⛰️ Miles and miles of Cascadia fun

Ep 47: When to use a VPN, taking flight with tequila, and a tale of travel from the PNW

Jul 31, 2023

Use a VPN when safety is paramount. Public Wi-Fi can be a boon for hackers. If you don't already use a VPN, get one for when you’re working on public Wi-Fi, or working on material that’s internal use only from your home network. When a VPN is on, anyone who’s on the same network can’t see what you’re up to. Data is encrypted while you’re connected, and is therefore unreadable.

This tip is one of 365 in my Handbook for the Modern Worker. This is an example of not practicing what I preach, for I do not use a VPN on my personal computers. My work computer definitely has one, though. Call me naive, but doesn’t a Mac help protect me a little more? Regardless, most of my public Wi-Fi access is pretty casual and done on my phone.

#365DayDraw

I drew this and wrote the accompanying annotation as part of my #365DayDraw project 7 years ago today.

Taking flight with blanco, reposado and anejo

I’ve had a flight of tequila just once, the day I drew this. Another fond memory from Ithaca’s Viva Taqueria!

Commentary

I spent the past week vacationing in the PNW with Amy. We hiked 66+ miles in some beautiful places and I’d love to show you a few highlights. Anyone who’s flown into this airport knows where they are by the carpet alone. Do you know?

Yes! That’s PDX, or Portland, Oregon if you don’t speak airport codes. PDX’s carpet has quite a history; you can even buy socks patterned after it.

Our first hike was Elk-Kings (11.23 miles) with Sarah and Adam, my sister-in-law and her husband. We hiked this with the kids ages ago and it was just as tough as I remembered.

From the traverse between Elk and King summits

The next day we headed to Mount Hood and hiked Twin Lakes to Palmateer Point (10.81 miles). The lakes were gorgeous on the way up and the views expansive.

We had the summit to ourselves and took turns with some goofy yoga poses. Look at those warriors!

We drove from Portland to Bend for the next few days. As we drove, we learned of a wildfire that started just east of Eugene. The Bedrock fire had quickly grown from 500 acres to several thousand and the AQI threatened to derail our plans. We’ve gotten used to AQI maps from the smoke drifting down into New York from Canada wildfires, but this was very acute and blanketed the whole area we’d planned to hike in.

AQI looking awful in and around Bend, Oregon

The next morning we decided to drive to Sisters, enjoy coffee and breakfast, and hit up Pole Creek to Camp Lake and Chambers Lakes (15.7 miles). After a few miles of hiking with our masks on, we realized that the smoke was far less acute than what we’d seen when we left our rental. Camp Lake is our favorite out-and-back hike in the Cascades and we got to enjoy it on our 25th wedding anniversary!

We also added a short and steep effort behind Camp Lake to see the beautifully blue Chambers Lakes, a first for us.

The picture doesn’t do the blue color of the Chambers Lakes justice

We saw beautiful patches of Indian Paintbrush on the return hike.

The patchwork of fallen trees after a decades-old wildfire (Pole Creek fire, 2012) made for some slow going, but it was still spectacular.

Our next hike was the big one: South Sister (13.36 miles). The wildfire smoke shifted to the south, leaving our path to the summit clear. We had to snag permits two days prior to the hike. The side effect of permitted hikes: no crowds. We were by ourselves most of this day and it was as spectacular as our two prior summits. The first was with Adam, Sarah, and the kids. The second was just with our kids, approaching the summit via the climber’s trail from Green Lakes. This time we parked at Devil’s Lake and beat a path north.

South Sister from the trail junction to Moraine Lake

This route gained about 5,000 feet of elevation, but it’s totally worth it. Here’s the view looking north from the South Sister summit at Middle Sister and North Sister.

Looking north from the South Sister summit at Middle Sister and North Sister

On our return to Portland, we finished our hiking off with Herman Creek to Deadwood (14.6 miles) in the Columbia River Gorge. It was a long effort with Adam and Sarah, and properly tuckered us out for our red-eye flight back to New York.