Karen and Tom Wanderings

After returning from the Tetons and resting for a day, we realized that cold, wintry weather was on its way ... so we had a couple of days to cram in perhaps our last backpacking of the season.  Our options were somewhat limited, due to the smoke from ongoing fires.  The Mt. Baker area looked like the best chance of avoiding the smoke, so off we went to Yellow Aster Butte.  We had visited this area several years ago, but had taken the old and longer trail (due to trusting a 1980's guidebook).  We had actually made it up to the camping basin, but had turned around without exploring due to the very cloudy conditions. This time, however, we scored big.  Perfect weather and drop-dead views of Mt Shuksan and Mt Baker.  And some fall colors, to boot!  On paper, the hike looks like a breeze (3+ miles, 2200' gain),  but seemed a bit longer.  Perhaps it's the fairly steep pitch of the trail as it climbs.  Regardless, we dropped into the basin a...

Ah, the summer of smoke!  As Labor Day approached, our planned trip to Glacier National Park was looking bleaker and bleaker due to the massive fires there.  But, following our MO of avoiding bad weather and smoke (perhaps to a fault), we looked elsewhere.  The Sawtooths in Idaho looked pretty good, despite the large number of fires in the northern part of the state... until the wind changed.  But, with heavy smoke expected to flow into Seattle, we had to do something.  Wyoming and Colorado didn't look too bad, until the departure day approached.  But we headed off anyway to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, with our fingers crossed (and our noses plugged), but not expecting much.  Truth be told, there was a bit of an unspoken undertone of "why the hell are we doing this ... driving for a couple of days to hike in the smoke."  And sure enough, within a half hour of leaving town, we hit smoke ... and it stayed with us the entire way to the Te...

As summer wound down and we were preparing for our road trip, we realized we hadn't made it to the Seattle Art Museum for Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrors exhibit ... and it was leaving shortly after Labor Day.  Well, we discovered that it was quite the "must do" in Seattle by that point, and only day-of tickets were available.  With the help of some beta from a friend of a friend, Tom spent a few early morning hours waiting in line for the day's tickets to be released, procured some for later in the day, and returned home for some breakfast.  Upon our return, we learned that the exhibit consisted of 3 main installations, each within a space of about 10x10, with room for 2 or 3 people to enter and/or view at a time ... and a couple of additional installations.  Per the artist's instructions, you were only allowed to spend 20-30 seconds in each of the major installations.  So, after waiting in line for each, we got our opportunity to experience them for a short ...