June 2013: Friends and I went to Cle Elum Lake for some camping. Other than some charming folks wilderness camping across the lake and shooting firearms non-stop (Friday afternoon) and/or playing EDM (Saturday night WAY too late), it was a pretty excellent little trip.
Friday afternoon, we headed east from Seattle. Made a stop at Twin Pines burgers for shakes and cones, then Glondo's Sausage in Cle Elum for stuff for the grill. (Note - non-meat-eaters, Glondo's is also worth a stop if you need some cheese or other fancy pantry items.)
My contributions to the group meal were, of course, tinycheeses (http://www.instagram.com/tinycheese) and preserves. This Old Goat cheese was a hit. One of my camping buddies, Naomi, actually works for Met Market (Tinycheese Homeland), and told us that this cheese is a one-time-only affair. I am still seeing it at Met Market (in the big cheese sections, though); I recommend picking some up while you can. The quick pickles were an experiment and I think they turned out pretty well. I just googled some recipes to get a sense of ratios (veg-vinegar-sugar), then added some flavorings and whatnot. My favorite was the carrot-scallion one, which had red pepper flakes and Buddha's hand salt for a little Asian flair.
Saturday, we went over to the Wenatchee National Forest to look for morels.
At first things weren't looking so hot - found a bunch of other stuff..
...but eventually we did pretty okay! I think every person in our group found some.
So I guess WA has like a burger/shake stand thing? I really didn't notice it until this year, but on this trip alone, we hit three of them. This was stop #2, the Cruise In in Roslyn. My favorite - really nice people and all kinds of free reading material.
Picked up some pineapple weed from the gravelly parking lot. My intention was to infuse this into rum, but honestly I forgot about this batch until I found it withered later. Anyway, pineapple weed is a common weed to find in gravelly spots, and those little balls do, in fact, smell like pineapple.
After moreling and lunch, we headed over to the beautiful Cooper Lake for some potential fishing.
But it sorta just turned into sitting around chatting by the lake. No probalo.
I went on a short ramble to, of course, look at plants. Like this Oregon boxleaf (Paxistima myrsinites/Celastraceae family)
And blooming vanilla leaf (Achlys triphylla/Berberidaceae)
And some huckleberries. (NOTED.)
Back to camp for some morels and pasta.
Next morning some camp-side hanging out.
It wasn't, as I mentioned, entirely bucolic. In addition to the noisy folks across, the lake, we had this guy as a neighbor.
I did more walking around looking at plants. Nootka rose
Arrowleaf balsamroot
Yarrow
Snow berry plant (if I remember right) getting nibbled on
Samara
Lanceleaf plantain
I was getting antsy to make something so I collected some flowers and stuck them into the small jar I used for salt. And another instagram/Vine project was born. If you follow me on either(instagram= LQSeaton, Vine=Leslie Seaton), you can see some short videos of these bouquets with the flowers ID'd. (Mainly. There are some mysteries.)
This bee was a total fan of my new idea.
Speaking of fauna, here were some of our other campsite neighbors. Western Tanager
Evening Grosbeak - female
Evening Grosbeak - male
White-crowned Sparrow
Free telephone museum in Cle Elum, which one stops in because it is a free telephone museum in Cle Elum.
Final stop for lunch - McKean's in Cle Elum. Pretty good, tremendous wait. We realized we might have been dealing with the high-school-kids-being-trained-for-summer-jobs delay on this trip.
Pink elephant clouds. Pretty great trip. Washington, you are excellent.