Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Bellevue --> Issaquah

My walking buddy, DeAnn, and I had decided the week before that we needed to push ourselves further. Although DeAnn isn't walking The 3-Day with me, she's been a constant driving force on this journey; she gets me excited to walk even when I'm not feeling 'it'. I honestly don't know how prepared I'd be right now if I didn't have her walking with me on the weekends.

Our journey started at 6:30am on Sunday. I rolled out of bed, threw on my walking clothes, and grabbed my backpack that I had packed the night before. DeAnn was already sitting on the stoop ready to roll.

It was a great morning for a walk; the clouds were high and provided a nice cover from the heat of the sun.

I had forgotten I was going to document this walk. But! I remembered about two miles in.

This is, believe it or not, a bike path/board walk thing. It parallels the I-90 freeway from Seattle -> East.


So, we walked and we walked and we walked some more. I, again, forgot about the documentation thing. Because if I'd remembered, I totally would have taken a picture of the motorized scooter that was just left on the bike path about three miles after the above picture was taken.

OK, so the scooter itself wasn't scary... It was the fact that it was just abandoned in the middle of the path! It spooked us, so we ended up jogging past it. Hey! Don't judge us! It was creepy!

The scooter story is relevant too. I learned a very important lesson by jogging past that scooter: Never walk 5 miles on an empty stomach then jog a few yards. Oy. I felt so so sick for a few minutes after my heart had settled down. Had to stop for a minute so I could eat one of the granola bars I'd stashed in my backpack. You might be asking yourself why I had them in my backpack and hadn't actually eaten one before this. The answer is simple: because I didn't feel like it. Lesson learned.

Moving on!

This picture was taken by DeAnn (unknowingly as the shutter button is very sensitive). I actually like this one best of all the pics taken on our little outing. So, you see me with my pastey legs and unkempt hair, you can see a little bit of the freeway that was our constant (noisey) companion and the freeway signs that denote entrance to Issaquah, all with the sillouette of Tiger Mountain looming in the background.


One great perk about walking all the time when it's light out for me is my hair starts to lighten up. There are days when I forget that I actually have red hair. This is about 8.5 miles into our walk.


We made it to Issaquah! We're standing on an overpass looking back at the way we'd come. If you squint and tilt your head juuuust right, you can kind of sort of see where the last picture was taken - waaay down at the other end of the freeway.


After all that walking, who couldn't use a little refreshment? I'm pretty sure the baristas thought we'd lost our minds as we both walked in with huge grins on our faces and dripping (it was overcast yes, but it was muggy as hell) wet. (How do you like my wings? Gotta love wispy hair!)


But we weren't done there! Oh no. How could one possibly visit Issaquah and not go to the worlds greatest store?

Wings fixed and walk accomplished!

10.5 miles flew by. It helps when you and your walking partner get along and neither of you shut up. The walk did take us longer than we'd thought it would for 10.5 miles, however. We clocked it at 2.75 hours. Still, though, that's not too shabby considering we stopped a couple times for various reasons. (There was a very cute, very expensive model house along the way and we had peek into the windows to see the floorplan ^.^)

All in all it was a fantastic time and I can't wait to get out and do it again!
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3 comments:

Donna said...

Okay... so how did you get home!

Zee said...

Haha! Forgot to put that in! We were originally planning on walking back as well, but my friend had some plans (damn commitments). So we took the bus back. ^.^

I think this next weekend we'll be walking to Seattle!

Donna said...

I wondered if you had walked it. At least where you're walking is pretty.