Last weekend my family and I gathered at Mount Rainier to do a memorial hike for my mom, who passed on six months ago. I tell a little more about our weekend in a blog post on another wordpress site – but I wanted to take time here to talk about some of the way cool people we met while we were at Rainier last weekend.
First, I have to mention this young man: I was looking around for someone who looked like they knew what to do with a camera, and saw him taking photos. I asked him if he would mind taking a photo of my family for me, and he said sure – and then he not only took one picture, but (like a true professional) took a few, just to be sure. 
Then there was this couple – Kathy and Yonsin – who I met on my way down from a hike on the day of the eclipse. I asked them if they’d seen the eclipse and they said they didn’t have eclipse glasses, so I let them borrow mine. I loved watching the look on their faces when they saw what was going on up there…
And as I stopped at Myrtle Falls to snap a picture, I ran into this group of enthusiastic young students from Central Washington University. They were taking a biome class at CWU that was taking them all over the state. They knew some pretty nifty stuff about science, too – they showed me how to look for the patterns in the shadows that showed there was an eclipse going on. Top row (from left to right): Carlee Carlucci, Jaelle Downs, Prof. Paul James, and Adam Hess. Bottom row: Clarissa DeLaVergne, Shiya Lin, Lee Thompson.
There was all kinds of magic at Rainier last weekend – and a big part of the magic was the way cool people I met up there.
