Day Hike a Cedar Butte

Hiking is one of my favorite COVID safe activities. Last weekend I set my alarm on Saturday AM to get to Iron Horse state park before 10am. The trail for the day was Cedar Butte and it was spectacular!

Parking was no problem, the state park lot had lots of spaces on this December morning. There is also a non state park lot that I drove past, not sure what if any permits are needed to park there.

The weather was incredibly nice, mid 50's, Sunny and the occasional gusty breeze.

The Cedar Butte trail has add on options, I added an extra mile at the very start on a very wide/ flat trail to warm up and did an additional 1/2 mile add on the way down, bringing my total miles to 5.

I was able to keep a good distance from others on the warm-up and way up the Butte. Heading down the trail did start to become more crowded. I was glad to see the majority of people were wearing masks and it was easy enough to step off the trail to let people pass.

Pictures from my hike:

The park is only a 45min drive from our house, allows dogs, and has miles and miles of railroad grade trails for walking or biking. I am sure I'll be back to explore more.

See the full hike description here: https://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/cedar-butte   

Virtual Family Scavenger Hunt

Our family, like many, have tried several Family Zoom calls to help create connections during our physical distancing due to COVID.

They have been ok, I personally, am glad we keep trying but have found them less than I would hope. The three things I have noticed are:

1. Its a lot of people (11, including 2 kids under 5). 

2. The conversations don't flow super well (A side effect of the group call).

3. It is hard for everyone to be engaged.

One of my brothers and I started to brainstorm on something fun or different to try. The result was a virtual family scavenger hunt.

I built a quick PowerPoint deck to lay out the idea & then shared the slides with everyone. We allowed for 15 days from launch to zoom call, that way each household could do the hunting on their own time.

Giving back is something that is incredibly important to me, so added in that those who did not complete the hunt would donate to the Seattle Homeless Outreach.

I created a scavenger hunt list that had a COVID life flair & combined riddle clues and some that were just things to find.

Over the next few weeks, everyone e-mailed the pictures to me and I created a PowerPoint slide deck with the submissions

The Sunday after we wrapped up the scavenger hunt we had a family zoom call where I shared the PowerPoint slides.

Albeit with some minor technical difficulties, it was a fun way to guide the conversation, kept people engaged, and gave a logical chance for everyone to be part of the conversation.

It was a success and has opened up the possibilities of trying more things other than just chatting via Zoom as we continue to navigate staying home and staying safe.