I Have Done Just About All The Holiday Shopping That I Am Going To Do

Continuing yesterday's Happy Holiday Theme, today I voted in a holiday shopping poll in the online version of my old hometown newspaper, the Skagit Valley Herald.

Years of reading a small town newspaper of high quality, like the Skagit Valley Herald, may have contributed to my bad reaction to much of what I read in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram upon first exposure.

Example, back some time in the 1990s, a legit entity, which makes those ranking type lists, named Mount Vernon as the #1 Small City in America.

CNN showed up. There was no city-wide celebration. The Skagit Valley Herald did not opine that being #1 on this list was making other cities, far and wide, green with envy.

Meanwhile, a bogus Washington, D.C. lobbying group, supporting the Urban Village concept, named Fort Worth one of the most livable cities in America. Neither CNN or any other legit news source showed up. Fort Worth had a city-wide celebration and the Star-Telegram opined that other cities, far and wide, were green with envy.

Back to the subject of voting in an online poll. The question was "When do you start holiday shopping?"

The choices were, "About now", "I start early", "Last minute" and "I don't shop for the holidays".

As you can see via the chart above, I voted "I don't shop for the holidays".

Apparently, according to the voting, I am not alone in being a Scrooge. Maybe it has something to do with the Skagit Valley that made me into such a bah humbug sort this time of year.

Today, rather than going walking at any of my regular walking haunts I decided to go to Walmart and get my endorphin inducing aerobic stimulation via pushing a loaded shopping cart whilst pretending to be a Holiday Shopper.

It was exhilarating and did not cost me a single penny.

Except for the almost $20 spent on stuff that had nothing to do with Holiday Shopping.

Sitting In Texas & Thinking About Hiking Around Mount Baker & Losing My Clothes At Baker Hot Springs

I read the online version of my old hometown local newspaper every morning. It's called the Skagit Valley Herald. For reasons unknown to me the online version is called Go Skagit. There used to be an online version that looked exactly like the printed version. Maybe that still exists and I lost track of it.

Anyway, Go Skagit has a Hike of the Week feature. These tend to make me a bit homesick. This week's is about the Dock Butte Trail and the fact that snow is beginning to close the trails in the high country.

That is Dock Butte in the foreground of the picture, with Mount Baker hovering over it. Mount Baker is a volcano. One of 5 in Washington's Cascade Mountains. When Mount St. Helens started going into erupt mode Mount Baker also started acting up, so much so that access was closed to some areas of the Mount Baker National Forest. I remember you could not go to Baker Hots Springs til Mount Baker calmed down.

Baker Hot Springs is, or was, a clothing optional little oasis reached after a hike through an old growth forest of Douglas Fir trees. During the Reagan years someone prudish was put in charge of Mount Baker National Forest. In an effort to stop the fun at Baker Hot Springs the wooden box that turned the burbling spring into a pool was destroyed.

Soon a makeshift pool was made using rocks to hold in the hot water. But that did not work too well. I suspect by now Baker Hot Springs has been returned to its former glory, likely restored during the more libertine Clinton years. That man came from Hot Springs, after all.