Chocolate and Berries - Yum! Yum!

I got the following recipe off the internet and wanted to share it with everyone because it is delicious!!!

Chocolate Raspberry Cobbler Cake

3/4 cup butter or margarine (1 1/2 sticks)
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
4 cups berries such as raspberries, marionberries or blackberries
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt the butter in 9x13 pan by placing it in the oven. Mix flour, baking powder, salt, milk, vanilla and brown sugar and pour half of batter directly in the hot melted butter in the pan. Top with 3 cups of berries plus the chocolate chips. Pour remaining batter over the top followed by the last cup of berries. Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes until the center is set. Use the toothpick method to test. Cool at least 10 minutes before serving.

If you don't have access to fresh berries, try the frozen mixed berries from Costco as I'm sure they will work too. There's something about the chocolate and berry combo that is so good.

Wildflowers abound on the mountain

The following pictures show why I love coming to Mt. Rainier in the summer. Normally, the flowers are at their peak earlier than this, but because of the tremendous amount of snow this year, we hit it just right. One hiker we met explained that some of the trails on the mountain won't ever open up this year, because the snow will start falling in a couple of weeks, and everything will be buried.

The visitor's center had a book all about Mt. Rainier's flowers, so I bought it. The purple ones are Lupine. The bright pink are magenta paintbrush. The white ones to the far left, with the large heads, are called pasqueflowers. The tall, yellow blooms are called Lousewort. I enjoyed finding out the names as some of them are so unusual.

Mt. Rainier: one of the most beautiful places around

On Labor Day weekend, Herm and I drove up to Mt. Rainier because we were hopeful that we could see the mountain and all of the wild flowers. Unknown to me, Herm made reservations at the historic lodge at Paradise. When we got there, it was raining, and there was no mountain in sight. When we woke up on Monday morning, the rain had stopped, but the clouds were around the inn. As I was sitting on the bed reading in our room, I glanced out the window, and this is what I saw. It gave me hope that we would have a great day on the mountain, and I was not disappointed as you will see in the following pictures.

What a handsome guy! Love that hat ;-)

Yes, my nose is red because it was only in the low 30's. B-r-r-r!

We heard a whistling in this area, and we found this marmot, the source of the sound.

I will do another blog with all of the wildflowers we saw, so be sure and check it out.