Baseball Season is Finally Here

I've been to two games so far this year. Opening day and the game on Monday. Both were complete opposites. Opening Day: Awesome atmosphere, dud of a game. The M's mustered 2 hits and got shut out. In soccer terms, it's like watching almost every soccer game. However, like I said, the atmosphere was great. Near sellout crowd, fireworks, baseball is back buzz, Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner, Dan Wilson, free soda, great upper deck front row seats, awesome. All in all, worthwhile even though the game failed to instill hope in any Mariners fans. Now lets fast forward to Mondays game vs the Orioles. The atmosphere was close to lame but the game itself was a thing of beauty. First off, it was officially the lowest attended baseball game in Safeco Field history. 14,000 or something. So if anything, a record setting night. I was a part of it. Other than that attendance fail, great night. The weather was July like balmy. No need for a jacket. We had terrace club level seats, row 2. The Mariners offense resembled an actual baseball team and hammered out 8 runs. Doug Fister pitched a no-hitter into the 7th inning, and the defense was nothing short of gold glove caliber. As the Mariners marketing machine wants me to believe, after Mondays nights game, I Believed Big. Mariners World Series Champs in 2010, you heard if here first.

Clear-cutting is the Coolest

Thanks to the invention of power and the need for lumber, Ty, Keaton and I got to enjoy this view. As you can see, what we have here is Lake Whatcom, Sudden Valley, Bellingham and the Bay. Obviously it's not as clear as one would like, but it's better than the last time I hiked this. That day is was all fog and clouds. Also, in the lower left-ish corner is my current home, Camp Firwood. You can even fuzzily see my house. Cool, right? So this "hike" is actually an access road that we followed all the way up the hill. The road serves both the power lines that shoot across this little hill and the lumber industry that uses these hills for wood collecting purposes. The power lines are the main reason for this view. They had to clear-cut a huge path through the woods in order to build three long power lines. So if you follow the access road to the peak of the hill, there just so happens to be a little lookout where, on a clear day, you can look out all the way to the San Juan Islands, up into North Whatcom County and Canada and down to the south end of the Lake as well. Awesome view. Tiring hike, but worth the effort in the end.