Hello fellow Waddlin' enthusiasts. I would like to begin this issue by apologizing for my lapse in publication over the last week, my parents were visiting from out of town and I had assumed tour guide duties while they were in Seattle, and spent about three days without my laptop in the middle of the week. As a consolation prize, I have lots of pretty pictures to share in this issue, though I might have less hard-hitting local journalistic insights to share, since I was doing a lot of tourist things.

What I've Been Up To

It has been two weeks since September 21st, so my memory of the September 20s is largely faded, only jogged by photos and Bluesky Posts. I suppose keeping a daily journal would be a great help in this regard.

The main thing I remember from that week was making numerous trips to Nordstrom Rack, as I needed to get some pants hemmed, and wanted it done before my trip to the mountains. This turned out to be a bigger challenge than anticipated, as the alterations desk is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, forcing me to wait until Wednesday to try again. Wednesday, of course, the pants completely slipped my mind, so finally on Thursday I headed to Nordstrom Rack again. This time, the alterations associate, Thuy, was very helpful in measuring my pants, gave me great advice, and even let me alter all three pants on a rush schedule for the price of one (sort of a best-effort agreement). Sadly, her hard work ended up being in vain, because the day of my pickup, a scheduling error meant that I ended up wearing some old pants for the entire mountain trip.

I saw these pretty cool ruby slippers on the discount rack.

sparkly red sneakers

This week has been mostly about family. Specifically, my parents (and my aunt!) flew in Saturday afternoon and stayed in the area until this morning, meaning I spent most of my time either with them, planning what to do with them, or sleeping. The first two days they were in the city happened to coincide with the incredible Northwest Tea Festival, so I spent a good amount of those days helping out at one of my favorite events of the year! My job there is always "Tea Mum", which basically means I serve all the volunteers tea to keep them happy ( and then serve the rest of the tea to guests1 ). I was basically swamped all afternoon both days, exhausted from running around for 4-5 hours, so I somehow only got these two photos, one of a booth I thought was interesting and one of a weird behind-the-scenes of our Tea Mums Brewing Station.

booth at the northwest tea festival with a big sign saying 'try any tea" we'll pour and a bunch of cool flower teas
yellow table in front of a white cinderblock wall. the table is littered with tea equipment

After the tea festival ended, and indeed with a bag full of stolen tea samples in tow, I woke up bright and early the next morning to head to Maple Pass, a trip which my mom and aunt had led me to believe would be extremely arduous, or perhaps even impossible for hikers at our skill level2. As a non-car-haver, I was extremely excited to finally visit the Northern Cascades, mountains which I have admired at great distance many times, and from time to time fantasized about escaping to, without ever setting foot anywhere near.

The drive was pretty long, certainly not helped by the fact that we perfectly timed our arrival at the forest service's building where they were on an hour-long lunch break. Some exploration of the sights nearby was fun and yielded some cool photos, including a very fleshy looking fly which landed on my pants and this teriyaki place which I tragically could not convince my family to go eat at, despite its incredible aura.

little yellowish bird about to take off from a branch
fat, fleshy looking fly that landed on my leg. i took many photos of it
red and yellow decorated teriyaki place. looked really good but we didn't go

We made a few more stops on our trip up to our rented house, which was in Winthrop, WA. Probably the most notable stop was the Trail of the Cedars, which was a small fun walk in the woods near Newhalem. I was surprised to see an old Seattle City Light train car in this town, but I suppose I shouldn't have been, as I spotted a number of other "Seattle City Light" logos throughout the trip, really forcing me to think about where all my electricity miraculously comes from.

large red bridge with a sign reading "trail of the cedars"
moss covered stone vault with a sign reading 'danger high voltage'
white tree covered in moss and mushrooms
picture of rotting log with light yellow umbonate mushrooms growing in a little tuft
picture of stellars jay hiding in a tree
big black train labeled "seattle city light"

We checked out a number of other small hikes and overlooks on our way to Winthrop, though the day kept getting cloudier and a slight drizzle began to come down.

blue bridge with a danger sign
dramatic looking power tower atop a rocky cliff
vast blue lake ringed with trees
small gray (dare i say plumbeous) bird with a striped head and bright orange beak
picture of a small blue stellars jay
rocky mountain behind a grassy hill

Once we finally arrived in Winthrop, I was momentarily wowed by the bizarre movie-like western architecture of the town, though I quickly began to sour on it as a real place to live. The first challenge, after arriving in our little prairie house outside of town, was food. Turns out many places in Winthrop were just closed on Mondays (Tuesdays too), leading us to go to a cute, but ultimately kitchy spot called Three-Fingered Jacks. The food was mediocre, the bar was full of stinky hikers and elderly vacationers (I suppose our group to some degree contained both).

Tuesday we had planned to hike, but it was raining all day so we resigned ourselves to idly driving around between scenic overlooks to kill time. Washington Pass was quite beautiful, even in the rain, and I suspect would have been stunning to behold on a clearer day. While looking for a hike that seemed too obscure for us mere tourists, we ended up in Mazama, which had a shockingly great bakery / cafe right off the main road. This also seemed to be a massive hub for hikers, which was really quite a sight to behold. People of all ages circled up in this outdoor dining area, decorated in fifty shades of gorpcore, eating delicious sandwiches in the woods.

taxidermied mountain goat with a hat on a shelf
plastic-wrapped sandwich and coffee sitting on a wooden table
rocky bluffs covered in trees
tiny navy jacket-swaddled man walks along a rainy path among massive trees in front of a cloudy mountain landscape
empty box of sea salt baguettes
outdoor cafe menu written in chalk marker on a black board

After driving for many hours, we headed back to Winthrop, where I wandered around between the various shops, cementing my opinion that it is a town without a soul, designed as some sort of amusement park for western enthusiasts a few decades ago and now largely staffed by depressed teenagers trying to save up enough money to escape. Luckily for us, a woman at the Three-Fingered Tavern the other day mentioned a place called "Twisp" nearby, so we headed over there to get dinner at a BBQ place. 1908 BBQ was honestly really good. I'm no Texan meat connoisseur, but I thought the brisket was delicious and the dry-rub ribs were super tasty (and huge). The town of Twisp also generally felt more like a place that real people live, which was a nice change from where we were staying. Twisp was all decorated for Halloween, including a bunch of funny / slightly creepy scarecrow characters all around town.

row of small gray identical house
rock climing scarecrow next to a street
"cowboy sushi", pieces of brisket on rice with pickled jalepenos and cream cheese somewhere?
ramen bowl with brisket and a dark broth that was a bit too much like pho
woman scarecrow with a t shirt and pink cowboy hat

The hike itself was not nearly as arduous as I had anticipated, and at least for the majority of the way up the mountain I was having a great time. The views were incredible, and my aunt's newfound obsession with larches was quite funny. The way down got pretty grueling about halfway through, I think walking downhill behind slower people ended up tiring me out more than going up did. Overall, great hike, would highly recommend Maple Pass to anyone who likes walking, especially in the fall! The blueberries were surprisingly one of the highlights, painting entire meadows in flaming red.

picture of a beautiful meadow full of trees and blueberries
picture of the moon with a tree (spruce? fir?) intruding on the left
mountainous rocky region covered in trees
mountain behind a blue lake
another gorgeous alpine meadow vista
fog rolls into a bowl in the mountains, evergreens and larches oversaturated give an otherworldy impression
tiny chipmunk sitting on a rock eating a nut
picture of a spectrum of colorful trees, from yellow, to lime, to green, back to yellow

I came back to Seattle on Thursday night, after enduring a pretty hellish ride on an Amtrak Electric Bus. Seeing that it was electric, I was immediately elated to be riding a bus powered by clean energy, but that elation quickly turned to dismay, as the bus overheated a number of times throughout the ride, leaving us stranded for 10-20 minutes three times over the course of the trip with only the word of our ( admittedly very funny ) bus driver to rely on that the bus would cool down and be drivable again. Somehow despite all of this, we arrived back in Seattle a mere 30 minutes late, with the bus driver having to yell at a bunch of taxi drivers at Amtrak Station that parked in the bus entrance. It was all quite an ordeal, and I was overjoyed to finally be home.

Saturday, my arboretum walk was POPULAR. Girlgoose, , and came, in addition to another 10 or so new people. This was surprising to me, as the walk had largely seemed to die out over the summer, and I had suspected I would need to shut it down soon. It was a great walk, and after getting lunch at Tacos Cometa, I went home and waited around for my parents to get back from their two-day San Juan adventure. We then went to get dinner, first planning to go to Peloton Cafe, but then realizing they were closed and instead heading to That's Amore instead. This is one of my all time favorite restaurants in Seattle, a very hidden gem that's a bit pricey, but still destroys similar restaurants on vibes and quality for the money.

juniper-coffee boar pasta from thats amore. delicious, their signature dish.
daily special crab pasta with a few limp asparagus shoots draped over the top

Sunday, I went FULL TOUR GUIDE MODE, waking up early to take the bus to my parent's hotel, then getting coffee and bringing them on the bus to Pike Place. The whole city was shrouded in this crazy fog all morning, leading to some pretty cool photos, though perhaps not the best for sightseeing.

foggy photo of the public market sign in pike place
foggy buildings with smokestack billowing steam
extremely foggy photo of the bainbridge ferry sailing away, barely visible

I then took them on our excellent light rail over to Bellevue to get coffee (because all of my favorite Seattle cafes apparently close on Sundays 💀). I consider myself a very low-tier coffee snob, but Story Coffee in Bellevue has some incredible drinks. If you are willing to part with your hard-earned dollars, I recommend the honey-process pourover in the middle of their list. I should have taken a picture of the menu, but I was not prepared to be as wowed as I was. The smell wafted so far, my parents were like "what the heck is in that carafe". I wish I had written my thoughts about it at the time in more detail, all I can say in hindsight is that I was thoroughly floored. We went to Cafe Flora for dinner, where I discovered that my father hates vegetables more than I thought humanly possible. Most of the food was good, but there were some definite flops, which is sort of my common experience with this place.

I Saw the Signs

You would think what with all the traveling, I would see a lot of signs, but really Seattle is the sign capitol of the area, my sign game was once again weak this edition.

sign on a wall reading "got bears?" "defenders can help
bumper sticker reading "but itw as assigned the gulf of mexico at birth
ai slop peppermint bark holiday drink specials
large concrete structure reading "welcome to concrete" in faded red sans-serif
sign announcing that fuel coffee is becoming Taru
car with a big lip emoji on the front reading "pls pls pls"
sign claiming to have seattles best espresso martini at Fonte cold brew liqueur. i'll believe it when i taste it!
Danger : do not enter spillway gates open without warning torrents of water will fill the gorge
framed photo with a racooon holding toilet paper. it says "your butt napkins my lady"
Property for sale: Watsapp only requires NDA

What's Coming Up

  • October 10th @ 12:00pm : Turkfest - Hosted at Seattle Center by the Turkish Cultural Association

Best of the Net

I have, if I am being totally honest, somewhat truncated the research process for what's coming up. I thought that I had already published this on Monday, and am now desperate to get it out so I am not a full three weeks behind schedule next week. Thanks for reading!