Spectacle Lake

Labor Day weekend I headed with a few friends to do a loop in the Spectacle Lake area.  The weather turned it into an in-and-out instead of the planned loop, but it's a great area and I'll definitely be back to explore more of the area in a future summer and hopefully do the loop another time.

Friday night we hiked in 4 miles to camp at Pete Lake and enjoyed a campfire and starry night.

Pete Lake

Saturday it started raining around 11am and didn't really stop after that.  We got a brief respite when we arrived at Spectacle Lake and set up our campsite.  It rained all night and the weather was still drippy the next day so we decided to hike out.

Spectacle Lake

Spectacle Lake

Spectacle Lake

There is a stream crossing between Pete and Spectacle Lake and with all the rain on Saturday is was quite a bit higher on the way out.

Stream crossing

RSVP 1

This summer was my first time riding the RSVP ride from Seattle to Vancouver BC.  I did STP (Seattle to Portland) a couple years ago and my bike had been mostly collecting dust since then so I decided I needed to sign up for another organized ride.  RSVP (Ride from Seattle to Vancouver and Party) is 188 miles with a stop for 2 day riders like myself in Bellingham.  We've had a beautiful summer and training for the ride involved lots of sunny day riding.  On August 15th, Day 1 of the ride, our luck with the weather ran out and it rained for about the first 50 miles, quite heavily at times.  My friend said she felt like someone was pouring a bucket of water on her as we rode down a big hill in Woodinville.  Still we enjoyed the ride and Sunday the weather was slightly better with only some light rain.  The weather cleared up by the time we reached Vancouver and we enjoyed spending Sunday walking around the city and taking the train back to Seattle.

Views from Chuckanut

Getting to the top of the hill before Bellingham