youtube videos, and generally hang out. There’s also one bedroom with a king size bed and another bedroom with two more twins.

One area that Glenn especially liked were the seats just outside the main entrance. You could sit down, have cover from the rain, and look out at the woods while the rain falls from above.

Tree house spiral staircase

We spent two nights here and it was a cool little place. You had things like a Nest to control the thermostat (those things are smaller in person!) and a wonderfully quiet and fancy laundry machine that automatically knows how much laundry is inside so you don’t have to set the size of the load. So many cool things to discover everywhere!

We grabbed a bunch of food out of the fridge before we left home so that it wouldn’t go bad while we were gone, so our meals when we weren’t going out consisted of whatever we’d brought with us and hadn’t eaten yet. Here’s some potatoes and bacon that we’re cooking up!

Heading to Portland

After leaving this place and heading back home to drop off some of the food we didn’t need, we headed over to the train station to grab an Amtrak ride down for the next leg of the journey. I’m going down a bit earlier to go see someone I’ve been wanting to meet for a long time and Glenn’s driving down a couple hours later.

Amtrak train

Seattle’s got a pretty cool lookin’ train station called King Street Station which is all white marble inside. Pretty wild. Here’s the outside of it.

King Street Amtrak Station

This whole post, in fact, I wrote while riding the train because, well, I can. :p Perhaps a better idea in theory because the wifi is a bit slow (which I anticipated and uploaded the images beforehand) and the vibrations made me a little suck from staring at the laptop, but it’s pretty cool that you can blog from a train.

Ariel on the Amtrak

We juuuuust arrived to Portland, perfect timing, so time to hit the Publish button and head out! See ya soon!

For this post I’ll share some of my favorite photos interspersed with some stories.

First off though, let’s set the stage and take a look at where this event took place.

As you can see, it’s gorgeous here.

This race happens at the DirtFish Rally School where you can learn to be a rally driver.

The rallycross event here is a two day event with multiple different heats, qualifications, semi-finals, and finals across both days. I only went to the first day since I’ve got plans for Saturday. When we first arrived, the first place we found to watch from was nice and close to the cars zooming by.

Look at what direction the rocks are flying in the photo… to the left. aka straight at us.

They keep people back for safety reasons, but even if you stand with a banner in the way between you and the cars, you can still get pelted. Glenn took a pebble to the side of the head and I had one that hit me about an inch away from my nuts, leaving a nice little muddy spot behind that we got to laugh at. (We were both just fine. No worries.)

That said, even though being close by is pretty cool, shortly thereafter we decided to go explore some more and find another place to watch from.

Note: Sunglasses double as handy protective eyewear from flying rocks! Bring them to rally events, even if the forecast calls for clouds and rain.

On the other side of the track was a great viewing area raised up a bit so you could look down at the cars zooming around the track.

These cars have some serious power. There were two classes of cars, the “Lites” which have only about 400 hp and the “Supercars” which are running closer to 650 hp. The Supercars were noticeably more powerful, faster, louder, and made a bigger mess of things.

Ken Block who does all the epic Gymkhana videos on YouTube, Tanner Foust who’s awesome at drifting, and Rhys Millen who drives for Hyundai where I used to work and who set a record driving up Pikes Peak were all there. I’ve enjoyed a watching a bunch of their stuff online and it was a nice treat to see them all there in person. Ken Block in particular I really enjoyed watching.

Every driver has a different racing style. Some drivers are more conservative and will slow down into a corner and drive around it. Ken is much more aggressive and flashy and he’ll dive into a corner much faster, grab the e-brake to lock up his rear wheel, and drift his car around the corner which is a lot more fun to watch.

Note the front wheel rotating and the back wheel locked up.

His car also shot flames more than most. All of these cars were incredibly loud and when they’d shift gears they’d backfire and pop and crackle. It sounds unbelievably amazing and you can actually hear the backfire pops through the woods farther than the roar of the massive engines! Here’s the biggest flame I caught out of Ken’s car.

Since I was shooting for fun I decided to play around with the camera a bit and get a little more aggressive with the panning shots. The risk is that you may miss a great shot like the one above if your pan didn’t turn out well, but if you get it right it looks extra fantastic. The background gets super blurry and the car really pops. Like this.

Speaking of drivers, you could go over to the pit area and watch people working on the cars between races. It was incredible to see them all up close.

The drivers all all right around too, not really separated from the crowd as much as I thought they’d be. Here’s Tanner Foust chatting up some people.

Much of the day was actually taking breaks between runs to fix cars or repair the track. With all the drifting they’d mess the dirt up like crazy and would have to keep bringing out a small army of tractors, steamrollers, and bulldozers to level everything back out.

Even still, the cars would create these ruts which would send them flying in the air, blowing out their tires and otherwise destroying their cars, lol… but it was fun to watch!

It was all worth it of course, because it makes for some awesome racing.

Due to delays from initial setup, having to constantly repair the track, and so forth, they didn’t get to do all the events and had to cut some of the last heats. These cars don’t actually have headlights (they’re stickers) so they can’t run when it’s dark. Because of this they had to rush a little at the end to make sure they got all the initial qualifying runs in before tomorrow. One thing that the PNW has is really gorgeous sunsets and today was definitely one of them.

Cool day…

One of my fav. places to go for fireworks in Seattle for New Years or the 4th of July is Gasworks Park on Lake Union.

They have this big floating barge in the middle of the lake loaded up with firey awesomeness and so you can watch the show from all over the area.

Not only that, but you’ve got smaller fireworks shows going on all over town.

You can walk down the street and there’s booms and pows and roman candles firing off. Very fun.

Parking was really packed near the park as usual, so we parked a mile away and walked in.

Once we got into the park, it wasn’t as packed as I was afraid of. There were definitely tons of people, but it wasn’t shoulder to shoulder sardine style packed. There was still room to find a place to sit down or set up a camera which was fantastic.

As the sun set, the lighting conditions got much better for fireworks and so they definitely started to pop and become more visible on camera.

One thing I really liked about the fireworks was that there were all sorts of different styles and heights they’d shoot to. Sometimes they’d fly up sky high.

and sometimes they’d speckle and dance right over the barge.

Figuring out how to shoot them was fun too! Playing with the settings, doing some bulb exposure with a remote release to get the exact exposure duration I wanted (from the beginning to the end of the burst without too many overlapping explosions), and so forth. I haven’t shot much recently so it was fun to grab a camera and shoot a bit some more.

Ariel exploring TreeHouse Point

So it turns out that less than 15 minutes away from me, there’s this place that has a whole bunch of treehouses called TreeHouse Point. I didn’t know more about it than that so I contacted them and a few days later headed over to go check it out. It turns out there’s a TV show that’s filmed here and everything! It’s a really rad place and I shot a bunch of photos to share with you guys. Let’s jump right into it! So the dude that started this place is named Pete Nelson. He has a TV show on Animal Planet called Treehouse Masters where he goes around building treehouses for people. For example, here’s a clip featuring the treehouse that I used for the intro image at the top of this post.

This location is tucked into the forest right off the road. Even though I knew where it should be, I actually drove right past it twice because they don’t have a huge big sign or anything. When I arrived for the tour, I figured it’d be some sort of small little tour, maybe 4 or 5 people. I was wrong. It was PACKED! There were a good 50 people or so who all signed up for the tour!

They’ve got a bunch of different treehouses here, every one is unique and custom built, and you can either go on a tour, stay the night like a hotel, and they also do wedding packages if you want something funky and different. I was there just for the tour and since there were so many people, I made a point to try and shoot photos without mobs of people in them. Because of this, I didn’t hear the tour guide all that much so I won’t be able to regale you with stories of fun treehouse facts. For that you’re going to have to go on the tour yourself, because the tour guides were hilarious and super friendly. Hi Madeline and Damon! You rock!

So for this post I’m gonna share a whole bunch of photos with you guys from each treehouse. It’s only a couple of photos per, but there’s a bunch of treehouses and every one is cool! Let’s go through the collection one at a time.

Upper Pond

Because there were so many people, we actually split up into two different groups. The first treehouse that our group went to visit was called Upper Pond. I *think* this was the second largest treehouse they had. Like most of the treehouses, there was a steep ladder that you had to climb to go in and out of it. The ladder was surprisingly easy to climb.

Upper Pond treehouse

Next to the ladder there’s also a rope on a pulley so you can hook on an item to the carabiner at ground level and pull it up to you up top. Here’s a look at people climbing up the ladder to go check out this first treehouse.

Upper Pond with people everywhere

The tour takes place around noon, right in between checked out from the previous night and check in for the following night. The place is basically sold out every night and that 4 hour period between guests is the only time they have available for tours. Housekeeping was actually doing their thing and cleaning up the rooms at the same time whenever tours weren’t taking place on that particularly treehouse. Because of this, lots of the beds will be unmade and whatnot and so I’m gonna show you mostly pics from the outside for this reason. That said, I will share some photos from the inside as well because those are really cool too.

So climbing up into Upper Pond, we can take a look at the inside of that.

Upper Pond inside

This one had both a normal bed and a bunk bed up top. Most of the treehouses are smaller and have just one queen bed, so they’re designed for couples really. This one has room for more.

Upper Pond up above

I love the want they actually hooked these guys up to a tree. I’m more of an electrical/technical type guy than mechanical so I always have an extra level of appreciation for the way people physically put all this together to make it work. As you might expect with a treehouse, everything is supported by the trees themselves. It’s pretty sweet.

Attached to the tree

Good job guys. I’m very impressed.

Upper Pond

Nest

Going from big to small (it’s all relative), the next treehouse we visited was Nest. This was one of the smaller treehouses on the property that you can sleep in.

Crossing the bridge to Nest

Gorgeous, isn’t it? It looks like everything was done by hand. I love it. Look at Nest all nestled into the trees. :p

Nest in the trees

The inside of this one, like I said, is really tiny. Here’s the bed with the roof sloping down into the corner.

Nest bed

(Sorry for the messy bed. Like I said, this is in between housekeeping prep work.) Other than the bed, there’s a little desk, two chairs, and not much else!

Nest bed and window

This one has a nice little balcony you can step out on, complete with two chairs to relax on. The treehouse across the walkway is Upper Pond that we just looked at.

Nest balcony

Now even though Nest is a smaller treehouse, one nice thing it has that not a lot of them do is a bathroom! It’s great that it’s up at bedroom level so you don’t have to go down the ladder (or pee off the balcony) in the middle of the night.

Nest bathroom

Treehouse bathroom! For those who don’t wanna go roughin’ it.

There’s Nest!

Bonbibi

Next up is a pretty treehouse with a fun name, Bonbibi. This is going to be the smallest treehouse at just 110 square feet!

Bonbibi

As you can see, the walkway leading up to this one is stairs instead of a ladder. Since it had such wonderful stairs, it made it easier for people to climb up to go check it out.

People climbing up Bonbibi

I really like the look of these treehouses kinda tucked into the forest. It sets up an idea of the atmosphere.

Bonbibi peek-a-boo

Once most everyone else had a chance to go check out the treehouse, I went to go up and take a look as well.

Climbing up Bonbibi

The inside of this one was particularly messy, so in the name of turning lemons into lemonade, check out this beautiful doorway and the gorgeous dark walls inside.

Bonbibi entrance

Turning back around, the spiral staircase is a treat to walk back down. Off in the distance you can see another treehouse we’ll get to shortly, a window-filled glassy one called Trillium.

Bonbibi with Trillium in the distance

Check out the curved railing on the left and the support beams for the railing on the right. They’re crookedly straight (is that how you say it? maybe straightly crooked?) and look so natural and earthy. So cool.

Bonbibi stairs down

Yeah, cool spiral staircase. Well done!

Bonbibi, you’re cool

Burl

Next up is Burl. I think this one was featured on TV as well, based on what everyone around me was saying.

Burl at the end of the bridge

As you can see, this one is tucked back into the woods a bit as well. Instead of climbing a ladder or stairs, you cross a bridge to get to Burl.

Burl bridge

This bridge is nice and solid and makes it super easy to walk across. Not scary or anything.

Burl at the end of the trees

This one’s a double decker and you’ve got two floors.

People walking under Burl

The lower level is your living room type area. Climb the ladder up and you’ll get to the bedroom upstairs.

Burl bedroom

You know one of the cool things about this bedroom? It has a bathroom!!

Burl bed

Not only does this one also have a bathroom, but it’s indoors as well which is great if you don’t wanna go outside when it happens to be raining. It’s got a real toilet too (as opposed to the wooden box with a toilet seat in Upper Pond) and it also features toilet paper rolled the wrong way. Back downstairs you have this wonderful little balcony so you can enjoy the view.

Burl balcony

This is a pretty sweet lookin’ one.

Burl from underneath

One thing that people kept asking about was the platform just above the treehouse. You’ll see the one right above the roof. There’s also another one a pretty good distance higher up the tree. They’re not part of the treehouse itself. They were actually put there for TV to get good camera angles. Once they finish up with the TV stuff, they’re going to remove those platforms.

Burl being burly.

Temple of the Blue Moon

Next up is probably the most popular and most photographed treehouse, Temple of the Blue Moon.

Temple of the Blue Moon

Can you guess why? As you can see, this one has a flexible bridge leading up to it. The bridge is pretty bouncy as you walk across it.

Me on the bridge at the Temple of the Blue Moon

(I love wearing forest colors. They make me feel even more a part of nature, at one with life.) Coming back to the bridge, I liked the way it would bounce and you’d create little waves in it as it flexed from your steps/jumps. Some people were a little more cautious. Understandable. :p

People crossing the bridge from Temple of the Blue Moon

As usual, I’m lovin’ the look of these treehouses in their natural element.

Temple of the Blue Moon in the woods

It’s pretty trippy seeing how high up some of these treehouses are.

Temple of the Blue Moon floating above the earth

Off to the side a nice little balcony you can enjoy. Check out how it wraps around the tree.

Temple of the Blue Moon balcony

You can see the balcony just off to the side. If you walk straight into the treehouse, you walk right into the main tree that supports it. Hi tree!

Temple of the Blue Moon entrance

This was definitely one of the cooler looking treehouses.

Temple of the Blue Moon front entrance

If you back up a little further, you’ll actually see the green pond right next to it. Doesn’t this look like something out of Lord of the Rings?

Temple of the Blue Moon with a green pond

Trillium

Next up let’s go take a look at Trillium. This one is pretty unique because unlike some of the other trees that seem to kind of blend in with the forest, this one definitely stands out more.

Trillium in the distance

See what I mean? This one’s got a ton of glass. I’m not sure if this applies to all of the treehouses, but if you like this one, you can actually get the plans to this one and build it yourself. Every one is custom built depending up the size and distances of the support trees, but you can definitely get some great ideas here if you’re into treehouses! Let’s take a closer look at this one.

Checking out Trillium

Like many of the other treehouses, this one has a spiral staircase to the top. They do such a great job with them!!

Trillium’s gorgeous spiral staircase

Why don’t we take a little walk and go check out this one.

Trillium entrance

When you get up to the top, you find that this one is a double decker as well. The bottom floor is like your living room / lounge area.

Trillium, first floor

Windows everywhere!! Climb the ladder and you make your way up to the bedroom.

Trillium bedroom

Having all these windows around is so cool, isn’t it? You don’t have to be inside this one to get a great view of the forest. Step outside and start going down the stairs and here’s your view.

Trillium, stairs back down

Too cool… Yeah, she’s a beauty for sure.

Trillium

The next two treehouses we’re going to check out (last two!) are more for day use. They don’t actually have beds in them.

Bird Blind

If you walk down towards the river, you’ll find two little treehouses. (I keep wanting to say birdhouse since it’s named Bird Blind.)

Bird Blind up in the trees

There’s bird blind. It’s a pretty fitting name, isn’t it?

Bird Blind on a tree

Getting up this one involves climbing up a ladder.

Bird Blind inside

When you get to this one you find a really simple interior. There’s a wooden platform where a bed could be, but it’s just a wooden platform (what I’m standing on in this pic). Looking out the window you have a gorgeous view of the picturesque river down below…

Hermitage

Remember how I said one of the other treehouses was the smallest one? I take that back. This one’s even smaller. It’s like a nanotreehouse. To be fair, this one doesn’t even have a bed. Check it out. This is the whole thing!!

Hermitage, inside

It’s a chair and a desk, and a view of the river! lol… Okay, so let’s look at this one.

Hermitage by the river

Here you’ve got your little treehouse by the river. This thing looks more like a growth off the side of the tree than anything. Here’s a closer look so you can see it has windows and other manmade aspects.

Hermitage up close

To get into this little treehouse, you climb the ladders on up.

Hermitage on the tree

When you get to the top, you’re greeted with this wonderful little nook, a place to rest and enjoy yourself. You can hear the sound of the river rushing by and you’ve got a place to sit, read, think, write… whatever you like!

Hermitage interior

Now let’s say you’re sitting up here enjoying yourself and you wanna go Super Hermit. You can do that! Here’s how ya do it. Step outside and you’ll find this pulley system.

Hermitage pulley

On one end of the pulley you’ll find basically a large stone floating in the air, lol. It’s your counterweight so that you don’t have to pull so hard for the next part. On the other end of the rope is the bottom of the ladder you used to climb up.

Hermitage ladder

Pull on that rope and you’ll actually start to pull the bottom of the ladder up! The top of that first ladder is connected by a pair of hinges so when you pull the bottom of it up, it’ll flip up so that no one else can come join you, you crazy hermit you.

Hermitage ladder hinges

What else is there?

Whew! Okay, that’s seriously a lot of pics. If any of you guys are actually still reading this text and not just flipping through the pictures, color me impressed. So other than treehouses, there’s some other stuff to see and do as well. (Surprise!)

Stacked stones and the River

As you saw from some of the previous pictures, there’s a great little river where you can relax, stack stones, lay in a hammock, kick back in a chair, have a bonfire, feel the pebbles under your feet, splash in the water, or whatever floats your boat. Because they like to host events here (think weddings and whatnot), they have a few places where people can eat, drink, and be merry.

Outdoor nom nom area

There’s some rooms you can stay in that are more like hotel rooms if you don’t wanna do the full on treehouse thing, but I didn’t bother checking those out because, you know, treehouse.

Back of the Lodge and Trillium

As you’ve seen from some of the other pics, they have this wild green pond that makes its way around the property. You probably don’t wanna go in unless you fancy coming out looking like Swamp Thing, but it looks pretty fantastic. If you wanna check this place out, which I’d highly recommend, you can visit their website at www.TreeHousePoint.com. They don’t do drop-ins (which makes sense when you’re there because of how cramped things get) and their tours and overnight stays do sell out (also makes sense now that I’ve been there, plus the fact that they’re on TV), so you’ll need to make reservations online. It’s definitely a fun, cool thing to do if you like doing things that are, well, fun and cool.

Main Lodge

Thanks so much to Madeline and Damon for being our tour guides, to the staff cleaning the place up and making it look awesome, and to Pete and Judy Nelson who it are the masterminds behind the operation.

Season 3 of the TV show Treehouse Masters is about to start in a few days on Animal Planet so if you like treehouses, that’d be a fun show to check out too.

So yeah, thanks for coming along on this adventure! See you next time.

-Ariel

I’m wanting to get into timelapse/video more now so I took half a day to drive around Seattle to scout for vantage points that would give me the views I want. Timelapse is interesting because once it’s going, you just kinda kick back and let it do its thing. Maybe put on some headphones and enjoy some tunes. Bust out a little dance party if you want.

For sunset I went to Kerry Park to do a day to night transition, my first serious attempt at one. Above is the video from the go. I shot for about an hour and a half. About a third of the way in I went to go move my parallel parked car real quick because a gap had opened up on either side too small for anything but a smart car to park in. If I moved it, it’d create an extra spot for someone else. When I was coming back, a little girl was trying to squeeze between my tripod and the fence while her family was taking pictures with this view in the background. She wound up bumping my tripod, effectively ruining my timelapse. I started trying to figure out how to correct it.. maybe making two timelapses and shifting one over slightly to compensate for the camera angle being shifted and make them match. Since this was mostly just a goof around test event, I decided to cut that section out altogether and just used the section after she kicked my tripod.

Note to self, if there’s little kids potentially walking around, stick around just in case!

On the way back from the ECETI ranch, I made a quick detour to the Columbia River Gorge. The road had a name like “Waterfall Highway” so I decided to visit one of my fav. places on earth. It turned out to be a great place to take a break from driving!

You’ve got waterfalls, wonderful hikes, and a couple even got engaged! (She said yes!) Take a look at the video. It’s one of my favorite that I’ve put together so far.