Friday, February 12, 2010

New blog site!

Hello to all our friends and family. We have moved to a new site infollowing with our current physical move.  Please find us here (click word)

  http://seattlepeters.blogspot.com/

A visit from Tonya's sister

In October right before we moved to Seattle, my sister came to visit. We had a great time hanging out and exploring. Here's a few pictures of our time together.
Hiking Blodget Canyon overlook It was a little overcast and rainy that day but we had fun anyway! (I think my poor Texan sister was freezing though!!)Awwwwww.
We did have one good day of great weather so I took her to National Bison Range, hoping to see Bison but also knowing the views would be spectacular. Unfortunately this is all we saw of the bison!We had some fun! Opps, bad timing......There we go! (Toyota! they need a little pick me up right now)Did I mention the views we spectacular?We were silly.. "No, Tara, you don't eat meat!"Did I mention the views were spectacular?We also drove up to Flathead lake and walked around on some of the docks. Did I mention the views were spectacualr??When we got home that evening we hiked the M trail above UM. We let Erik go with us this time!Here's a shot of the M Trail as seen from down below. It was so fun to have her visit! I miss her already!

Monday, January 25, 2010

A bit of randomness!

Today I'm just showing some ramdom pictures from our last couple months in Missoula. In Sept Erik took me fly fishing on the Blackfoot River. It was a wonderful day and fun fishing even though we didn't catch anything!Here's a gorgeous sunrise I saw one morning in early Oct. In Oct. we did the Carlton Ridge hike that I've done several times before. Here I am part way up looking out over Lolo Creek and Hwy 12.Here's Erik. Way in the background in actually Missoula but it doesn't show well in this picture at all. Pretty snow and trees!At Carlton Ridge. Lolo Peak in bckground. Remember I climbed that in 2008?Two of Erik's fishing buddies. This was on Nov 25th. the day before Thanksgiving and 5 days before we left Missoula.
Watch for my sister Tara's visit in Oct.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Our last day in the tetons

Here are some of the pictures from our last morning in the Tetons. These first two shots were taken from Colter Bay, near our campsite. Wonderful morning! These next two were from Jackson Lake Dam. Which one do you like better?This one was taken from Willow Flats. One the way home we decided to drive though Yellowstone. We had never been in the southern part of Yellowstone. Each area of Yellowstone is so different. We had to stop at Old Faithful and have our lunch there. While we were waiting a huge buffalo decided to run through the parking lot! Boy, did that set the rangers to scrambling and yelling for people to get out of the way. The old boy was just passing through, no trouble at all!Do you see me?Then Old Failthful faithfully spouted off it's excitement.

Then we drove home! Thanks for stopping by!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Where have we been????

Well, most of you probably know that this fall was pretty busy for us as we decided to move yet again. We are now located in Seattle WA and Erik got a good job working for King County there. Me? Well, I'm at home right now, getting us unpacked and settled in. I'll be looking for a job soon enough! We'd like to wrap up this blog since we really aren't the Montana Peters anymore and start a new blog. But I don't want to forget to share about our last few months in Missoula! I think Erik left off on our trip in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. So, I'll continue there and hopefully over the next week or so bring this blog back into the present and get you all updated!
We left off with day 2 of our trip and the Cascade Canyon trail hike. Now we're onto Day 3 and the Garnet Canyon hike. You can check out a map if your interested here. Click on maps and look in the area near Jenny Lake.
This morning we got up early because our goal was to climb Middle Teton and we knew it would be a long day. So we were up and out of the campground by 6am. On the way we saw a ton of elk, our first sightings of elk in the wild. We even heard the males bugle it was pretty awesome. No picture because the camera happened to be out of batteries at the time! Here's Erik eating his breakfast at the trailhead.
So off we went into the wild blue yonder! I can't remember all the details like the miles or exact time hiked but I know we started around 6:30am and got back to the car around 4:30pm.
It took us about and hour or so to get here. The peak on the left is Nez Pierce and the peak in the center that's a little washed out is Middle Teton.Awwww, So cute and smiley!Tonya on the trail. Middle Teton continues to loom large!Tonya just about the enter the non-trail portion of the trail. We're headed into the south col and over our first small snow field. See the little snow field in this picutre. That's where I was standing in the last picture. It's hard to get perspective, just remember everything is WAY bigger than it appears on screen. Here's a view of the next part of our climb. Ahh, to climb the snowfield or climb the boulders??? Well the ranger recommended ice axes which we don't have, so we went without. Smart, not ro sure but at least we didn't die. Although I thought I was going to at one point during this portion of the climb! We took the left side of the snow field for a while but it was too icy so we "jumped" off (over scary boulder crevices!) and tried the boulders instead but ended up way off the unofficial trail in a loose boulder field. Even Erik got a little nervous, I think. So here I am thanking Jesus that I didn't die yet! Although heaven will be wonderful, I just wasn't ready to go there that day! This was our lunch spot and my get the feeling back in my legs spot. After this it was a steep climb but we found the "trail" again for it was easier going. Here is a picture that Erik took from the saddle of Middle Teton. I didn't make it, I was about 200 ft lower sitting on a rock shedding a few tears cux my legs were too woobly to go on and be safe on the descent. Erik also took this panoramic shot below from the saddle looking west. I'm not sure the name of the lake. Looking back down the way we came from my resting spot. See how far down the valley is?All smiles on the way down. It was getting warm again (it was cold up near the top). Se the people behind me on the snow field to the right? Goofing off!We did enjoy some pretty views!And pretty flowers!Almost down. I love this shot for some reason!Here's a shot of two lakes at the "mouth" of the Canyon. You can see where they were carved by glaciers long ago by the berms built up all round them. The darker line out int he distance is the Jackson river or the tree growing up around it. Down the valley to the right is where Jackson Hole is.

Thus ended our hike for the day. It was an amazing experience. Scary and testing of our courage and strength but I think we both passed! I probably could have made it to the saddle or even the top if we hadn't just put in a 14 miles hike the day before and maybe we'd started out earlier.

Watch soon for our last day in the tetons. Adios!