We went hiking someplace new this weekend!  Quartz Mountain is in the Mount Spokane State Park and is across a valley from Mount Spokane. The mountain is named because there is quartz everywhere!  

Here is the view from the top of the mountain!  You can see Lake Coeur d’Alene! 

Also at the top is a fire lookout station. We heard that it is rented out to people to stay and spend the night and someone was staying there so we did not look any closer.

On one of the trails we passed some people riding horses!

There were huckleberries all over the mountain rowrrrrw Tigers love huckleberries!  When we have lunch mom likes to save part of the sandwish for emergencies and I said this is an emergency!  We put some of the huckleberries into what was left of the peanut butter sandwish and it when you bite down and squishes the berries it was awesome delicious!!!

Then after the hike we went to Greenbluff where there are all kinds of farms selling fruit!  We went to some cherry orchards!  Rowrrrr! Tigers love cherries!

Look at the Rainier cherries hanging in huge clusters!  We did not even need a ladder to pick them!  Later we gave some cherries to our neighbors.  It was a super day!!!

It was a super day for a hike! Sunny and not too hot with a nice breeze blowing. We hiked a part of the Columbia Plateau Trail that goes through the Turnbull Wildlife Refuge! I thought we had done all the hikes at Turnbull but this trail goes through a different part of the refuge than where people normally go. It was great!

There were wetlands all around and lots of lakes and ponds. We saw an eagle! And a coyote!  He was trotting through a grassy meadow and then stopped to look around. When he saw us he ran off!  He was not close enough to get a good photo.

Mom let me use the camera!  Here is a picture of a bird that was dive bombing us for about 10 minutes!  She was probably protecting her nest.

Also here is a picture of some barbed wire I found coiled up in the grass near the trail.

Oh I almost forgot!  Last week we took the car to get re-aligned for the second time in two months! Thanks to the famous Spokane potholes. Here I am with Richard who got the car all taken car of. He was super nice and handsome but not as handsome as me.

Today we hiked on a trail in the Columbia Plateau!  It was a super sunny day and most of the time we hiked along a creek with wildflowers.

Here is a picture of me by Fish Lake.

We saw a turtle !!! He is just about in the middle of the photo to the left of my ear. He sitting on a rock and right after we got the picture he jumped in the water and swam away!  We also saw chipmunks, lots of birds, lot of butterflies and moths, and some smallish animal such as a ground squirrel or marmot that ran across the trail.

For the holiday we had dinner with Maggie and Phil our awesome neighbors across the street!  But mom FORGOT to take pictures until after dinner!  Here I am with Maggie who is so beautiful glamorous and also in the picture is their dog Max.

Here is me with Phil and Maggie strategizing during the after dinner Yahtzee game!  Phil and Maggie are super nice and they even let mom win. 

Max gave me kisses did not try to carry me around in his mouth like most dogs do.  Maybe it is because we are almost the same size. It was a great evening!

This weekend we went for a hike at the Turnbull Wildlife Refuge!  We have not been there for weeks and it was awesome.  Look at all the wildflowers that are blooming! The path leads right through them so be careful walking try not to step on them!  For lunch we had fresh ground peanut butter on whole grain bread with sunflower seeds sprinkled onto the peanut butter – YUM!

Here are some closeups of some interesting plants we saw.

Then on the way home we stopped at Northland Rosaruim and it was AMAZING!  It is not just roses and there were spectaciuar display gardens!

This is me with Pat who showed us around and was super nice and helpful and funny and gorgeous! We are in front of some giant campanula.  It was a great day!

This weekend is Hoopfest!  It is a festival of basketball !  At work last week people warned us that the city closes off lots of streets and traffic is terrible downtown for the Hoopfest weekend so of course I wanted to go see it. It was fantastic! It is the largest 3 on 3 basketball tournament in the world! 6000 players, 3000 volunteers, and almost 250,000 spectators! And one Tiger.

We watched elite former college players, they were amazing!

The SeaGals were here to perform for the crowd!  OMG!

Here are the security guards who look out for the SeaGals and escort them around.

I got to meet some of them OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!

We have been going to physical therapy twice a week to make mom’s hand get better. Here I am with Janelle and Brad the therapists who are super funny and make jokes the whole time.  Janelle is gorgeous and Brad is handsome but not as handsome as me.

Also this week we went to the dentist!  This is Diana the dental hygienist who cleaned mom’s teeth and she is super nice and really beautiful too!

This weekend we went for a walk in the woods near our house and discovered these picnic benches!  I did not know they were here we will have to come back with a picnic basket sometime. There are all kinds of trails just blocks from our house!

We went to the library!!  They had stickers of animals including a TIGER!!!!  Mom said we should leave them for the children who come to the library and she also said knowing me I would get the sticker stuck in my fur or someplace even worse.

We named the new cat Jasper and he is doing great!  He is settling in and slowly meeting all the other cats. This was his big weekend adventure where he got to explore all over the house !  He is friendly and is a real good cat.

Look at this T-shirt that mom got. It has a kitten on it and says PAWS!  ha ha ha!  Mom says it is even funnier if you get the joke.  It is something about a movie with a giant shark but I have not seen the movie. mom says it is too scary for me but it is not !!!  I am a tiger I am not scared of a shark movie! I will see if I can order it online.

Mom hurt her hand !!  She has to wear this cool brace which helps a lot but it would be better if it came in a tiger striped pattern. I will try to order one online. And surprise her.

This is me with Dr. Golan who is taking care of mom’s hand and is totally hilarious and also very handsome but not quite as handsome as me.

On Saturday we did lot of errands like go to the pet food store where we met this really nice lady named Valerie who loves cats! She was super nice and really beautiful too.

We also went to to hardware store to get a tool to fix the stereo system that came with the house.  I helped figure out where all the wires go.  There were about a hundred cables!

On Sunday we went hiking!  yayyyy!  First we hiked through fields of wildflowers.

Then we saw views of the Spokane River.

We hiked through all kinds of terrain and for lunch we had a cimmammom    cinamom cinnamin toast sandwich made with honey !!  Yum!!

Mom let me use the camera!!!  The rule is no taking pictures of animal poop. We did see lots of horse poop but no horses.  I took a picture of a flower with a bug on it!

We went hiking somewhere new this weekend – the James T. Slavin Conservation Area Park. Mom says living in Spokane is like being on a long vacation because there are so many great places to hike and explore.

There were so many birds to hear and see!  There were cheeps and tweets and squwaks and quacks and much more!  We saw an osprey dive down and catch a fish!

Look at these awesome pink flowers growing right out of the rocks!  On this hike we discovered a fun way to make chocolate peanut clusters!  Here is the recipe: Mix up a plastic ziploc bag of your favorite trail mix with peanuts and raisins whatever else you like and add chocolate chips. Put the ziploc baggie in your backpack. Then go hiking when the temperature is near 90 degrees. Look at the trail mix during the hike but don’t eat any. It would be a big chocolatey mess!  Come home and bring the backpack in the air conditioned house with the trail mix in it. The next day you will have peanut clusters!!

Also in the news is that we got our sprinkler system going!!!  Mom says this is the best invention EVER!  We got the programming all figured out so it runs automatically but we still like to go out and run it manually to see the sprinklers pop up and down and water the different zones in the yard.  It is fantastic!!! Plus we get to play in the sprinklers yayyyy!