11/23, Wednesday. Bad traffic like a typical Friday afternoon. Arrived at Altimer Cabin in the rain. Nicely appointed cabin in the woods, few minutes drive east of Ashford. Amenities include a hot tub, outdoor grill, well stocked kitchen, privacy. Cooked dinner: pasta with mussels and wild caught fish, home grown tomatoes. I brought Reisling from Mosel. Too sweet.
11/24. Thanksgiving day. Rain in lower elevation, snow higher. Two snow plowers driving up and down constantly. More cars than I expected at Paradise parking lot, on this snowy turkey/football day. Not surprising, most visitors are immigrants. I saw a lot of Chinese, many of whom dressed handsomely, but unsuitable for the weather. The visitor center smelled like brunch: a group of Latinos occupied two tables with piles of food. It's good to see people spend their holiday in national park.
Hiked a 1-mile loop to Myrtle Falls. Very small. No icicles that I hope to see. Too warm. Just about freezing. Snow is powdery. Very light. Even with snowshoes I sank to the bottom. I'm getting to heavy. Visibility was poor. No view to speak of.
Narada Falls had about 5 cars in the parking lot. Bigger waterfall, but uglier: thin and dirty looking.
No more snow on ground at the bridge across Nisqually River.
The trailhead of Comet Falls is just west of Christine Falls, very pretty but small cascades in a narrow gorge. One car there. Trail started in woods, mud, then sloshing snow. Even no view to speak of, you can here the pounding of water that forms Christine Falls, and a couple of glimpse of the gorge. A mile or so later, emerged out of the thick woods. Walking along a valley, made very pretty by the powdery snow, about a food deep. No one else had trekked here, all pristine white snow. Comet Falls is 3 tiers, not what I remembered one straight and big waterfall. Very pretty here. A single log bridge looks sketchy under snow. The photo taken by my phone at low light made doesn't do justice to the serenity around. Had to use headlamp hiking out in the woods. Slippery. I fell twice. Back to parking lot ~5pm.
The gate was locked when we arrived at Longmire. Walked to the hotel asking for help. The lady at the front desk keeps a logbook. She wrote down my license number, address, phone #, car license plate, and time of exit. Took my driver's license and gave me a key to unlock the gate. This lady was also helping in the dining room. It was very busy with Thanksgiving buffer and dinner guest. A lot of people. Had to wait around for her to show up. It's warm and festival. So I don't mind the wait too much. It's good to see that the business is doing well here.
Dinner tonight is roasted duck with apple and lavender. Potato cooked in duck fat, and sauté haricot-vert as sides. Apple cider for drink. Too sweet.
11/25. Almost no traffic in the morning. I was early for my 1pm bus to Canada. Chatted with a black guy having his lunch in the food court of Uwajimaya. He's an economist. Articulate. Talks with vigor and conviction, sometimes with bits of food flying over my side, 2 seats from him. I don't remember everything he said, all with data and reason, and I'm sure glad that he decided to talk to me. Here are some. US$ is going to loose over 3/4 of value as soon as it looses its default currency status of petroleum. Iraq is now the largest oil reserve in the world, because little was excavated. No oil pipeline were laid in southern Iraq for the last 50 years, even though price was going up elsewhere. There, literally oil is seeping out of group, can be bought as cheap as $4 a barrel. That's why, US invaded Iraq, after Saudi and Kuwait depleted a large portion of their reserve. He said US economy is going downhill for quite sometime. Even California, the flagship of US' top economy can not compare with much smaller Scandinavian countries. He said I made a terrible mistake closing my French bank account when I left France 10+ years ago, because every European bank allows you to buy 20+ other currencies or trade stocks in different markets with ease. A Luxembourg or Swiss bank may provide access to around 80 currencies.
11/26, Saturday. The holiday lights are on starting today, until mid January. Took a walk around the lake after a late dinner (~10:30pm). The rain finally relented. Quite a lot of people admiring the lights, some carrying big lens and tripod. Met one worker walking around checking the wires. He said most of the lights would be turned off at 11pm.
11/23, Wednesday. Bad traffic like a typical Friday afternoon. Arrived at Altimer Cabin in the rain. Nicely appointed cabin in the woods, few minutes drive east of Ashford. Amenities include a hot tub, outdoor grill, well stocked kitchen, privacy. Cooked dinner: pasta with mussels and wild caught fish, home grown tomatoes. I brought Reisling from Mosel. Too sweet.
Hiked a 1-mile loop to Myrtle Falls. Very small. No icicles that I hope to see. Too warm. Just about freezing. Snow is powdery. Very light. Even with snowshoes I sank to the bottom. I'm getting to heavy. Visibility was poor. No view to speak of.
Narada Falls had about 5 cars in the parking lot. Bigger waterfall, but uglier: thin and dirty looking. 
The trailhead of Comet Falls is just west of Christine Falls, very pretty but small cascades in a narrow gorge. One car there. Trail started in woods, mud, then sloshing snow. Even no view to speak of, you can here the pounding of water that forms Christine Falls, and a couple of glimpse of the gorge. A mile or so later, emerged out of the thick woods. Walking along a valley, made very pretty by the powdery snow, about a food deep. No one else had trekked here, all pristine white snow. Comet Falls is 3 tiers, not what I remembered one straight and big waterfall. Very pretty here. A single log bridge looks sketchy under snow. The photo taken by my phone at low light made doesn't do justice to the serenity around. Had to use headlamp hiking out in the woods. Slippery. I fell twice. Back to parking lot ~5pm.
Dinner tonight is roasted duck with apple and lavender. Potato cooked in duck fat, and sauté haricot-vert as sides. Apple cider for drink. Too sweet.
Trail follows power line for a bit, then into the woods. The lower trail is by Wallace River, not always have views, but often have water sound. The little Small Falls loop isn't worth the short detour. 1.5 miles to a shelter by the Lower Falls. 2 picnic tables and plenty benches to sit out of the rain. No view from inside of the shelter, but just steps out of the shelter, you can see a good size waterfall, and a cascade dropping out of the view. 
0.5 mile later is Middle Falls. It's the prettiest, double tiered. A few minutes higher, more short cascades by the trail. Then a good viewpoint of the valley. Back in the woods for another 1/2 mile, that's the Upper Falls, tall and double tiered. Trail continues up with blue diamonds on trees. We did follow it a bit.
Slide and Grip knots used to slide down the rope (right to left):
Pre-rigging rappel :
11/6, Sunday, mostly cloudy, light rain at times. 9 of us hiked Lower Salmonberry River trail for about 4.5 miles in, almost always along the trail track, if not on the track. Surprisingly, this doesn't make it an easy walking.
We walked across a couple of bridges, some detailed sections, but not a lot. You can see fiber optic cables clearly at one of those sections. We passed one big water tank, a yellow tractor, and a long stretch of log cars towards the end of our trip. We saw two houses there. Two guys were sitting in the front porch looking at the train carriages as we walked by. We finished our trip at tunnel 35, where we had lunch. It was raining by then.
We saw a salamander, a mini snake, and many little pink flowers on the way. Autumn leaves graced the hill side and the track.
All the author events are "moderated". Sometimes the moderator is a bore. Q&A isn't always allowed. I enjoyed Sherman Alexie's picture book "Thunder Boy Junior". He's quite funny. Not so much with Colson Whitehead and Yaa Gyasi, as the well prepared moderator spoke more than the two authors combined. She was trying to make common analogy into each question to both authors, which is completely unnecessary. I didn't come to hear you talk! 
Some venues would have a moderator with 3 writers, and the poor moderator tried to ask the same questions to all 3. None of the writers gets a fair share of time to express their ideas or their books. I prefer letting the author talk whatever (s)he wants, or do one-on-one interview. I enjoyed Christopher Rothko, Rob Spillman, Garrard Conley
I didn't like the interview with Sally Tisdale as much as I'd hoped.
I checked out the new Andy Warhol exhibition. Some of his drawings are shocking, some are fun, some are typically boring. Again, have to check in my pack and umbrella.