20-Aug-09 USA Trip - Day 18

After a breakfast of omelette and toast Steve & Kristi took us on a drive to Mount Rainier - we'd seen the impressive snow-capped peak on our journey north from Springfield to Tacoma, but today we were driven up there through the National Park. There were masses of trees lining the steep winding roads and covering the mountainsides. Our first stop was at Paradise and we managed to get some great pictures and then it was on to Sunrise (yes, these really are names of real places) where we took some more. We also walked the trail for a while but it was very hot so that didn't last too long. The mountain is spectacular and the scenery breathtaking... and big, very big.

We made our way back down the mountain and went to visit friends Bill and Lynne (music friends of Steve and Kristi) who had invited us all round for dinner. We had a beer, a lovely mexican dish, wine and then all played music together for a while. A new experience for us to have people joining in playing mandolin, slide guitar and washboard! Songs from the jiva repertoire were:

• Back Home To You (Allan Taylor)
• One More Song (jiva)
• Different Dreams (jiva)
• Love At The Five & Dime (Nanci Griffith)
• Some Way Home (jiva)

After ice cream we headed home with Steve & Kristi - many thanks to Bill & Lynne for making us so welcome. Naturally the conversation turned again to music and we swapped anecdotes about places that we/they had played, and about some of the characters met along the way, and about performing and songwriting, and audiences and venues (good and bad). We then listened to some CD tracks, copied photos and videos onto the netbook, backed up the netbook to our portable USB-powered 500 GBdrive, checked our emails and updated the blogs as the time ticked remorselessly on and we were all ready to turn in with a busy weekend ahead of us!

165 photos today

Links
jiva website
jiva MySpace
Steve & Kristi Nebel website