Bears Love Beaches Part 2

My dad filmed a whole lot of Bears playing at the beach.  I managed to edit it down a lot but it's still about four minutes.  Don't worry, it's highly riveting stuff.  At least it is if you happen to be the mommy of this cudger.

They Have Canyons in Seattle

Okay, not in Seattle, per se, but just a short drive out, you can find the south fork of the Snoqualmie river which cuts a pretty sweet canyon. My dad decided that we should check it out since it got pretty good reviews.  Once we got to the pools, we got an inkling as to why.  It's some pretty stuff.

The whole canyon is supposed to take 4-6 hours with about four rappels down waterfalls.  Due to a typo in the directions, we weren't able to find the trail head until really late in the day.  Luckily, there was a way to enter into the canyon halfway down so we opted for that...and a good thing too.  Turns out we are pretty slow hikers, especially when it comes to trekking down a mossy, boulder-filled creek bed.  That sucker ended up taking us almost 5 hours and we even bailed early out by clambering up a mossy cliff before doing the final rappel because we were worried about time.  I'm pretty glad we decided to do that impromptu climb, though, because it ended up being the most exciting part of the trip.  It looked like a relatively easy climb from below but halfway up, we realized that the only handholds were moss and a few crumbling, rotted tree roots.  We were at that awkward point where it would be too tricky to climb down but going up looked even more dangerous.  We decided that the best thing would be to make an anchor out of the most solid thing available (a fallen tree dangling down the cliff with it's roots still seemingly solidly planted) and Dad would belay me from there.  It did the trick because it gave me confidence that I likely wouldn't die if I fell so I was able to kinda just shimmy up and over the last 20 feet of moss crumbles and then belay him from the top.  Action packed adventure at it's best, I tell you.  All in all, quite good times.

Bears Love Beaches

Last week Bears got to discover the wonders of the beaches off the northern coast of Washington.  I don't think it's a stretch to say that the beach is his favorite place ever.  I mean, just look at his smile in this next picture.  If he smiled any bigger, that cub would look plain crazy.

alright.  maybe he does look a smidgen crazy as is.  You get the idea.

He loved just laying in the sand just kinda petting it...

...pointing out very important features out at sea...

...stretching unsightly strands of kelp to get them back in shape...

...discovering things with the aid of his trusty stick...

...Writing notes to Daddy with the aid of Grandma...

...and just puttering around with us.

He was so preoccupied that he even gave grandma and grandpa some time to themselves.  A rare thing on this trip.

playing on the beach really wore him out though.  He fell asleep on grandpa's lap on the plane ride home.  He hasn't slept on anyone's lap since he was a newborn.  It was so cuddly cute.