Seattle: A warmup for Daddy-daughter travel season

Plans to return to Munich, Germany over the weekend were shelved for a couple of nearer adventures here in the Northwest.  On Saturday, a dozen of us got together for a 17.6 mile hike/scramble on Mount Hood to the Mooney plane crash site and Mooney Tarn, including the Elk Cove trail, Pinnacle Ridge, and some off-trail action.  Stories and photos are coming soon!


Garth's Blog skips over many of my international travelogues (or I often post them later).  Friends who follow my blog grudgingly accept this.  But hopefully I'll be uploading more international posts now that Kathy is almost ready to let me take Lena along overseas!

For now, here is our OTHER adventure from this weekend:

We've come a long way since Lena: International Baby of Mystery (link).  At three years old, Lena already has Daddy's sense of adventure, exploration, and restlessness.

And I'm praying that our 8 1/2 month old Levi will, too!

Lena's vacation in Spain last Fall was so long ago...

En route to Madrid, Spain

...So, with Mommy's permission, I figure it's WAY past time to get Lena flying again.


Flying Lena to Seattle on Friday for lunch with my friend Michael Alben (living in Burien) was a good place to start.  Let's call this a "dress rehearsal" for some upcoming kid-modified, Garth-style international trips.

PDX Airport

Mommy holds back tears long enough to drop Lena and me off at curbside.  Kathy's dry eyes lasted all the way to the PDX cell phone waiting area, where she awaited my text assuring her that Lena and I were assigned seats on board.

A groggy Lena tugs her little roll-aboard luggage though the TSA checkpoint, charming everyone.

Lena's is giddy for her favorite part of flying:  The airport people-mover!

Delta'a PDX rampers Jeffy and Cindy load up our Skywest CRJ for departure.  Lena's car seat is sitting on the ground, next to the aft belt loader.

Seattle - Burien

Rather than this church parking lot, imagine Lena dragging her luggage to a kid-friendly hostel or friend's house in Italy... or anywhere in the world!

After Michael picked us up from SEA-TAC airport, he showed us around his house, his church, and the town of Burien.

Michael gives us a tour of Burien Evangelical Church (don't let the name "Evangelical" fool you), including the music room upstairs.

Downtown Burien

Seahurst Park, on Puget Sound

The journey home to Beaverton

Vine video-  End of a Daddy-daughter trip:  A sleepy Lena boards our flight home from Seattle to Portland.

Flying back to PDX:  Lena is too young to fly standby in Business Class, so we sat in the comfy Economy Comfort row again.

Riding the Max train home from PDX airport to Beaverton:  Lena is in desperate need of her afternoon nap.

Reunited with another future traveling, hiking, and climbing companion:  Baby Levi!

Garth's Blog will return in late October with...

Climbing Mount St. Helens again!

Rough night with the Portland Timbers

The Portland Timbers earned an impressive 3-1 road game victory against the Real Salt Lake last night.  Last Sunday night here in Portland, though, was a different story...

Until last Sunday, Kathy and I hadn't brought Lena along with us to a Timbers game since a couple seasons ago.  The last time Lena watched the Portland Timbers play the Vancouver Whitecaps, a few things were different:  Lena was only 11 months old, the now Providence Park had recently made the change from PGE Park to Jeld-Wen Stadium, the refs were vigilant, and the Timbers were victorious.


Before we get to the more recent game from last Sunday, here are a couple throwback photos from our 2013 Warner Pacific alumni night  (link) at PGE Park:

Warner Pacific grads Amy, Garth, and 15-20 others cheered along with baby Lena (on Daddy's lap) for the Timbers

Fast forwarding to this past week, the Portland Timbers were beat 4-3 by the Vancouver Whitecaps in the latest Cascadia Cup rivalry on Sunday.  The www.mlssoccer.com game recap is here.



After I got home from work, we dropped off our 4 1/2 month old Levi at a friends' house and headed for the MAX train with Lena.

"A twain!  Daddy, c'mon!":  Click this Vine video above for audio

The view of the field from our seats was pretty good, near the jubilant Timbers Army section.  I tried throughout the game to explain to Lena what was happening and who was handling the ball.

Thanks to some dirty plays by the Whitecaps and some controversial (read: horrific) missed calls by the refs, the mood of the crowd was a bit more intense than normal. Lena got a little freaked out and spent much of the game hiding been our legs.

It didn't help that we were sitting in the "angry" section.

Sitting in the angry section also meant that the frequent use of obscene hand gestures (and even a fight) around us rendered many of my best pictures inappropriate for this blog. Some things are a little difficult to Photoshop out of a picture.


But hostility didn't rule the entire evening. Here's a Vine video of the crowd exploding after the second Timbers goal of the night:

Timbers GOAL!!

And of course, our mighty Timbers transformed last Sunday's unfair loss into a distant memory last night on the road in Salt Lake City.  In contrast to the travesty that Lena witnessed last weekend vs. the Whitecaps, it was nice to see the refs stay on top of things.

A happy Timbers Army is a happy world.  RCTID!!

Coming in a couple weeks...

The best of all-new 2014 (so far) hiking photos!