Office Drone Escapees on the Loose!

My fellow office drone K. and I are taking off at noon for a brief day trip into the North Cascades. Yes, it's silly to have a day trip so far away and not even be able to leave first thing in the morning; this was all very last-minute. We might even just pop up a tent and stay overnight, although I doubt it. Just in case, though, I've been putting together all the things we'd need to make such an sojourn possible. I felt well-prepared as I surveyed my tidy bundle of supplies, but checked to see if I had managed to get all the Ten Essentials. Mr. Thel rattled them off: map, compass, firestarter & matches, water, food, extra clothes, flashlight, first aid, knife, and sunglasses & sunscreen. (Okay, we got stuck at nine and had to look up the final one, but it turned out to be something I already had packed anyway.)

"Hey, I already have all that together!" I said proudly.

"Well, I told you, you were trained by an expert," Mr. Thel replied.

True.

K. and I plan to drive up to Diablo Lake. She moved here from Florida last summer, and she has a specific memory of seeing a picture of Diablo Lake in a magazine on her way here and promptly deciding she wanted to see it firsthand. She's excited to finally realize that ambition, and I'm excited because I've only been there once before. If we stick with Plan A, we'll just drive up, spend some time looking out over viewpoints and taking a few tiny nature trail walks, bask for a lazy while in the glorious summer sunshine we've been seeing so much of lately, and drive back to Seattle. (With any luck, we'll be the only ones driving toward town, as all the SeaFair crowds clog the roads heading back out of town.) But if we go with Plan B, we'll have the supplies to make it easy.

I'll post pictures to my Flickr page after we get back. Hasta!