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!

California Highway 1

After spending our time in Los Angeles, decided to take the coastal route to San Jose.

It's quite a trip, taking at least twice as long as I-5, but when time is not important there is no doubting which way is better to take.

We stopped to watch the sunset north of Morro Bay.

Then we spent the night in Cambria before continuing north from there.

North of Cambria, there isn't really much development at all—there isn't space for any. The road twists and turns, hugging the mountainous coastline.

Around every turn there was another picture-perfect scene before our eyes. I love our grey, grey-blue, and grey-green Pacific coast in Washington, but the vivid colors of the southern California coast are fantastic.

Just before sundown, we stopped at Big Basin state park to see some of the most southerly redwoods.

We broke out of the forest just in time to see another beautiful sunset.

That concludes the photo-documentary of our 2015 California trip!

I decided it was time to change my blog header again, and I came up with this design using elements from my 1981 Erika 120's unpacking instructions.