Nothing smells sweeter than Washington air. Especially the hot, pine scented air that floats through my motorcycle helmet and into my lungs while speeding off on a dirt road behind the cabin, becoming cooler the higher the bike climbs up through the tree covered hillsides.

Pine tree to people ratio: a million to one.

It’s amazing how being gone for a year can make a place look new again. The cabin has always been beautiful, but after living the city life for a while it felt wonderful to be in nature and it was a good cure for the jet lagged moping I had been doing earlier in the week right after getting home and desperately missing Paris.

Sunday included a hike up to dinosaur rock.

It was a weekend full of activity, from hiking to motorcycle riding, to catching up with family while sitting around the campfire; I milked every second of that three day weekend to do all the things I missed doing while away. And each evening I would fall into my sleeping bag exhausted and covered in a thin layer of dirt, with my hair feeling awfully similar to dreadlocks and smelling like campfire smoke and it felt wonderful.

On Monday we rode all the way to Chelan which I had done only once before a couple of years ago on an overnight trip with my dad. This time, we went on a much shorter route and it only took about four hours to go there and back. Despite dusty roads it’s a really fun ride, especially when it includes a stop at Coopers General Store, where one is almost always guaranteed to have an interesting conversation with a lonely traveler type mountain man, who is currently living in a trailer but planning on building his own log cabin.

Lake Chelan selfie on the side of the highway…

There are only a few things better than making a turn on a curvy road and suddenly seeing a splay of mountains beneath you, their jagged edges hitting the endless blue sky that stretches above with a solitary hawk gliding peacefully through. It makes you catch your breath and let your hand off the gas, trying to take it all in without crashing the motorcycle while wondering how anything so picture perfect could exist in real life.

One of the few things better than that view is homemade rocky road ice cream, but we had that at the cabin too.

XOLily