September | 2025 | Blissfulbritt

1. Time for another rapid fire, minimal transition post where I can brain and photo dump multiple things that have happened in my life the past couple months (we’ve had a lot of EMC posts lately.) This post will be cat heavy. Is that anything new though? I don’t think so.

Speaking of cats…has anyone been seeing the trend on social media where people are buying their cats a concrete slab? I try not to fall prey to these things, but I HAD TO TRY IT with Little. I bought a 16×16 concrete slab for just under $6 and hoped for the best. Naturally, my cat was beyond disinterested in this. It’s fun watching videos of other cats loving the slab, but mine barely even sniffed it. HA.

2. Duncan and I went to hike Mount Si recently, his first time. This hike is notorious for Canada Jay’s dive bombing hikers for their snacks. I’m not usually one to feed the wildlife, but look…us not feeding them won’t change a damn thing here. People will never stop. Instead, we can opt to feed them species appropriate snacks like bird seed.

Or, like in the photo below…we can pretend to feed them, only for them to see an empty hand. I call this photo: “disappointment.”

3. You won’t be able to tell from any of the photos in this post, but my hair is the longest it’s been since 2017. The downside of growing out a pixie cut is that it grows really wonky. I had a mullet/rat tail like section that was longer than the majority of my hair, and this week I’d had enough. I cut the mullet myself, only to ask my mom to help me. It’s not perfect, but at least most of my hair is “even.”

I will get a proper haircut eventually. LOL.

4. A while back I agreed to watch my friends kid so she and her sister could go to a concert. The time came, and I had a blast from the past evening. We started with perler beads, where I made the most beautiful creature known to man. Then I introduced her kid to the wonderful world of the N64 (I went easy on him.) And we ended the day with a jump on the trampoline. FULLY equipped with a net, just like the one I had as a kid.

Safety first.

5. My Garmin watch was acting a fool recently. The elevation gain on my hikes was constantly messed up, it was no longer accurately recording my distances for hikes or runs, and it was just all around spazzy. I contacted Garmin to see if there was anything I could do to help this, and they offered to send me a free exchange.

The watches they use for this are refurbished, but I figured anything was better than what I had.

The watch I received was as good as new initially. Unfortunately it had some pixelation issues, but they immediately fixed the problem and I’m getting another “new” to me watch. Black and Decker needs to take notes…(see number 9 in that post.)

6. Back in February Duncan bought tickets to see my favorite artist for my birthday. The time came, and we set off for the concert at the farm. While I LOVED seeing Gregory Alan Isakov, I don’t think the outdoor concert scene is for me. I was wildly distracted (and annoyed? even though it’s totally in their right?) by the people constantly walking around.

I was spoiled seeing Gregory for the first time with the Seattle Symphony (LOOK AT that baby child in that post, I wish I could go slap her and tell her to relax her freaking forehead in those photos. This is why my forehead is now wrinkled.) A background symphony is now my standard – inside, no one moves around, acoustics on POINT.

I still had a good time and I’m glad we went. Greg (we’ve met, so naturally we’re on a first name basis. We’re basically besties) was fantastic as always.

7. If you’ve been around here for a while you will remember this post from a year ago. The specific call out in that post is the hubcap story. I lost a hubcap, but it wasn’t the first time. Because this had happened before, when I saw a rogue Toyota Camry hubcap on the side of the road sometime around 2014 I picked it up and stored it for when I needed it.

I ended up needing it last year, and sadly I have since lost that replacement hubcap. I recently had to get a new tire (my third one this year wtf) and when they put the hubcap back on it must have been the final straw. When Duncan and I parked at the Gregory Alan Isakov concert I notice it was missing. That free hubcap lasted me a year, and I will call that a win.

I am back on the hunt for another rogue hubcap on the side of the road, wish me luck.

8. Recently at work we received a random one off Nalgene that we don’t typically carry. I already own a Nalgene, and I use it for hikes where a glass jar will not be a good idea (I exclusively drink and eat out of glass. Yes, I’m one of those.) Because of this I did not need another Nalgene. One is more than enough. However, this Nalgene was very cute and I made a comment about it to my coworker.

I expressed to him how much I liked it, but I didn’t need two Nalgene’s. He knew we likely wouldn’t be getting anymore of these and he decided to buy it for me. This made the Nalgene suddenly very special, and I am reminded of the magnitude of a small gesture. This made my day, and now I can just rotate between the two Nalgene’s I own. Or I can give my other one away. So many options.

9. I’m getting the itch again to sign up for a half marathon. I truly don’t know what is wrong with me. I swore after my last one I would not run another one for a WHILE. That one destroyed me not only physically, but mentally as well. Somehow after the summer season passes I tend to forget how much I abhor the last few weeks of training for a half.

I might try to start training earlier and run exclusively throughout the winter. Maybe that will help?

10. Last, but most certainly not least Duncan and I went on a triple date recently to Ziggy’s Cat Lounge. I went here once last year, and this time it was just the six of us in the room. We had a magical time, and I was reunited with two of their resident black cats. They recently got ANOTHER resident black cat (named Binx, how fitting), and they were all so sweet.

I managed to capture a photo of Duncan in his element…feeding wild animals (this is a call back to him being Snow White on Mt. Si with the bird.)

My favorite thing about this visit is that all of us own cats and are very happy with the cats we own. Sometimes cat owners just want to have coffee and socialize together in public…with other cats.

Q: What’s your confession?

I. Am. So. Behind. My posting has taken a back seat to anything and everything else in life. Which is absolutely fine, but when I have a handful of hikes I want to document in my online diary it’s much harder when I am months behind. The hike I want to share today is from July 27th, nearly two months ago. This is a hike I had heard about a few years ago, and finally got around to prioritizing.

Duncan and I set out to hike the Klahhane Ridge in Olympic National Park. I had been to this area of the park before (the Hurricane Ridge entrance), but only a couple of times. I had forgotten how breathtaking this part of the Olympics were, and no matter which hike you embark on from the Hurricane Ridge area you will see sweeping views of mountains and trees.

The Klahhane Ridge trail has two starting locations. The steeper and more direct route begins at the Switchback Trail. For a longer and more gradual trail to the ridge you can start from the Hurricane Ridge main parking lot. We chose the Switchback Trail, which only has maybe 5-8 parking spots, so it’s best to arrive early.

We arrived before 0730 and easily snagged a parking spot. We saw a few other hikers, but had the trail mostly to ourselves on the way up. The trail to the ridge from the parking lot is short, but once you are on the ridge there are multiple options for continuing on. My main goal was to hike this trail until we were able to see Lake Angeles.

We could have hiked all the way DOWN to Lake Angeles, but this means we would have had to go back up (obviously.)

The ridge itself is mild, but for someone like me who is afraid of thin trails with drop offs there were a few spots that gave me pause. I managed to get past them, and then we entered the back side of the ridge where there were open meadows with zero drop offs. We sat for some lunch before continuing on to where we could see Lake Angeles from above.

Overall the trail was very quiet which was surprising for a Sunday mid summer.

I would have loved to continue on to the bottom of the lake, but I have hiked to Lake Angeles many times before and ultimately did not need to see it again. It wasn’t worth the effort of going down and then back up. Although my ego always wants to “complete” a trail. This trail had multiple branch offs for somewhat of a choose your own adventure trail so I didn’t feel tooooo bad skipping the lake.

We turned around and walked a little bit on another trail before calling it a day and heading back to the car. We ended with just over 8 miles, and just under 3k feet of elevation gain for the day.

One of my favorite things to do when visiting a national park is checking out the visitor center. Sadly the Hurricane Ridge visitor center burned down in 2023, but they do have a smaller ranger station down the road. We stopped in here on the way out to browse the trinkets before heading back home. I don’t typically buy anything, I just like to look.

We ended the day filling up our bellies at Red Robin. Somehow this place doesn’t leave me feeling like a total bag of garbage after eating their food, and for that I go every so often. I can’t say the same for Duncan, but that’s likely because he drank a milkshake meant for two despite being sensitive to dairy. LOL. Alas, sometimes it’s worth the pain.

Q: Do you like national park visitor centers?