Team Schmidt Travels

Saturday, August 1, 2026 Day 6 The squirrels woke us up early this morning. Well before Bryan’s 6:15 alarm. We started hearing many people in our campground stirring and decided that if everyone else was getting up, we’d better too.  We put the tent away and ate some poppyseed muffins. We drove through thick cloud to the parkinglot which appeared to be more than halfway full already.  We were at the Paradise Trails trailhead by 6:45. We began the steep, paved path up the side of the mountain. We were huffing and puffing almost immediately. Elevation, man. It’ll get ya. But after a bit we were in the rhythm of things. We passed from paved, to gravel, and finally to a rocky dirt trail.  We were happy not to be hiking in the direct sun as we had been yesterday. Going up within the cloud had that as an advantage. We saw a bunny darting back and forth across the trail. We also saw a variety of chipmunks - some fat and others slender.    The fat ones tended to be by l...

Friday, July 31, 2026 Day 5 We grabbed some complimentary ice bags provided by the hotel (a nice gesture seeing as our mini fridge did not have any freezer portion in which to refreeze our ice packs) and packed up our cooler and left Leavenworth behind this morning.   First we drove to Snoqualmie Falls because Bryan had seen online that we could get one of the little collectible tokens there. They didn’t have any. But having a waterfall at your potty break seems better than not. So we won’t complain. The gal at the gift shop desk did say they may be ordering some in soon, because “lots of people have been asking about them.”    So we are apparently not the only ones taking side quests just to get these little tokens.  I decided it was time for chicken teriyaki before we drive into the park. Because it sounds like they may not have very many dairy free options at the Sunrise Day Lodge where we will be stopping first. We were served large portions of chicken and rice -...