Cumberland Plateau

I think my main purpose for coming on this trip was to help D negotiate the three flights (four airplanes and four takeoffs, but only the three with working landing gear actually count) and to hand him enough cash for three days of pizza.

But that gives me time to explore. Saturday I left early and headed east to spend the day looking for waterfalls and natural bridges and rocky bluffs. The bridges and arches are a great contrast to the ones I know better on the Colorado Plateau - they're all sandstone, but in the southwest, they're easier to find. Here, you walk through the forest until you notice that the shadow is actually a 100' arch of rock passing through the canopy above your head!

I checked out the Big South Fork (of the Cumberland River) - including Twin Arches (interesting to contrast to yesterday's Double Arch bridge on the Natchez Trace), Leatherwood Ford, and the high bridge at Rugby. And then drove south to the Clear Fork and the Obed River before driving back to Nashville and Opryland, arriving somewhere in the middle of Round Five.

Natchez Trace

Last Friday, I was driving the Coulees of the Columbia Basin, this Friday I'm exploring central Tennessee . American Airlines delivered us to Nashville late this morning - after an unplanned overnight in Dallas - and I managed to get D to Opryland half an hour before Round One started. I checked in, then hit the road. I drove south an hour or so on the Interstate and then cut over past the Saturn factory to pick up the Natchez Trace Parkway for the drive back to Nashville.

The Parkway is one of those wonderful winding two lane, protected corridor highways that makes you realize that roads can be beautiful. Sure the setting helps, but it's mainly about landscape planning and highway design. This one runs 400+ miles from Natchez to Nashville - following the route of the original overland route from the lower Mississippi into the interior on the back side of the Appalachians. Remnants of the original road can still be seen, abandoned when steamboats began running up the Ohio and the Cumberland rivers.

There were few people on the road this perfect spring afternoon. I checked out waterfalls and the great double arch bridge near the north end. And then waited an hour for a table at the Loveless Cafe, where I had ham and biscuits and a Nashville beer.

Wild Horse Wind Farm

Maybe because it was Earth Day, I felt obliged to pay homage to hydroelectric dams and wind turbines. It probably didn't make up for the carbon footprint of today's 500-mile road trip! I drove up to the visitor's center, although it had closed at least an hour earlier, and I had the hilltop all to myself. The view of the windmills was spectacular in the late afternoon light. The only sound, besides a few birds, was the slow whoosh=whoosh-whoosh of the blades turning.

Grand Coulee

As long as I was so close, I decided to drive up through Electric City and take a look at the dam. The lake was pretty low and any water coming through the dam was doing so in pipes and tunnels, not over the spillways.

Steamboat Rock

Steamboat Rock is a basalt mesa that rises from Banks Lake, near the north end of Grand Coulee and not too far from the dam. It's about 800 feet to the top and there's only one trail up, which makes use of a break in the cliffs above the State Park campground on the southeast side. I spent two or three hours wandering the summit. The sun was shining and the temperatures were probably in the high 50s. The flowers were starting to come out, but the rattlesnakes were probably still sleeping.

Eastern Washington

It was Good Friday and Earth Day. I had been thinking of taking the day off since it was D's break week, but it turned out he had already made plans to see the Mariners Friday night. The weather was looking great, so I decided to do something anyway, and by 7AM I was on I-90 heading east.

My main objective was Steamboat Rock, but I managed to swing by Grand Coulee Dam, Dry Falls, and the windmills above Vantage, too.

Mt. Erie

The sunny day on Whidbey was a wonderful break after a cold, damp spring. The Beach Watchers class went well (or at least I hope it did). I subjected them to the normal Beaches 101 and then through some fairly loosely organized earthquake and tsunami material (in high demand after last month's disaster in Honshu), before heading to Ledgewood Beach with the group for the field trip.

My afternoon stops took me north and I didn't make it to Deception Pass until very late, but not too late to decide to head up to Mt. Erie before heading back to Seattle.

Neah Bay

I hadn't been able to come up with a plan for the long weekend - and the sunshine Saturday morning was driving me crazy - but after coffee and much waffling, I asked D if he was up for a long day. He was, so despite a late start we headed west. The wind was strong - and cold - but it was strongest crossing the Sound from Edmonds. By the time we hit the beaches west of Port Angeles the wind was gone and the temperatures were fine. We had a 2:45PM lunch in Neah Bay, then headed out to Cape Flattery and the beaches to the south. I suppose if we'd left earlier, we would have had time for the hike to Shi Shi Beach, but today we would have been hiking back out well after dark. Maybe next time. We had pizza at Gordy's in P.A. and were back in Seattle around 11PM after not quite making the ferry we wanted.

In August, I watched the sun rise from the country's top right hand corner (West Quoddy Head). Today, we came pretty close to watching it set from the top left. And what an incredible day! Especially for February.

Crescent Beach

Coming back from Vancouver, we got off the highway and looped out through Crescent Beach. The rain had let up a little and the sun was peaking through and there was a great rainbow over the town (not great enough to show up well in pictures). We picked up our Canadian contraband (three boxes of Viva Puff cookies) at a White Rock grocery store before heading back across the border. We had a 10PM dinner with the team at Red Robin in Bellingham and got home around 1AM.

Vancouver

The Garfield team was at the state high school chess championships in Blaine on Friday and Saturday, so after dropping D and the others at the tournament on Saturday morning, M and I drove across the border and into a particularly bleak early February day in Vancouver. We parked at the big garage next to the River Rock Casino in Richmond and took the Canada Line into the city. We walked a little bit downtown -- long enough to find sushi for lunch on Granville -- but mainly we just rode the Sky Train all over the city on our $9 day passes.

Tacoma

It's a five minute walk from the UW Tacoma Campus down to the Foss Waterway, so a lunch break is enough time for coffee and a quick walk. There's a great mixture of old and new down here - it's also what I really like about the UW Tacoma campus - and today I was seeing patterns and textures in the built landscape.

Mount Vernon

There wasn't a whole lot of light left, but it doesn't take long to get from I-5 up to the top of Little Mountain, and it seemed like the perfect day for it. There are great view points off both sides - looking south over the Skagit Delta and north over Mount Vernon and Samish Bay.

Stevens Pass

It's been at least two or three years since D and last skied and as usual, I was convinced I'd either have forgotten how or that my aging body would break. As it was, joints and muscles worked fairly well and although my knees were awfully stiff after the drive back, they didn't feel too bad the next day. We spent the day with J&R, and with Will, once his lesson was over. He pretty much called the routes - though we had to talk him out of some of his more ambitious plans.

I guess every year my postings take a dip around the holidays - this has been a particularly long gap. Things get busy - both at work and at home We launched the kitchen remodel. And when I do take pictures, they are family pictures at Thanksgiving and Christmas and sometimes I hesitate to post those shots.