milythael / Sean Carley

I remember several trips to Mount Rainier as a very young child. I remember hiking out trails before the snow melted off and being forced to turn back when a cliff side trail dissappeared beneath a massive drift. I remember a morning by a mountain lake followed by torrential downpours that chased us off the mountain. I think my sister and I were even carried by a ranger for part of that trip. I remember sledding on a slope of Mount Rainier. I remember trying to swim in glacier fed, crystal clear rivers, barely above freezing. I remember drives with plummeting mountain sides made even steeper to my young mind by the trunks of evergreens barely steeper than they.

All of my memories of this great mountain are fond, even the ones that maybe shouldn’t be. Mount Rainier inspires my soul. I’m glad for Mount Rainier.

My wife and I love zoos. We visit them every chance we get. The Toledo Zoo looked good enough to make me wait 3 hours for it to open in a town I knew nothing about. The suggestion that it is the 7th best zoo in the country had my expectations quite high.

The zoo we found did not live up to my expectations but was well worth the visit. Several of the exhibits deserve an honorable mention on Ultimate Zoos with the seal and polar bear exhibits standing out. Something let me down a bit though. I felt this zoo was more about the people visiting than it was about the animals living there. It was subtle but I felt it could have been better.

I would like to go back when I am not exhausted by the road (I had been driving since 1 AM when we hit Toledo) but you should definitely take a look here if you get a chance.

Wondering what this was about, we stopped at City Market for a look around. What we found was remeniscent of Pike’s Place Market in Seattle, a cross between a farmer’s market and a local shopping district. We were there on a Saturday and most of the place was closed down but the health food store and the greek concession were both worth the trip and I would like to return when more was open during the week. If you are in town, it is worth your time to experience City Market.