Andrew and I headed out to Washington to visit friends and get some hiking in. We spent less than 24 hours in Seattle but did quite a bit! Right when we got there, we hit up Kerry Park. It has great views of the city and I've been to it a couple times but this was the first time I've been to it where the weather was clear enough to see Mount Rainier!
After that we went to a Botanical Garden, checked out the Fremont Troll, saw Gas Works Park, and did dinner with my friends Steph and Paul!
We stayed at my friend's house and I get so excited to stay there because her dog Toast is the best!
The next morning we grabbed coffee and hung out around Alki Beach!
Andrew had never been to Seattle so we did lots of the typical tourist things including going to Pike Place!
Then we started to head out to Leavenworth, Washington. On the way we saw Snoqualmie Falls & Franklin Falls as well as hiked at Twin Falls (picture below)!
Leavenworth is a cute Bavarian-styled town in the middle of mountains! I loved the look, vibe, food, shops, everything about it! I put together this video of Leavenworth if you want to see more of what it looks like!
The next day we did a hike to Lake Valhalla a glacial lake in the mountains. We jumped in and it was freezing because it just unfroze a few days prior which was something we were not anticipating being from Minnesota and the lakes are typically thawed out by May at the very latest! Check out the Reel I did of this hike :)
We enjoyed lots of German food throughout this trip!
Saturday we hiked to Colchuck Lake with my friend Steph. This hike has blown up because of social media so we started the hike at 5:30am and got to the lake by 7:30am. It wasn't too busy when we got there but on the way down, we passed SO many people. I'm super happy we did it that early. Also we got to see what the lake looks like before the sun hits it versus when the sun comes over the mountain. It almost looks like two different lakes! See more pics from this hike here.
As if all that hiking wasn't enough, on our last full day we hiked to the top of a mountain. Distance wise it wasn't so bad. The steepness of it was pretty tough. But we had 360 views where we could see Mt Baker to the north and Mount Rainier to the south and a bunch of glacial lakes. We had originally planned on just hiking to Minotaur Lake but then had to challenge ourselves a little more to get to the peak and it was totally worth it!
We had such an amazing time in both Seattle and Leavenworth. If you ever need some recommendations, feel free to message me!