26 July to 2 August 2015

Change of plans: on return from McCarthy, I met Angie Monaco (one month in and I am already doing well on my surname quest!), same age as me from Seattle. We were in the shuttle to Anchorage together, 8 hours, and had a lot of time to kill at the airport, 7 hours. Our flights were at the same time and same destination, Seattle, but different airline. So many shared hours. Angie invited me to come to her pool party on Saturday/Sunday in Leavenworth, WA, where her parents live. An amazing time and am very grateful to Angie, her parents and her friends for having me. Leavenworth is marketing itself as a Bavarian-style town. I included some pictures, so you can see the result.

Originally, I was going to travel to Canada on Wednesday, but I am now taking in the national parks around Mount Rainier instead. I could already see the mountain when I went for a run at the Seattle waterfront on Tuesday morning (see photo). To do this detour, I finally decided to hire a car for the next six weeks.

It is otherwise to difficult and inflexible to get around here. The only downside of the car is that it comes without any insurance. I am now basically driving without insurance, great! I could have purchased one for 150% of the rental amount itself, $1,600. I will resort to praying and hoping (and sensible driving).

I was already rewarded for my choice on Thursday when I drove up a dirt road for 8miles to do a 7mile hike. The juniper trail first went through forest, very much looking like the Black Forest at home. It smelled so nice of the trees, Evergreens (ich glaube, es waren hauptsächlich Tannen). It then cut into the open, where there were amazing panorama views of Mt Helen (erupted in 1980 I was told), Mt Rainier and Mt Adam.

On Friday, I hiked on the wonderland trail to summerland. Again, only a month in and I have found wonderland! German efficiency right there. The wonderland trail is 93miles around Mt Rainier, of which I did about 5miles. I started in forest as on the juniper trail and got to great views once I came higher up.

I also had a very good impression of Seattle. It seems a place where I could stay for longer.
Angie contributed a great deal to this. She guided me to my hostel on Monday morning, 5am, and even invited me to a pub quiz with her friends that evening. I performed as usual and came up with one impressive answer (relating to a statue in Denmark). On Tuesday, we jogged around Lake Union and in the evening had BBQ on her balcony. I discovered that beer and beer varieties are very popular here. Life is good!