On previous trips, I’ve blogged and documented almost every single day, but given the vagaries of connections in the Montana wilderness, not to mention the difficulties of carrying a laptop into the backcountry, that just wasn’t possible this trip. So now I sit here, in the aftermath of it all– endless fascinating stories that don’t really connect unless I want to write something novel-length; several hundred pictures; a few amusing and/or weird videos that do not really belong on the planet Earth.

Heck, I’ll start with one of those. When people think of Yellowstone National Park, they think of bears, or crowds, or Old Faithful, or a volcano that will one day kill us all. But when you’re standing in or near the caldera, in one of the countless geyser basins that litter the area, the utter strangeness of the landscape makes it difficult to remember you’re still standing on our own planet. The stark muddy landscape, with orange and brown bacteria mats spreading as far as the eye can see, and bubbling hot springs that throw up a field of steam so dense it’s like you’re walking through sulfurous London fog… well, it’s not planet Earth. It’s the sort of place you’d expect to find Captain Kirk fighting a guy in a lizard suit, is all I’m saying.

While we were at Yellowstone, we walked around Shoshone Lake, which is believed to be the largest lake in the lower 48 states not accessible by road. Only hand-powered watercraft (canoes and kayaks) are allowed on it, and when you reach the top of a hill on the lake’s edge, you can essentially look out and see miles and miles of scenery– water, forests, and marshland– that looks no different than it would have to a fur trader in the area three hundred years ago.

On the southwest corner of Shoshone Lake is the Shoshone Geyser Basin, which is a prime example of one of those alien landscapes I mentioned. It has eighty geysers in a 1600×800 foot area, and, well, you’d best watch your step if you’re walking through it. It’s a landscape that smacks you in the head and says, “Why, yes, you ARE standing inside a 45-mile-wide volcano. Have a nice, non-terrifying day! Muwahahaha.”

Both Yellowstone and Glacier National Park are also famous for their wildlife. Before either park lets you camp in the backcountry, they subject you to a fifteen-minute video detailing how to avoid bears, and what to do in the event of a bear encounter (answer: not be an idiot). In fact, a large swath of Yellowstone was closed to hikers, thanks to a recent bear attack that resulted in a fatality. So we followed the advice in the video, but despite that (or perhaps because of it), we didn’t even see any bears at all. Darn it!

We did see plenty of bison, and chipmunks (see right), and one eighteen-inch long critter that looked sort of like a red fox, except that red foxes don’t climb trees.

There were plenty of elk, too, including a few lounging right in the middle of Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District, aka the biggest town in Yellowstone.

So Yellowstone was pretty awesome. Glacier National Park was pretty awesome, too– I’ll add a few pictures to the post, but otherwise I think my previously-posted poem about Glacier National Park speaks for itself. Yellowstone wins as far as weird scenery and wildlife, but Glacier wins when it comes to sheer, raw nature. (Until the day Yellowstone erupts and kills us all, that is.)

As for Grand Teton National Park, we only got to spend one night there, unfortunately, and didn’t get to hike in the mountains at all. But they were still darn impressive. Hopefully in the future I’ll be able to spend more time there. They’re only… fifteen hours away… through some of the most monotonous scenery this side of Texas. (Montana and eastern Washington are cool and all, but the driving does get old after a while.)

If you’re interested, here’s the full set of photos from the trip.

And, for one last obligatory video, I leave you with Old Faithful erupting. (Skip to 1:50 if you can’t stand the wait.)

It’s pulled straight from events and sights on our backcountry trek. It’s also the first poem of any length that I’ve written in years. The muse strikes in weird ways sometimes.

My thumbs got a workout typing this up on my phone. Forgive any typos- I’ll go back and fix them later, and pretend they never existed.

Update: Now that I’m back in Seattle, I did add some cool photos.

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Some see the kingdom of Faerie
In the mountains and vales of Scotland,
Others in the forests and glades of Eire,
Or the dark and brooding
Woods of Eastern Europe,
The lands from which the gypsies hail.
But to me, the greatest Faerie Queen of all
Lives in the wilds of Northern Montana.
She is not a gentle mistress.
Her arms do not offer
Titania’s warm embrace.
She is perhaps a relative of Mab,
Agent of Winter,
And her beauty is ferocious and cold.
You can see it in the ragged rocky peaks
Thrust toward the sky like
Turrets of the greatest castle
In the world,
In clear green lakes
All but glowing with magic,
Their pristine, icy waters encased in
Shrines of pine trees
And protected by rock walls
Soaring half a mile high all around.
If you dare to climb her mountains
You can feel her anger
In the gusts of wind that tear at you
With hurricane force,
As if to throw you off the high passes
And back from whence you came.
But the chance to see her domain
From on high, to see the cliffsides
Thousands of feet sheer
Surrounding the forests below,
The glaciers that shroud the slopes
In blankets of white,
And to see it all from the level
Of her eyes,
It is a sight worth incurring
The wrath of a Faerie Queen.

Yet she is not entirely
A Mistress of Winter.
For if you travel the lush forests
And alpine meadows,
You can see her beauty in the
Yellow and purple flowers
That line the trail,
Taste her essence in wild huckleberries.
Bears, elk, and mountain goats
Are her agents and her friends,
And if you sit on a log
And talk for a time with a chipmunk,
Perhaps he will tell you of her secrets.
But beware, if you set your tent
In her lands on a cold autumn night,
You can hear her roar,
Her and her army of Night Chills,
Roaring overhead with the force of a gale,
Roaring at the interlopers who have
Dared disturb her domain.
You can hear her coming,
Hear her getting closer,
Then she slams into your tent
As if throwing herself bodily against it.
Be assured she is not happy
To have you here.
Yet her ferocity and her wild nature
Only add to her beauty and allure.
Keep your pixies and your changelings,
Your sprites and woodland elves,
My heart belongs
To the Faerie Queen
of North Montana.

On Saturday we did a five-mile hike to Heliotrope Ridge. It felt a lot longer than five miles, thanks to a long uphill climb at the beginning and several streams which took us a while to ford. The trail took us up through dense, lush pine forest, into the streams and past meadows of wildflowers, to the edge of the Coleman Glacier. The glacier is the biggest on Mt. Baker, and even though it was at its smallest size of the year, it was still an impressive sight.

The weather was perfect: sunny, mid-70s, and not too hazy, which made for some very nice views, both of Mt. Baker and the surrounding scenery. Far up on the slope, where the snow and glaciers still reign supreme even in summer, we could see hikers and snowshoers making their way across the slope.

After a soak in the hot tub at the rental cabin, a huge and excellent dinner, and a night of games and conversation, we headed out again the next day, and stopped at Silver Lake near the Canadian border for lunch. Afterward, most of the group headed back to Seattle, but a few of us stuck around for a bit. I had originally planned to join the group heading back to Seattle, but I’m glad I didn’t. We got some excellent views of Mt. Shuksan (ninth-highest in the state), and made it up past the snow line to the Mt. Baker Ski Area. We had hoped to drive even higher, up to Artist Point, a viewpoint with a 360-degree view of both Mt. Shuksan and Mt. Baker. But the road was closed, and hiking there would have been an 8-mile walk. At that point, it was 4 pm, so we piled in the car and headed back to Seattle.

Now I’m in the middle of a two-day break between trips. Tomorrow, I’m meeting a friend from Texas, and early Wednesday morning we’re due to embark on a driving, hiking, and backpacking tour of Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks. There probably won’t be much tweeting or blogging during the trip, but there will hopefully be some excellent photos and stories when I return.

(For those interested, here’s the full set of Mt. Baker photos).

As usual, Dragon*Con had two sides: the daytime, full of panels and readings and costumes and the Dealer’s Room and the Art Show, and the night time, full of parties and dances and even more elaborate and/or skimpier costumes. So that’s how I’ll divide the report:

Daytime

I spent most of my mornings and afternoons being fairly straight-laced and normal, attending writing panels and readings. I got to see Howard Tayler read again, and I was also particularly happy to meet Laura Anne Gilman, who I’ve conversed with on Twitter a couple of times. I heard Mur Lafferty read, and I heard a number of different editors and publishers hold forth on their favorite books that will soon hit the shelves.

I enjoyed readings, and those sort of “what’s coming soon” panels, far more than I enjoyed the panels on the actual writing process. I feel like I’ve reached a point where I know most of what’s going to be said on the process panels. Intellectually, I know how to write, thanks to writing groups, podcasts, scattered classes and panels, and my own accumulating pool of experience. So as I listened to these panels, I began answering each question in my own head, and comparing them with what the panelists said, and came away reasonably sure that I could hold forth just as expertly on pretty much every panel I attended.

That’s not to say I know as much as published authors. But sitting in on one of these panels is like sitting in on a “Basics of Writing” class: it keeps things at a pretty trite and uncomplicated level (there’s only an hour, after all), and once you’ve moved beyond that level, the panels are kind of useless.

I felt the same way about the “How to Get Published” panels. I know how to get published, I just have to do it, and the biggest step to getting published is to write more publishable stuff. It’s a fact that most of these panels tend to gloss over, even though it’s probably what most of the audience needs to hear. It’s so easy to get caught up in how to get published, or the commercial vs. self-publishing debate, that it’s easy to lose track of the actual writing.

One panelist even commented that he’s met people like that: people who go to writing panels, attend classes and workshops, but when it comes to actual writing output, they write very little. They’re utterly fascinated by the business and process of writing but don’t actually practice it. And more practice is the main thing I need right now, far more than panels or advice.

Nighttime

Ah, the interesting part of Dragon*Con, and let’s be honest, the biggest reason to go. You can get panels and readings at any con, but only one con has earned the title “Nerdy Gras.”

This year, I was determined to cosplay. Not as any character in particular; I prefer making up my own characters, which I suppose comes from being a writer. I don’t cosplay to show off my outfit-making skills (of which I have none), but I like the aspecting of transforming into a different character for a few hours. And makeup & special effects are closet hobbies of mine, so I packed some interesting clothes, a variety of prosthetic ears/horns/teeth and bodypaint, and headed out.

I hit a stumbling block when the TSA confiscated my airbrush. Airbrushed bodypaint is longer-lasting, easier to wear, and faster to apply than regular bodypaint, and as a result it’s usually what I use when I’m costuming. It wasn’t the airbrush itself that the TSA had a problem with– it was a small electric air compressor, about the size of a volleyball, which the TSA classified as “dangerous goods.” Why, I have no idea. It plugs into a wall outlet, so it’s not like it going to turn on or explode, or, um, compress anything, in the middle of a flight.

When I got to Atlanta, I recovered my ransacked luggage and a generic form note from the TSA telling me I’m not allowed to take lighters on a plane. Makes me proud to be an American, I tell you.

After a bit of fruitless raging at no one in particular, I got over it and cosplayed anyway, using cotton pads bought from a mall pharmacy in lieu of airbrush (I’m the one on the left– my cosplay isn’t that good):

On Sunday night, I skipped the bodypaint and went with vampire instead of elf-demon. Technically, I was a time-traveling vampire from an alternate reality– or at least, that was what I told everyone at the Steampunk & Time Travelers Ball.

In a sense, I feel like Dragon*Con is a big social experiment for me. The people who attend represent, in a variety of ways, a community I want to be a part of: from the professional writers on the panels, to the cosplayers who head out every night and party– but most of all, all of us geeks who spend four awesome days reveling in our geekdom. As I’ve said before, there’s a special combination of passion and independent thought that, for me, is at the heart of being a geek, and every year at Dragon*Con, I’m thoroughly immersed in it.

But because I started going to conventions only recently (Dragon*Con 2009 was my first), I don’t have the network of friends in the community that most congoers seem to have. My first year at Dragon*Con, I didn’t talk to anybody except the two people from Raleigh who I already knew. The second year at Dragon*Con, I did better– I had dinner with some professional authors, and attended some parties, but still spent a large chunk of time feeling introverted and out of place. This third year, I still felt introverted and out of place– but I cosplayed, I attended the Steampunk Ball with a few of my roommates and their friends, and interacted a little more with the larger community. Each year has been a little step forward, a little bit of progress in this weird social experiment.

But it’s a lot like my goal of being a professional writer– it’s about being patient, and playing the long game. In multiple senses of the word I’m remaking myself, redefining my identity, going through a stage that I feel like most people get past in their early 20′s. I didn’t like my first try at being an adult, so now I’m having a second try, this time as the person I want to be.

And yes, I realize that to some people, there’s an irony in dressing up in costumes and writing fantasy novels while talking about adulthood. If you’re one of those people, then conventions aren’t for you. And I kind of feel sorry for you, because you’ve let society define “adulthood” instead of doing it yourself.

Next year, Dragon*Con conflicts with the World Science Fiction Convention. It’s gonna be a tough call as to which one I go to, but Dragon*Con reminded me of one thing: among cons, it is unique. Every WorldCon is unique, too, but the business networking I can get at other cons. If WorldCon is a glass of fresh-squeezed, healthy vegetable juice, then Dragon*Con is an entire bar stocked with beer and mead and wine.

And rum, of course. Can’t forget the rum. (No worries, Captain Morgan is on it.)

My Dragon*Con Photos on Flickr

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew that WorldCon has a higher-than-usual percentage of professionals, and there’s more of a focus on business and networking than at other cons. There’s a lot of fannish stuff going on as well, but WorldCon is one of the best cons for rubbing shoulders with professional writers and editors and talking one-on-one (or at least few-on-one) with the pros.

My own career is still in such early stages that I’m not sure how useful networking really is. I have a finished first draft of a novel that needs a lot of polishing before it has a prayer of getting anywhere, so I’m not really looking for an editor or an agent yet. And I don’t have professional short story sales under my belt, so it’s not like I can expect an anthology invite or anything. Instead, I’m playing the long game, hoping that contacts I make now might pay off in the months and years down the road. I’m also familiarizing myself with the names in the business, and the way the business works. And, above all, I’m hopefully making some friends along the way.

I’d say WorldCon was a rousing success in all those categories. I got to see some friends from previous cons, like Matt Rotundo and Mary Robinette Kowal (who won a Hugo Award for Best Short Story!), and I met plenty of new ones. I was particularly pleased to meet the Inkpunks, a collective of writers who I’ve followed on Twitter for a long time, and various friends of theirs, as well as Cassie Alexander, who deserves special mention for inviting me into the SFWA party. *ninja eyes* I also met several Seattle authors who I’d seen and heard at events back home, including Keffy Kehrli and Liz Argall.

So much happened, it’s tough to form a cohesive narrative, so I’ll hit a few high points:

Kaffeeklatsches. I hadn’t done kaffeeklatsches at previous cons, but these are small group discussions (usually limited to 9 people) with an author or editor, which last for an hour. It’s a way to have a more intimate conversation with industry professionals, or even your own personal heroes. At WorldCon, I had kaffeeklatsches with John Scalzi, Howard Tayler, Lev Grossman, and Jennifer Brozek– these were some of my favorite hours spent at the con.

World Jay Day. Jay Lake is an author who’s been fighting a multi-year battle with cancer, and right now is undergoing chemotherapy. Despite that, he came to WorldCon to host the Hugo Awards, and is all-around an awesome guy. Diana Sherman organized a bunch of people to gather in the Dealer’s Room on Friday wearing Hawaiian shirts, and give Jay a surprise show of support. It was pretty cool.

Meeting my heroes. I got to meet several of my personal literary heroes, most notably Howard Tayler, who writes and draws the webcomic Schlock Mercenary. I suppose it’s odd that a webcomic artist would be so influential on an aspiring author, but he is, for many reasons, not the least of which is that it was through Howard that I found Writing Excuses. When I finally had the chance to talk to him one-on-one for a few seconds, I told him, I’ve been reading Schlock Mercenary for nine years, listening to Writing Excuses for three, and I have a 175,000 word fantasy novel that probably would not exist if it weren’t for you guys. My life has led all sorts of interesting places because of you, and I just wanted to say ‘thanks.’

In general, I tried to stay professional throughout the con. I didn’t geek out when I passed George R.R. Martin or Patrick Rothfuss in the hall; I didn’t squee with joy when I held Mary Robinette Kowal’s Hugo Award or frantically try to get someone take a picture of me with it. Meeting Howard was the closest I came to having a “fanboy moment”, and as I walked away, I definitely teared up.

Parties. Each night I spent a few hours surfing through the various room parties, clustered on the 15th and 16th floors of the Atlantis Hotel. Some parties were put on by fans, others by groups bidding for future WorldCons, and some by publishers. There was also a semi-exclusive lounge hosted by SFWA, which, as mentioned earlier, I got into thanks to awesome friends. My next career goal is to be able to get in to the SFWA suite at cons without help.

I won’t deny it: parties stress me out, especially when (as was frequently the case) I walk into a party without knowing anyone. My inner introvert goes into total brain-lockdown mode, and a very strong part of me just wants to find a corner and hide. But the evening parties provided some of my favorite moments of the con, including meeting and hanging out with the Inkpunks (okay, technically, that was at the bar, but it still counts); hanging out with Lev Grossman on Saturday night after he won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer; meeting Amy Sundberg, Patrick Swenson, and holy cow I could list names forever and still forget someone. Suffice it to say that everyone was totally, absolutely awesome.

The Masquerade. Costumes were not as prevalent at WorldCon as they are at many cons, but what costumes were there were extremely well done. Someday, at some con, I’ll get tired of Masquerades and stop attending them, but it was not this con.

I was seated well back, but the people immediately in front of me were short, and I was able to get some relatively good pictures without having to worry too much about people’s heads being in the way. The best-in-show winner was Torrey Stenmark, for her Avatar costume, which also won at Norwescon earlier this year.

The Hugo Awards. On Saturday night came the biggest event of WorldCon: The Hugo Awards. Given each year for the best works in the field, they’re sort of like the Oscars of Science Fiction. In every category in which I actually predicted a winner, I was right, however, my votes usually did not correspond with my predictions, and in the categories where I strongly supported one of the choices, pretty much none of them won. I don’t begrudge any of the winners their awards; they all deserved them, and nothing happened that I would decry as a travesty of literature or good taste. Too often, science fiction itself is decried as a travesty of literature and good taste– so forget that noise. Fandom is far more diverse than my particular corner of it, and I’m okay with that.

I suppose if I have one regret about WorldCon, it’s that everyone was so dang busy. There were so many people who I’d have to loved to chill with at the bar and shoot the breeze, but the con as a whole was far too crowded and busy for that. Plus, the two hotels of the con were far enough apart that travelling between them was not easy, and even each hotel on its own was so big that it was hard to find people. What the con really needed was a con bar, but alas, despite the presence of numerous bars amongst the two host hotel/casinos, a favorite never materialized.

Speaking of casinos, I managed to go through the whole con without so much as sticking a quarter in a slot machine. All the temptation for me was in the Dealer’s Room: I came home with far more books than I have room for, and I’m now having to improvise bookshelves out of every available surface in my tiny apartment. I haven’t actually had to stack books in the sink yet, but if I live here much longer, who knows what measures might need to be taken.

Now I have less than a week until Dragon*Con, and all the craziness starts all over again. Except even crazier, because well, it’s Dragon*Con.

It’s gonna be fun.

It’s gonna be great.

In related news, my main goal prior to WorldCon was to finish the first draft of my novel In a Land of Wind and Sky, and today I did so. The draft is 176,902 words long, and it stretches across 642 pages in Microsoft Word. Since the time I wrote the first word of it (November 1, 2009), it’s been 653 days.

But to be honest, it feels a bit anticlimatic. There’s still a lot of work to do, and the line between where the first draft ends and the second draft starts is kind of arbitrary. For my own purposes, “first draft” means that I’ve built all the plot lines and character arcs from beginning to end. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re consistent. Sometimes the character’s voice changes from scene to scene as I experiment with different styles, or setting details are added midway through the story. Major plot elements are introduced and disappear as I try to decide what should be important and what isn’t, or change my mind about exactly what’s needed in order for different aspects of the story to be resolved.

In the second draft, my task is going to be to go through and make things consistent– support what needs to be supported, emphasize what needs to be emphasized, and take out what needs to be taken out. After the second draft, I think it’ll be ready for alpha readers.

But for now, I can head off to WorldCon, secure in the knowledge that if anyone asks if I’ve written a novel, I can say, “Yes.”

My flight leaves in less than 12 hours. Hmm… I should probably start packing.

So since summer weather in this neck of the woods (by which I mean “sunny and higher than 70 degrees”) is fleeting, I decided to take advantage of it and actually see some of the outdoor scenery for which the Northwest is famous. And thus, with only about two days’ advance decision time, I threw my camping gear in the car and headed out on the 440-mile Cascade Loop Scenic Highway.

The simple need to enjoy summer wasn’t my only reason for going: I’ve felt overconnected, lately, and with two major sci-fi conventions coming up, I wanted to escape and recharge my batteries before so much travel and social chaos. And even though I’m only a few thousand words away from the end of my novel, I felt like a break would be good for the creative batteries as well.

For what was supposed to be a relaxing trip, it didn’t start out well. First, I made the mistake of rushing my departure in order to make it to a McDonald’s about ten minutes down the road before they stopped serving breakfast… hey, I have a weakness for their biscuits. I make no apologies. The problem was that in my haste, I forgot my wallet. So, I had to turn around and go back home– and of course, I didn’t get my biscuit.

After finally procuring food, I was on the road and starting to get into the “road trip groove” when the lid popped off my soda, spilling most of it between the driver’s seat and the center console. This necessitated spending about twenty minutes at a convienence store, helping myself liberally to the paper towels from the bathroom, and trying to clean it up. (Speaking of which… anyone have any tips on how to get soda out of a seatbelt mechanism? Sigh.)

Things started to improve once the Cascades came in sight. However, the weather wasn’t exactly cooperating. The day had started out overcast, and although it was gradually improving, the mountains were still shrouded in cloud:

But luckily, it didn’t last long. The weather cleared, and soon even the snow-covered peaks were visible.

I didn’t have a specific plan or itinerary; my plan was to drive, listen to music, and stop at whatever happened to look interesting along the way. My first stop ended up being at a place called Deception Falls State Park, where a half-mile loop trail followed a lovely creek past a series of picturesque, occasionally raging waterfalls, and through some absolutely beautiful pine forest.

There are a lot of little towns around the Cascades, most of which depend on tourism. During the summer there’s whitewater rafting, and hiking, and backpacking, and during the winter of course, there’s skiing. A few of the towns have come up with “themes” that, I suppose, make them even more enticing to tourists. For example, there’s the town of Leavenworth, which has modelled itself on a Bavarian village. Even the signs for the McDonald’s and the gas station were done up in ornate wooden Bavarian style.

In my opinion, it had all the authentic character and charm of Disneyworld– in other words, I was not a fan. But I know a lot of people like that sort of thing, and in fairness, I did have a huckleberry cheesecake ice cream cone there that was absolutely superb.

Another example of such a town was Winthrop, Washington– all done up in authentic Old Pioneer style, and perfectly charming, with friendly people, but it still felt fake to me.

I guess all in all, I’d rather feel the authentic character of a place. And if you have to model your town on an artificial theme, you’re pretty much saying that whatever character you originally had wasn’t that interesting on its own. It’s true, I suppose, and good on them for making the most of the situation, but when I need a reason to visit the area, I’ll stick with this:

The Cascade Loop also provides a fairly dramatic illustration of what a “rain shadow” is. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, a rain shadow is when a mountain range blocks the passage of rain clouds and weather systems, so that the rain falls on the mountains and the area directly “behind” the mountains is very dry. For the Cascades, the weather systems generally travel west-to-east, so the area directly east of the mountains is in a rain shadow. And the landscape transforms from lush, verdant pine forests like this:

Into this:

The eastern half of the Cascades Loop is dominated by that sort of landscape; hardy scrub brush and dry grasses scattered across an almost desert-like environment. I suppose it pretty much is a desert, actually… it just seems odd. Who knew the wet-and-rainy Pacific Northwest had a desert in it?

The eastern side of the Cascades is also where summer hides from Seattle. The temperature went from low seventies to upper eighties, and the air conditioning in my car got way more of a workout than it has any time since I left North Carolina.

I camped overnight just outside of Winthrop. After the sun set, I sat at a picnic table, far from any power outlets, and as I watched bats flit overhead in the quickly-fading light of dusk, I took advantage of the campsite’s free wi-fi to check Twitter and Facebook. I considered doing some writing, but the bright screen amidst the darkness was starting to give me eye strain, and besides, I did feel marginally guilty for staying connected on a trip where I was ostensibly supposed to disconnect myself. So after a few minutes, I shut down the laptop and went to bed… but the novelty of wi-fi at a campsite was still worth it.

The next day, I made my way back over the Cascades, and saw some of the most spectacular scenery of the drive. The highway passed a lot of trailheads, but I didn’t have time to hike them, since I wanted to be back in Seattle by late afternoon. That’s okay, though– this was really just a scouting run of the Cascade Loop; soon I’ll go back and fill in more of the details.

But even sticking mostly to the road, there were still some impressive sights to be seen, like Diablo Lake. And no, the color of this picture isn’t wonky; that was the actual color of the water.

Eventually, the highway came down out of the Cascades and back toward the coast, and I continued outward to the islands of Puget Sound. The highway wound its way down Fidalgo Island and Whidbey Island, and in between them was one of the coolest things on the drive: Deception Pass. (Despite the similarity of the name, no relation to Deception Falls State Park.) And on the day I visited, the clouds were having a field day, coming and going every few minutes and creating some pretty cool effects.

After walking the length of the bridge twice, taking pictures and marveling at the view, it was time to finish the trip and head home. I traveled to the south end of Whidbey Island and caught a ferry across Puget Sound, back to the mainland, heading south just in time to get caught in Seattle rush-hour traffic.

Ah, well, you win some, you lose some. But all in all, I’ll chalk that trip up as a win. The full Flickr set is here. And I’m already looking forward to seeing the Cascades again. Anyone up for a hike?

So when I finally got a good opportunity for a camping trip into the midst of the Olympic Mountains, I jumped at it. However, the trip was unusual for me in that it wasn’t a backpacking trip. Instead, it was a car camping trip, to a place that was essentially a small RV resort on the shore of Lake Cushman.

For me, there are pros and cons to car camping instead of backpacking. Here’s a quick summation:

Cons: Noisier campsite (including stereos blasting ’til the wee hours). Less natural setting. My camping skills (largely learned through backpacking) are not as useful.
Pros: It’s easier to bring beer.

So in the end, it evens out. It was a really fun group of people, though, and we ate well, drank well, and entertained ourselves well. The weather was pretty good– we only had a few showers’ worth of rain, although we didn’t exactly have a lot of Sun, either. It was also, according to longtime Seattle residents, unseasonably cold, even for the Pacific Northwest. The weather sort of reminded me of November camping in North Carolina: not exactly the dead of winter, but still plenty cold. On the first night, one girl started to go into hypothermia, and had to finish the night in the car.

As for me, I basically just threw all my camping clothes into my backpack and went– at first, I was thinking that I had brought too much, but I was glad I had it all. The temperature probably got down close to 40 degrees at night.

During the days we went hiking, although on Sunday one other person and I elected to rent a motor boat and take it out across the lake instead of going on the hike. This was pretty cool– I had never driven a motor boat before– although we had some drama when the motor died on us, and we resorted to paddling with the oars for a good fifteen minutes. (As it turns out, paddling a motor boat is much harder than paddling a canoe.) But after we got fed up with paddling, I tried the motor again, and with considerable fidgeting, was able to get it started– huzzah! Just call me “Cap’n Andrew.”

So all in all, good times. One other benefit of the trip: a couple of the guys I met on the trip are avid backpackers, so hopefully I made some connections that will lead to more serious backpacking excursions later this summer. Maybe some hiking around Mt. Rainier? Here’s to hoping.

Orycon was also my first introduction to the fandom and convention scene in the Pacific Northwest. I did notice a few differences with East Coast cons– although some of this may just be my own experience. But I felt like the crowd at Orycon was, on average, several years older than the crowd at the East Coast conventions I’ve been to. It is because Orycon’s focus is more on literature and less on media? I’m not sure. But it’s quite clear that fandom spans all age groups, and that was an impression I got more strongly at Orycon than I have at any other convention. It’s kind of reassuring, actually, to know I won’t have to turn in my geek card in my later years.

I also felt like there was more of a celebration of “the other”, of “the weird”, than there was at the East Coast cons. I wrote about this aspect of conventions in my Dragon*Con write-up, and I felt it even more strongly at Orycon. The atmosphere at conventions is incredibly, marvelously, accepting. On panels, someone might casually mention that they were gay, or bisexual, or polyamorous, or pagan, or various adjectives that might get you a raised eyebrow if you were overheard on the street. But at Orycon, no one so much as batted an eye. It was all taken in stride, and even though I’m a straight white male, it felt good to be around such an accepting crowd. We all have our differences, after all, our ways which make us “weird”– and being nerds and geeks, we pretty much fall into the “weird” category by default.

But first and foremost, Orycon is a convention to celebrate sci-fi and fantasy, and as I mentioned earlier, its biggest focus is on the literature side of things. There were a lot of great writing panels, lots of readings (the zombie erotica reading was particularly interesting– I honestly wasn’t sure how that would work, but it did… some stories were even romantic), and lots of panels that were just generally fun. In fact, I’d say that Orycon had the best selection of panels of any con I’ve been to– Dragon*Con had a wider selection, of course, but Dragon*Con panels are usually gigantic. The Orycon panels were nicely sized, and usually small enough that it was easy to ask questions. I got to meet some of the panelists, and chat with a few who I already knew (notably Mary Robinette Kowal, who I have now talked to at conventions on both sides of the country), and even chip in a few puns at the “Pun-ishment” panel… which went exactly as the title implies. 4 panelists and a good chunk of the audience doing nothing but coming up with horrible puns for an entire hour. As I mentioned on Twitter, I left with a headache.

Now it’s back to Seattle, and back to the NaNoWriMo novel I’ve been putting off and falling behind on. See you next year, Orycon.

The final stretch was through the pine forests of the Pacific Northwest, and up Highway 101 (the Pacific Coast Highway) for a large chunk of the time. It was beautiful, dense forest, dark green speckled with the occasional burst of autumn yellow. The forest here has a totally different feel than the forest on the east coast, and I’m already looking forward to hiking in it.

The last hour of so of the drive passed through a string of cities: Olympia, Tacoma, and then Seattle, with downtown and Puget Sound finally materializing in the distance. I’m staying in an extended-stay hotel (basically a month-to-month apartment) near the Space Needle; hopefully after a month I’ll have a permanent place, and in the meantime I can get a much better feel for the city and its neighborhoods.

So, I made it. It was one heck of a trip: eleven days, ten hotel rooms, countless cities, snow, rain, wind, and plenty of sun too. There was heat, cold, one and a half long audiobooks, plenty of caffeine, a herd of cows, a herd of bison, and a herd of… I’m not sure. It ranged from the top of the Sears Tower, to the Mississippi River, to the Yellowstone caldera.

Still, I have little doubt that the hard part lies ahead. Getting to a new city? Even moving across the country, that part is pretty easy, compared to making that city your home. But I’m optimistic. I’m posting this after having spent a few days in Seattle, and I’m already loving it. I’ve been to four coffee shops in four days (and I don’t even drink that much coffee!), and am slowly learning my way around the complicated-but-convienent bus and trolley system. I’ve been walking quite a bit, too. I love having so many things in walking distance (or a short bus ride) from where I live, and even the infamous Seattle rain has been little more than an occasional nuisance.

So in conclusion, here’s a picture of the Seattle waterfront that I took on Friday. From where I’m standing, I think I’m going to like it here– but I have a strong hunch that the real adventure is just beginning.