It’s so easy to spend all of our free time riding mountain bikes with a ton of great riding nearby and a bucket list that seems to grow instead of shrinking. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that Washington has more than just MTB trails for us to explore while we’re here! A few weekends ago we had a (mostly) bike free weekend filled with local drinks, a beautiful hike, and a new city.
Friday: Brews
After work we ordered pizza from Wicked Pies Pizza in downtown Olympia and headed to our first brewery stop: Headless Mumby Brewing Co, a 7-barrel independent brewery. Sitting on their patio (their parking lot which had been turned into a seating area for covid) we enjoyed the pizza with a drink. Our second stop was Oly Taproom which has a variety of local brews on tap and fridges filled with anything else you could want. We ate outside again since we had Cooper with us. Our third and final stop, Northwest Beerwerks, offered a large selection of drinks and a huge dog friendly outdoor patio space. We hung out for a while here to solidify our hiking plans for Saturday.
Saturday: The Hike
We headed out to Mt. Rainier National Park for our hike today: the Tolmie Peak Trail. This hike is about 2 hours from our apartment, 45 minutes of which was a steep and uneven dirt road. This hike was a little over 6 miles and took us 3.5 hours with several stops to soak in the beauty of Mt. Rainier. We passed by two clear and blue glacier fed lakes and, at the top, explored the Tolmie Peak Fire Lookout. We enjoyed lunch (leftover pizza from last night) from a cliff with beautiful views of Mt. Rainier and one of the lakes below us before heading back down the trail and to our car.
Sunday: Some Bikes
Portland Oregon is only about 2 hours south of us and home to a small bike park so on Sunday morning we packed up our BMX bikes and headed there. We spent some time enjoying the pump track and dirt jumps. Before heading home for groceries and laundry, we stopped into Montavilla Brew Works (another small, local brewery) for a quick drink. We didn’t spend much time in Portland so we’re really hoping to get back into the city to explore soon!