I get around

We were out on a drive to see the eagles on the Skagit River. During the winter months, the eagles follow various salmon runs, and the Skagit seems to be one of the favorites; it also happens to have a road that allows easy access - Route 20, the North Cascades Highway. Our tour started near Concrete, WA, and continued east, including stops at Rockport State Park and Mile 100 (a wide spot in the road). Along the way we happened across a tour group of restored cars. As the drivers lunched nearby, the cars formed an impromptu show.

Update: Forgot to provide a title.

Tattered

The Seattle Science Center has a tropical butterfly house. Inside it's hot, humid, and bright. The visitors walk paths among tropical plants, gawking at the flowers and the butterflies. The butterflies congregate around flowers, water, and plates of food. This particular butterfly must be approaching the end of his life. His neighbors have smoothly undulating edges to their wings, but this one is tattered. He seems to be enjoying a banana.

Paths on the Mountain

We were using our snowshoes on Mount Rainier, WA. We parked by Paradise Visitor Center and started climbing. The day started out clear but clouds came in during the early afternoon. At times we were climbing through overcast and snow, but there was also plenty of sunshine. This image captures a period of change.

Update: We are standing around 6000 feet (about 1000 feet above Paradise) and looking up the 14,400 foot mountain.

I like Paris in the Springtime

I've been visiting daily a couple of photoblogs. The first one I found was the London Daily Photo (LDP). The LDP was inspired by and introduced me to the Paris Daily Photo (PDP). These are wonderful. In honor of the first anniversary of the PDP, I offer this little snapshot of an obscure part of Paris with a wonderful name, Rue du chat qui peche. My poor abilities in French give this street the name "Avenue of the Fishing Cat".

Eric, the host of PDP, has a special listing of photos he has received in honor of his first anniversary, and I encourage you to have a look!

A rose by any other name

A simple sand pendulum can create complex, interesting figures as the point swings through the sand - Lissajous figures. These sand pendulums are often sold in little shops. One of the shops in Port Townsend, not far from Seattle, happened to have their pendulum swinging at the moment of the 2001 Seattle earthquake, and this image is left to us to ponder. The owner named it The Earthquake Rose.

I feel the earth move under my feet

Seattle is on the Ring of Fire, a massive curve around northern part the Pacific Ocean. As the tectonic plates move, we develop neighbors who like to party. Five years ago, 28 February 2001, Seattle had a reminder of our party-hardy neighbors: an earthquake. Everybody has their story to tell and everyone remembers exactly where they were when "it" happened.

I was in the office of my boss, having a routine 1x1 meeting with him. The first rumble hit and it was like a heavily loaded cart rolling down then hallway - just a loud rumble. A few seconds later, a louder rumble with a distinct floor motion hit. I asked Gene (my boss), "Is this an earthquake?" "No, don't be silly." By the time he got the "...lly" out of his mouth, we were both standing in the doorway of his office, looking at each other, because the third rumble hit and hit and hit. It seemed to go on forever. There was a fellow outside Gene's office, sitting at his desk and staring up at a light fixture that was swaying back and forth. "Gee, you really ought to get away from that and under your desk." "Huh? What?" he said as he watched the fixture sway. It seemed to go on forever, but it probably lasted five seconds of so.

Gene and I walked around the floor to inspect any damage and to ensure that anyone needing help or attention got it. Luckily, we were in a new building so most of the damage was to items that slid or bounced off desks to the floor, and a couple of bookcases that weren't properly secured to the walls. I waited around until the official all-clear announcement. I had to wait until the city bus lines started running again.

The bus ride was a little strange. The city was silent, nearly still. The route for the bus I needed took me into the Seattle Metro Bus Tunnel. I must say it is a bit odd to ride through a tunnel in the aftermath of an earthquake. No obvious damage - the engineers had checked it out before re-opening it, of course - but one feels like the ultimate gambler to go below the earth after an earthquake.

Next day? Back to work.

Note: it is normally a bad idea to stand in a doorway during an earthquake. Much wiser to get under a table or sturdy piece of furniture that's away from glass windows. In this case, the door was a sliding door rather than a swinging door, so the response was reasonably safe. A conventional swinging door tends to flap in harmony with the earthquake (literally), slapping you out of the way should you attempt to interfere with its path. Avoid doorways, head under a table or desk.

Where have all the flowers gone?

The Northwest Flower and Garden Show comes to Seattle like a tropical breeze each February. The floors of the Convention Center blossom with displays and booths. This display was an interesting combination of flowers and glass in the style of Dale Chihuly.

Don't know much about history

You look at this picture and you probably think it's inane. Here's the secret: it's not inane, it's art. Yep, there's a plaque on that utility cover in the foreground. A significant plaque. Well, OK, I'll let you judge for yourself (I assume a singular readership here, and I don't mean distinctive, I mean unary).

The plaque reads as it says. Kirkland, WA.

Grazin' in the grass

What do you do with a valley floor that is also a floodplain? You might build houses or businesses there, but they would flood regularly. Here's a clever idea: build a sod farm. Yep, grow grass. Then when the fields flood, you don't lose much. If the floods recede quickly enough, you don't even lose the grass - it will recover quickly.

This is the valley of the Sammamish Slough and you're looking north from the north side of Redmond, WA. The Slough is to your left. In the distance you might be able to make out the Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, but I rather doubt the visibility is good enough. The Columbia Winery (must be over 21) is nearby and so is the Red Hook Brewery. Yes, we have all the conveniences here.

Slip-sliding away

The good side of all that rain is: snow in the mountains. We went skiing at the Stevens Pass Ski Area on the afternoon of a recent football game. It was great. The day was sunny, as you can see to the right, the crowds were light, the snow was good, and the lift lines were brief. There was even plenty of seating and eating room (normally it's a struggle to find a place to sit).

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It is raining again in Seattle. After a day of brief relief - it takes just one to interrupt the record string - we're back into rain. Two and a half times the average amount of rain for January and an inch short of the wettest January on record. Water is everywhere. The rivers had started to drop, but they're higher than ever. Hillsides are slumping; one stretch of a hill slid into the Oso River and blocked it. The emergency folks brought in construction equipment to dig a new river channel to save nearby houses.

This is to be someone's basement. The rain will drain, the ground will dry, the cement will pour, the foundation will harden, the house will go up, and the happy people will move in. Seattle - we can survive anything!

Three mountains

We've had another sunny day, but don't tell anyone - they might think there's a pattern here. But the sunny day calls for another mountain photo. This panorama is from the slopes of Mt. Rainier and looks roughly south. The tall volcano in the distance on the left is Mt. Adams; the volcano hiding in the center distance is Mt. Hood, and the volcano on the right is Mt. St. Helens.

Rainier Sighting

The rains have broken and I saw Mt. Rainier for the first time this year. It feels like a long time since Mt. Rainier was last visible; those layers and layers of clouds can weight more than one might think.

Although I saw Mt. Rainier from Redmond this afternoon, this photo is from January, 2003, and was taken in the alpenglow from Longmire.

Wash-out

We went out looking for eagles today. At this time of year, bald eagles commonly come south from Alaska to roost along salmon rivers in the northwest of the US. We were looking along the Skagit River north of Seattle. This is an area where the road had previously washed out and there is a (locally) massive reconstruction project. The face of raw rock in the photo indicates the scale of the construction (see the "little" excavator in the lower-right corner). Further up to the hill one can see a valley in the mountain side that channels water into a stream. As the construction shows, the stream is powerful enough to undermine and wash out the road.

The eagles? We saw about 15. They were relatively low in number because the high water level in the river washed downstream the salmon carcasses that the eagles normally eat. A month ago, we would have seen five times as many eagles.

I fear rivers over flowing

It's not that bad. The rains continue and the rivers are in flood, but the floods are pretty normal for this time of year. This picture shows a slough, a channelized flow that leads from the north end of Lake Sammamish in Redmond to the north end of Lake Washington in Kenmore. As you might tell from the sapling in the foreground, the slough flow is normally lower - about 1.3 meters (4 feet) lower, in fact. This picture was taken where NE 124th street crosses the slough, looking southwest (the glare in the distance is the setting sun around 4:30pm or so).

Flowing in from the left (from the east) is a small salmon stream that has been restored. The stream shows as a wiggle in the map. As you might imagine, a salmon stream has salmon in it. Salmon like wandering, cool streams so the stream was recently de-channelized: they put the bends back in, dropped some logs in the water to create snags, and planted saplings on the banks to shade and cool the water in the summer. We hope the salmon will return and prosper. They come all the way through Lake Washington.

More precisely, they come from Puget Sound into Lake Union and Portage Bay, through the Lake Washington Ship Canal, through Lake Washington, and into the slough. Pretty impressive. But these guys are stragglers compared to some of the other salmon that head up the Columbia River.

Rainy Day People

Seattle is a rainy climate in the Winter, there's no denying it. We get a lot of rain. To be more precise, we get a normal amount of rain and it takes a long, long time to fall. Our typical rainy day is 4-8 mm (less than 1/4-inch) as measured in my backyard. Over a year, that's roughly 40 inches (102 cm). We call it our "liquid sunshine" and instead of "showers", we note the exceptions as "sun breaks".

So what does one do when the weather is not quite perfect? We go outdoors, of course! We spend a lot of time out of doors. We're not dim, we do come in out of the rain (mostly), so we find indoor-outdoor things to do -- like Dutch Oven cooking. Here's our troop running a Dutch Oven cooking contest on an iffy day in the Fall. You're looking at over a dozen ovens cooking away. The little gray spots are charcoal briquettes nicely heating everything around them. It was difficult to get a shot of the ovens without too many people in view - a lot of people spent time near the coals for the warmth.

The ovens contain entrees and desserts. Enough to feed an army. That's the only problem with a contest like this - each participant is cooking enough for about five people to eat. It's a burden that I shall bear....

For the record

Officially, we only made it to 27 sequential days of rain. According to the official record-keepers, it didn't rain in Seattle on Sunday, 15 Jan 2006, so the streak of days began anew on Monday, 16 Jan 2006. Too bad they didn't have a rain gauge in my backyard - Redmond got rain.

Be Prepared

We went on a hike today to see the Big Four Ice Caves, about an hour away from our home. We piled two kids, four sets of snowshoes, lunches, poles, hiking gear, and winter clothing into the car and headed off. I cleverly grabbed a spare battery for my camera. We arrived, unpacked and dressed, but the snow depth was insufficient for snowshoes and we only needed hiking boots. We got to the trailhead and there was a nice view of the clouds parting over Big Four Mountain. I whipped out the camera, turned it on, and viewed the message "No Memory Card". No problem! I reached for the spare memory card that I keep in the camera bag. No Memory Card. The spares were sitting on my desk - at home. Fortunately, my new cell phone comes with a little megabit camera, so I gave that a try. Herewith is the result.

Moral of the story: take the spares with you.

Update: the image displayed in this entry looks odd, but click on it, and the "original" (?) looks fine.

Twenty-five

Twenty-five days of rain. We have had 25 consecutive days of rain in the metropolitan Seattle area and we're heading toward the record of 33 days of rain. It will come as a surprise to many that Seattle can think of this as unusual. "It's the rainy city, the Emerald City," I hear you cry, "how can they call any amount 'too much rain'?" Well, even we have our limits! For those keeping track at home, the record for Spokane is more like 50 consecutive days.

This photo was taken in Mt. Rainier National Park in May, 2005.

Update: Oops. The record rainy city is not Spokane, but Centralia.

Rainbow abbreviated

Here's a smudge of a rainbow, an abbreviation. I'm on a ridge overlooking a river valley with the sun setting behind me at the end of a rainy day. Somehow, physics shows me a fragment of a rainbow in the settling darkness.