x over it: snow

Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts

7 Feb 2017

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.

31 Dec 2015

Happy New Year (and some December stuff)

December has been a busy time. W and I spent the past week with my sister and her boyfriend, visiting from Michigan, and we had a great time in and around Tacoma. One of the highlights was a trip up into the mountains.

There's almost never snow in the lower elevations in western Washington, but up in the mountains there is a tremendous amount. In fact, the highest levels of snowfall in the continental 48 states are measured here!

There was only 2 to 3 feet of snow where we went, Crystal Mountain. There was more at Paradise, but the road was closed due to an excessive amount of snowfall for this time of year. That's saying a lot, when you consider that it sometimes has snow as deep as 16 feet! (it's like driving through a tunnel and I'm looking forward to hopefully getting to see that some time this winter after a very bad winter last year with low snowfall)

We found a lonely abandoned sled at a little turn-out on the road, and went down this little hill a few times.

It was a gorgeous day and everything was beautiful and perfect.

The road into Rainier National Park was closed, as it always is in the winter.

We found a snowman. Or should I say, Jabba the Snow Hutt.

The snow was actually kind of blue if you saw it at the right angle. Hopefully you can see this here.

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of joining Scott and Cabot for a type-in in Kirkland, WA. I only managed to snap this one photo of Scott on Cabot's decrepit Underwood standard. That was a fantastic machine, it looked so terrible but true to the Underwood's reputation, it typed pretty great.