Camping in the Cascades

It’s been a week full of camping and working in the woods. We’ve explored around the Cascades to get a lay of the land, and find the best spots. The water in the rivers is SO blue and crystal clear. Just gorgeous. A little too cold for swimming, but I’ve done a couple quick dips.

We’ve found ok camping spots, mostly pull-offs on the side of the roads. The better ones will have a steep path down the riverbed. We still haven’t found any that have enough space to set things up set up outside the van, except for this one in the woods. But it’s not by water! We like having a water source nearby, like a lake or a stream - it just feels nice. 

Ben is getting so sick of his long hair. He keeps saying he’s going to chop it, but then never does when we’re in town. I offered to give him a new-do in the mean time. He said it increased his productivity and I think we can all agree it increased his style factor as well LOL

We went into Seattle for the weekend to shower, but mostly to meet up with my friend/old co-worker, Lauren! She and her boyfriend were in town working remotely. We all got dinner and went to a brewery after. This was Ben and my first hangout with people (other than each other) since we left! We were beaming afterward. It was so much fun to catch up and laugh all night long. 

And lastly, an update on my data visualization learning journey! I’ve dusted off my HTML and CSS knowledge from college, and now I’m learning new Javascript libraries by watching YouTube tutorials. I’m mostly using node, react, and of course D3! It’s fun to have a new challenge to figure out. Definitely frustrating at times, but I’ve made some great progress so it makes the frustration worth it. I’m thinking I could use this time off to build out my data visualization portfolio.