The main reason I came back to Seattle was so that I could take Abbey to a vet there to get some tests rechecked. I took her Wednesday morning and we’re still waiting for the Lyme test to come back, but her other tests looked better than before so I was happy about that. The vet said she looked pretty good for a dog her age. I also did some shopping and got restocked at Trader Joe’s. I went a little crazy at TJ’s seeing that it could be the last one I go to for several months. We stayed in a pretty decent RV park in Bothell, near Lake Washington, while we were there. There were actually shrubs between each site so you got a little privacy. This isn’t normal for RV parks. A couple of the days I took Abbey to a park on Lake Washington so she could get her swimming in. She has been in more water lately than she has for a long time. I think she likes that better than hiking. One evening at the same park there was a free concert. Abbey wasn’t interested but I checked it out by myself. The artist was described as playing “deadpan folk and blues”. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but once I heard her music I knew right away why they called it deadpan. It was actually pretty entertaining. It was definitely folk music judging by the lyrics even though she played an electric guitar. And her style is hard to describe in words other than to say she was deadpan alright.
For the weekend we headed up the Mountain Loop Highway which is northeast of Seattle. I was itching to get back up to the mountains and thought this might be a good place to get my legs going again. One surprise was that while I was at the visitor center getting information I found out that a woman and her daughter were killed only a few weeks before on a trail in that area. It is still pretty close to Seattle so it isn’t exactly out in the wilderness. After finding a campsite Abbey and I took a short hike up to some ice caves. At first I wasn’t too excited but there turned out to be quite a few of these “ice caves” that form at the base of these cliffs. 
Snow piles up there from avalanches and in the spring melting snow above forms streams and carves the caves out from underneath. It may not sound like much but it sure was a popular trail. 
The following day I was able to hike a real nice, though very steep and challenging, trail. It started from an old abandoned mining town. The road to it is blocked off so I rode my mountain bike into the town and hiked up into Glacier Basin from there. There aren’t any glaciers there any more, but the wildflowers were beautiful and the surrounding peaks were jagged and scenic. 
I have missed taking hikes like this – up to a spot with nice alpine views and/or lakes. They are my favorite kind, though my legs were pretty tired. On Sunday morning it was raining so we packed up and headed back to civilization and did a few things before heading up to the mountains again – this time on the North Cascades Highway a bit farther north. More on that in the next entry.