Another trip back (part 2)

I spent quite a lot of time in Tacoma on my trip, so most of today's photos were taken there. First, here are some photos I took at Point Defiance Park.

There were raccoons beside the road, begging to be fed, as usual.

View from the point looking out at Puget Sound.

Gig Harbor and the Olympic Mountains.

At some points the trail atop the cliff is quite close to the edge.

Here are the Tacoma Narrows.

More raccoons!

Tacoma Narrows bridge view from a neighborhood.

A better shot of the bridges.

A nice little mural in the Oakland/Madrona neighborhood.

Hilltop neighborhood.

Part of a mural there.

Boarded-up houses with "By Order of the City of Tacoma Do Not Occupy" signs are common.

You need to "Turn Wheels to Curb" so if your brakes fail the car doesn't roll down the hill.

Looking down 11th Street towards the Murray Morgan bridge.

Tacoma's Fire Station Number One.

The Rialto Theater on 9th Street.

Storm clouds brewing on the way to Olympia.

What's left of the unfinished Satsop Nuclear Power Plant.

Two cooling towers loom over pastoral farmland.

Foggy oceanside at Westport.

You can just make out the lighthouse through the fog and trees.

A view of Mount Saint Helens through the clouds driving south on I-5 back to Portland. I drove through an incredible thunderstorm, the biggest one Washington has seen in recent years. (For those in the eastern regions of the country, though, it would have been an average storm)

Another trip back (part 1)

While W has been deployed, I went on a two week trip back to Washington as a break from work, and being alone at home. Here are some photos I took on the trip.

Shasta Lake, California.

An abandoned building in Tangent, Oregon.

Milwaukie, Oregon's library is in a very natural setting for a city.

Back in Washington on I-5.

The Narrows Bridges, back in Tacoma

Another view of the bridges.

Wright Park.

A new bridge for the Wright Park pond.

New market-rate high-rise apartments going up in a former parking lot.

Ships at Tacoma's harbor.

A view of the city from across Commencement Bay.

A rural road in Kent.

Abandoned houses in an industrial area of Fife.

I'll have more later!

PNW2017 (days 5 to 8)

Our next stop was one of my favorite places in the world, the Hoh rainforest.

I'd never visited it in the middle of winter with snow, and it was a new and different experience.

With the temperature just below zero, the typical thick, foresty, musty feeling of the air was less apparent.

We got to see salmon swimming upriver to lay their eggs.

This is a natural colonnade of trees formed by a nurselog.

Next, we hiked the Ozette trail to Cape Alava, the westernmost point of the contiguous 48 states. Much of the trail was a boardwalk.

Here are some views of the coast at Cape Alava.

Then we drove up to Hurricane Ridge to get the real snow experience. It's a popular place for skiers but we just tromped around in the snow.

Our next destination was Seattle, which we reached by the Bremerton ferry.

Washington State Ferries is the largest ferry system in North America, and is publicly owned.

It gives a great view of the Seattle skyline.

To get a daylight view, we climbed to the top of the water tower in Volunteer Park, a free alternative to the Space Needle.

Plus, you get to actually see the Space Needle in the skyline this way.