I turned 28 years old on Saturday. Troy took me to the Dahlia Lounge on Friday for dinner and the food was excellent. We started with a glass of wine each and some shrimp potstickers and bread. For the main course, I had the dungeness crab cakes with potato salad, tomatoes, pickles, and a few chips. It was put together very well and tasted great together. Troy had some sort of pasta with zucchini and sun dried tomatoes. Then for dessert I had the doughnuts, fried to order with vanilla mascarpone and apricot jam. Troy had the creme caramel. Both were so delicious! My dessert was free because they knew it was my birthday, so that was nice. Dahlia Lounge is one of the best restaurants I've been to in Seattle. Tom Douglas, the chef, definitely deserves the local fame he gets.

Saturday Troy gave me my birthday presents - Sim City 4 and a butterfly necklace. Then we headed out for the day to Mount Rainier. But first, we stopped to get bagels at Noah's on Mercer Island. We decided to go the opposite way we normally go to Rainier and went through the Northeast corner instead of the Southwest. We got a late start to the day, so we didn't arrive at our first stop until around 11. We went to Ohanapecosh and hiked about 1.5 miles to Silver Falls. The trail was pretty busy, but that was to be expected since the weather was perfect and it was a Saturday in the summer. The trail had a little elevation gain and wound its way through the old growth forest, with several creeks and small waterfalls along the way. We eventually made it to Silver Falls and it was just beautiful. The falls were rushing so fast with white foam and the water was a clear blue-green color.

We continued on another .7 miles to the Grove of the Patriarchs where we saw some old growth forest trees that were estimated to be over 1,000 years old. There was a neat small bridge over the river (the same river that continues down and becomes Silver Falls) to the grove. We were pretty hungry by the time we started to head back, but we forgot to bring a backpack and left all our snacks in the car. I guess we didn't realize how long the hike would take.

Anyway, we finally got back to the car and ate our snacks on a picnic table nearby. We had an apple, strawberries, trail mix, a granola bar, some cashews, and drinks. By the time we were done, it was after 3:00, so we headed out toward Paradise. We stopped at a few viewpoints along the way for some photos, but basically continued on without stopping very long. There were lots of wildflowers along the Stevens Canyon Road. I would have liked to do another short hike at Longmire, but it was getting late and we didn't want to be eating dinner at 9:00 at night. We got home around 7:00 and ordered Pagliacci pizza for dinner and watched Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring the rest of the night. We also had some chocolate cake with chocolate icing that Troy had made for my birthday.