Places that take your breath away

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Home sweet home on the Palouse! It is so good to be back, living my amazing house with some of the best girls I know, seeing friends, a new set of classes, adventures, and new people to meet. It is going to be a great senior year.

My housemates and I went to the Gorge for the Jack Johnson concert the weekend before classes started. I had never been there before and was totally floored by how amazing this venue is. Thousands of music fans poured into this natural amphitheatre, spreading blankets on the grass until it was a solid patchwork hillside overlooking the Columbia River. Spectacular. The Gorge is miles away from the next semblance of civilization, so that means no noise or lights, just music, hills, sky and water. The concert held another special significance for me, as I got the chance to see one of my best friends from high school before she headed off to Spain for a year abroad. The concert was amazing, and in one of the most wonderful places I have ever been. Great way to end the summer.

Now that classes are back in session, I am trying to figure out how I want to spend my final year at school. I decided to make my schedule more flexible, so dropped a class and am now down to 15 credits, uncommitted myself from all extracurricular activities, and now have a blank slate to work with! I am taking advantage of it and trying some new things: cardio kickboxing (my roommates think I am nuts going to work out at 6am!), kayaking, rock climbing, and signing up for a whitewater rafting trip. Yes, it will be a great semester.

Tonight was my kayak trip on the Snake River. Like the Gorge, this landscape is the rolling sagebrush steppe all of a sudden falling off into a massive body of water. Steep basalt cliffs cuts by years of erosion make the Snake basin seem like a world totally removed from the Palouse. We paddled for 3 ½ hours, just hanging out and enjoying the relaxing sound of our paddles dipping into the still water as the sun went down. I am officially addicted to kayaking now! There are so many amazing places in the world, and I am trying to make the most of the ones around wherever I happen to be.

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Photos

@ the Gorge
me and Kels