The last leg of fun-employment

After prime ski time, Shannon and I discovered that we couldn't just hang out in Seattle and job search (too much grumpiness) and initiated a every-other-day mini adventure scheme that was great and allowed us to really enjoy the end of our fun-employment.

dani (Shannon's friend from college) came and visited and we headed down to Mt. Rainier to do a little hiking and sight seeing.

Still snowy, but melting fast.

Sorry, dani, had to post this.  Nice moss mustache.

Of course, we went to Wenatchee and ran into Theresa, Rolando and their kids Memo, and Noe.  I had a lot of fun playing Transformers with Memo and Noe.  The next day we hiked in the Wenatchee foothills as the flowers were just blooming.  Then we had a nice dinner with Nick, Flora, and their kids Clementine and Scarlet.

Jason and Kaitlyn got married on April 25th and we had a great time celebrating with these close friends.  Great dancing, great food, and a very rad married couple.

With time to spare, we decided to checkout Bellingham and their interactive science/wacky museum called Mindport.  Highly recommended.  Here's Shannon playing with the Tornado machine.

Around this time, Shannon finally heard the news... things had worked out for the AmeriCorps Supervisor job she had applied for.  After a few ups and downs, this ideal job had finally become a reality.  She formally accepted the job in the smack middle of a trip to Vashon Island and I mucked around on the beach to celebrate.

In order to really celebrate the end of our trip, we went to Walla Walla, a previously unexplored corner of Washington.  We had a fantastic time bike riding.  Riding on the roads in Walla Walla is road biking as it should be, beautiful, uncrowded and fast.

We burned off just enough calories to justify 3 different winery visits and a great celebratory dinner....

... and just like that, our Bonus Year was formally over and I sent Shannon off to work.  My job search has concluded as well and I just finished my third week as a Design Engineer at Cascade Designs.  We'll have a few more reflective posts, but that's a wrap on our journey!

Ski Season... the end... ish

Yes, we know, it's been literally months since we've updated the blog.  At this point we're updating the blog for us.  We want to make sure we have a good record of our full Bonus Year and it's time to finish it up in the next handful of posts.  If you're still reading, good on ya.

After getting back from Biloxi and Memphis, we got the last shreds of ski season with some late season April snow.  Bozeman and I capitalized on a storm and backcountry skied at the closed Mt. Baker ski area.  Despite a epic equipment failure on Bozeman's skins, we had a great day in some deep pow (Bozeman's deepest of the year... I didn't tell him about my season ;) ).

April Pow is fantastic

Bozeman laughing at our good fortune:

It's all fun and games...

This big storm allowed Stevens Pass to re-open.  The PNW had such a rough snow year, we got some pow with the starved locals and enjoyed some of our last employment uninhibited mid-week ski days.

From Daisy to 7th Heaven in 4 seasons.  Shannon skis hard.

Fog, evergreens, and pow.  It's home.

Of course, we took advantage of good weather to do some quick hiking in-between job searches (not fun for anybody).  Here's a few photos from our jaunt out to Barclay Lake.  This was the site of our first backpacking trip together many years ago.  It's easy and beautiful.

I wanted one more in-bounds ski day before retreating to the backcountry and went down to Crystal before their closing weekend.  They've mostly spun the Green Valley chair all season and I skied what felt like a million hot laps off the chair.  So fun.  And the view never disappoints.

All good things must come to an end and I rode the gondola down at the end of a great ski season.

I did manage 3 more backcountry ski trips before hanging em' up this year.  Our overall stats for the year aren't so bad... (these are for me (Scott), plus/minus a few for Shan)

-37 days

-25 different ski areas

-12 new areas

-15 pow days (+/- a few depending on your "standards")

-3 continents

-1 attempt by Shannon to snake my line.  Unsuccessful.

-Many happy apres ski times/beers

-More than 5,000 miles driven

-2 times skiing in the rain (1 more than necessary)

Can't wait for moooore snow!