Birth Week 1976 Local Landmark #11: Olallie State Park, North Bend, WA Originally Twin Falls State Park (since 1950), 200 acres of land transferred to Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission June 21, 1976.

Whenever possible, I reserve the actual day of my birthday—April 30—for Shobhit, and I try to make it a day trip somewhere that gets us at least a little ways out of town. This year, we were joined by two more: Barbara, who I've known for 30 years and we flew to Seattle from Louisville for my 50th birthday this year so she's around for the back half of my Birth Week (Wednesday through Sunday); and Ivan, who I've known for 12 years, has sublet our spare room three times before, last moved away in 2022, and recently took a probably-temporary job in Edmonds. I had pretty much my entire Birth Week planned out before I even knew he had moved back to the area after living some years between New England and Pennsylvania, but when he expressed interest in participating in one of my Birth Week activities—for the first time in four years—this was the most logical choice for fitting him in. He's long had a thing for hiking in scenic areas no matter where he's living or traveling, and maybe even more importantly, he and I actually share the same birthday—though he's 9 years younger than I am (to the day).

So that brings me to the choice of activity and location for my actual-birthday. Combining the desire to get outside of town for a day trip of some kind with the need for it to be significant to 1976 was a bit of a challenge. I landed on Olallie State Park when I learned the bit about it expanding by 200 acres in 1976, and decided it would be a workable outing even though Shobhit and I went to this exact same park five years ago to the day in 2021, that time as part of a Washington State Parks Tour theme for my Birth Week.

The biggest attraction at Olallie State Park is still Twin Falls—I'll get to that momentarily—but I was still very intentional about visiting the part of the park that was added in 1976. The other falls, called Weeks Falls, are part of those 200 acres of land, so that was where we headed first, and where I got the amusingly awkward group selfie you see above.

I mentioned yesterday that, on the way home from the Ballard Avenue Historic District, we stopped by Karen's in Magnolia to pick up a cake dish she said we could use for the birthday cake Shobhit is making for me. The upside was that I got a brief Birth Week visit with Karen during a year I was unable to schedule any Birth Week activity with her (her husband, Dave, took a great photo of us while Shobhit and Barbara were waiting in the car), but the downside was that Shobhit took a work call while we approached Karen's street, he was distracted and pulled up to the curb too quickly and hit the front passenger tire in just the wrong way. We were only a few blocks away leaving Karen's house when we realized the tire was flat, and we had to call AAA to have someone come out and switch it out for the spare.

I only mention all that because we drove the 38 miles from home to the Weeks Falls trailhead on that spare tire, which is designed for shorter distances and slower speeds. Shobhit openly complained about having to drive under the speed limit, and I worried a little about the risk we were taking, but it all worked out in the end. We got to my 1976 landmark for the day, and that's what matters!

The walk from the trailhead to Weeks Falls was a surprisingly easy half-mile or so, but the hike to Twin Falls from that trailhead is about a mile. Barbara joined easily for the walk to Weeks Falls, but turned back maybe a third into the hike to Twin Falls. Flatter terrain is easier for her, so she made the right decision; I had completely forgotten about the 500-ft elevation gain on the Twin Falls trail. So, that's why Barbara is missing from the group selfie at Twin Falls; why both Shobhit and Ivan refused to smile for that particular photo remains a mystery,

Twin Falls was still worth going to, especially for Ivan as he had never been there before. The "twin" refers to a much higher (135') waterfall at the lower elevation, plus a shorter series of falls at a higher elevation above them—the latter being what's behind Shobhit and Ivan and me in the previous photo; the former being what's seen here, from a more distant vantage point along the trail. (You can see a bit of the higher-elevation falls in this shot too, if you look closely.)

The one bummer was that the Lower Falls Viewpoint, a series of wooden steps to a platform with a spectacular viewpoint that Shobhit and I did get to see in 2021, was closed due to structural damage in a recent storm. I still managed to get some great photos this visit, just none quite as good as I could have gotten from that platform.

There's something about the composition of this photo, which I really like, even though it very much looks like Shobhit is the focus. But! We stopped at a bakery we found in Issaquah on our way home from Olallie State Park, which I found on Yelp, called Berna's Bakery & Cafe. We all shared two slices: one of the Dubai Chocolate Cake, the other of their in-house cheesecake. Both were delicious, but the cheesecake was truly incredible, and justified their insistence that it was what we should try because it's their biggest seller. Anyway, we told them it was both Ivan's and my birthday, so they served them on plates with Happy B-Day! written on both, and with a single candle stuck into each.