Seattle

A small line of planes, two Beavers and an Otter, motored all the way to the north end of Lake Union before turning and one at a time taking off back over the south end of the Lake. I was in the Otter, on the way to Friday Harbor.

Coincidentally, J was in one of the Beavers, heading for Roche Harbor.  A circumstance that neither of us could have imagined 40 years ago growing up in Maine!

Between the overcast and an inadequate camera for aerial photography, I took a remarkable number of fuzzy photos of every spit, landslide, and island we passed over.  Some of my best shots were taken in the first minute of the flight as we climbed over Seattle Center and headed out over Elliott Bay.

Mount Vernon

This was the first time in a long time that M & I could get away together and we decided to head up to the Skagit to see the Tulips. My ideal tulip trip would be to run into them unexpected in the middle of nowhere with no one else around and this morning in Seattle, I had visions of gridlocked farm roads, overpriced parking, tour buses, crowds of gawkers, and low-flying helicopters. I guess all of those things were there, but somehow we managed to avoid most of it, and I came away reminded that just because something is overhyped and commercialized, it can still be a lot of fun!

The weather was great.  The timing was perfect, with most of the fields in full bloom.  The photography was both helped and hindered by the slight haze, and the photos themselves suggest that my camera does some weird stuff with bright, contrasty colors.

We ended up at Seeds in La Conner for lunch - which was good, but took about 40 minutes longer to arrive than it should have.  Blame it on the crowds.

Tacoma

What is this - the third nice weekend in a row?  No whining!  Looking for something different than last Saturday's expedition to Dungeness, I found a counterpoint on the Foss Waterway.  Today it was by boat, and I was back by noon.  And yes, the shoreline was a bit more urban.

Like Lake Union (Seattle) and False Creek (Vancouver), the Foss has gradually gone from industrial to mixed.  "Mixed" meaning vestiges of the past, gradually overtaken by museums, condos, marinas, and public promenades.

Dungeness Spit

The long walk out to the lighthouse has been on my list for decades - even before I started working on beaches professionally and long before I started collecting beaches as a hobby.  I've been to down the base of the spit numerous times, with and without family, and once I even walked out half a mile or so at high tide to watch storm waves spill over the top.

Saturday, I headed over to the Peninsula early, stopped at Port Williams to explore another beach and to wait for the tide to fall a little farther.  I began hiking around 11:30, spent an hour or so out at the lighthouse, and got back to the car around 4:30.  I walked four of the five miles back barefoot.

The day was perfect.  The only thing that might have made it better would have been for the Olympics and Mount Baker to have been completely clear.

Cama Beach

I hadn't been up to Cama Beach (previous posts) in a while but word of a landslide up at the north end brought me back, first a week and half ago, then again on Saturday morning (Gravel Beach).

The weather was miserable when I left Seattle and was even worse driving north, but by the time I got to Cama it had started to dry out and within a few hours the sun even came out.

The new retreat center is now open and this was my first chance to check it out.  I would like Cama Beach even in the worst conditions, but being able to enjoy a nice cup of coffee and a scone while watching the light on the beach cabins makes it all the better.

Whidbey Island

Everyone says that February weekends in western Washington are bleak and depressing.  People can't wait for spring (then they complain about that, too).  Saturday might have been just another cold, dark, drizzly northwest winter day.  Conventional wisdom be damned.

The first Saturday of February always brings me up to Whidbey Island for Sound Waters.  I watched the sun rise from Possession Point, then headed to Langley to listen to Joe Gaydos talk about the role of science in Puget Sound restoration.  I spent the rest of the morning entertaining (I hope) a small classroom with pictures and explanations of local beaches.

Sometimes I stay for the afternoon sessions, sometimes I don't.  This year, the remarkably pleasant weather was too much to resist and I headed off in search of new and interesting beaches.   I probably logged three or four miles of sand and cobble before ending up at West Beach to watch the sun set over the Olympics.

Volunteer Park

We woke to off and on wet snow this morning.  Ironically, we probably now have more snow on the ground than D does in Minnesota, but at least we don't have to worry about dipping into the single digits later this week!

M & I headed over to Capitol Hill, hoping for deeper and less slushy snow.  I was also eager to introduce my new Subaru to challenging conditions. We parked at the bottom of the hill, since the streets going up were snarled, and climbed up to Volunteer Park, where kids were sledding and large snowmen were coming to life.  There were at least 4 inches of snow and it was still falling heavily.

Seattle

Christmas fell in the midst of Chanukah this year, which made the season both more efficient and more confusing than those years in which they maintain their distance.  We kept the menorahs and the Christmas tree far enough apart to maintain some religious and cultural identity, while also preventing the candles from igniting the tree.

But unlike last year, when the three of us were split up over the holidays, this year we were all home together.  As usual, we spent Christmas Day at A&B's with the whole family.

Seattle

We hosted Thanksgiving again this year, although our numbers were down a little from some years.  That does make the whole thing a bit more manageable, since we can all fit around one table and we don't need quite so large a turkey.   We had a 19 lb bird for 11 people this year -- which would have worked better if the proportion of dark meat had been higher!

We rarely entertain, so Thanksgiving is our annual opportunity to actually host something.  It's an excuse to clean the house. It's my annual deadline for wrapping up house projects.  And I'm finally figuring out how turkeys are put together - although I still make a mess of taking it apart.

I think we can call the kitchen officially done, after a year and a half (more actually) of cabinets and floors and paint and appliances.  I finished a shoji shade for the south window and installed it Thursday morning after the bird went into the oven.  And I just finished the pot-hanging rack over the stove a few days earlier.  For years we have said that the only reason we really needed a dishwasher was Thanksgiving.  And this year  we finally had one.  What a great idea!

Denny Creek

A sunny, brisk Sunday morning and fresh snow in the mountains, and M grading papers all day, so I headed for the foothills hoping to catch sun reflecting off of ice on the edges of Franklin Falls or on the waterfalls up Denny Creek.  But the road got snowier and snowier and by the time I realized I should turn back, it was awfully hard to figure out how to do so without getting stuck.  The Denny Creek road (old highway 202) was beautiful in the  snow, but just as I approached the top (about to pass beneath the westbound lanes of I-90 near the summit), the snow got too thick and icy and I slid to a stop, high-centered between deep ruts.

All I could think was that M would see this as just one more of my excuses to replace my 235,000 mile Outback with a new one.  If I could have just gotten 50 more feet, I could have parked it beneath the overpass for the winter.  I called AAA, but realized they might be of limited use up here.  What could have been a very long and complicated day was saved by three guys in two jeeps that showed up before AAA could even find me.  They ignored my pleas of gross stupidity and clearly thought that getting stuck in the snow was what made a day like this fun!  They put their jeeps to work, pulled me to solid ground, where I could finally get the chains on and turn the car around.  So I could head back down.  I had realized that there was no way I could make the last 400 feet up to the Alpental Road, but with the jeeps standing by and chains on the rear wheels, I could probably make it back the way I came up.

It was a very pretty drive back down and I even made it back to town to see most of the Seahawks game.  The adventure cost me a breakfast sandwich and a burger on the way back down, but no expensive tow back to the city.  It looks like I did break a torsion bar, but maybe that's just a down payment on the new car.

Speaking of breaking things, these pictures were taken with my new SX150, which replaces the SX130 that I filled up with salt water a week ago Friday (Whidbey Storm).  I wonder what expensive thing I'll break next week?