Road Trippin' in Washington - Elk and Family and Beaches!

The Pacific Northwest!  Awww, what a great land of beautiful animals!  Beaches you can drive on!  Bald eagles! And family of course.  

My niece happened to see a large herd of elk just of the road near her house and, bless her heart, ran home to get me so I could see it too!

Look closely at this next picture...it's a little family!

Baby was nursing and we tried to stay as still as possible so as to not disturb them.  Mama was the last elk near us with baby feeding, but as the rest of the herd meandered further into the brush, she got nervous and off they went. 

And now they caught up and feel much safer. 

Later that night we headed out to watch the sunset at the beach.  We were hoping to find some bald eagles, but we got distracted by the beauty so we parked and walked around.  

This is Lee being a real trooper.  You will NOT believe this, but we found a small American flag in a dead porcupine on the beach (no, I did not take a photo).  Sabrina and I talked Lee into taking the flag to the water line because we thought it would be a cool addition to the photos.  And of course WE didn't want to touch it.  

While Lee planted the flag on our newly claimed territory, we watched the kids (especially Logan) run around on the beach. 

LOL!  So the flag is backwards and doesn't look as cool as I thought it would.  

Meanwhile, Lee took pictures of the love of his life.  No, not my gorgeous niece.  His gorgeous truck!

He had the bright idea to capture the sunset in the window, which I thought looked pretty cool so I joined in. 

My beautiful great-niece found a bunch of sand dollars, and I took one of my favorite photos of the day!

As we were driving down the beach, I actually saw what we had originally came for!  A bald eagle!

I hollered and Sabrina backed up, but then he flew away just as I started to take his photo.  lol

I call this "Abstract of Eagle on Waves".

Yay!  And that's the story of the only eagle I saw.  haha

xoxo

Nikon D3300

Multnomah Falls Oregon and Columbia River Gorge - August 2017

Words cannot express how sad I am about the fires burning through the West Coast (Best Coast!) states.  So much beauty is being destroyed, animals killed and losing their homes, and people's lives and belongings are threatened as well.   

In the case of the Columbia Gorge, it's somewhere I went when I was young, but I have not stopped on my way through to Washington for many, many years - even though I've wanted to and even planned to on several occasions.

Luckily I listened to my soul and to my sister the last time I was there and took the opportunity to go to the gorgeous and historic Multnomah Falls as well as a quick side trip down to the Columbia River near Troutdale, which is now threatened by this fire.  

You can see the lush, green forest that surrounds the area.  What you can't see is the problem trees - dead trees and vegetation that one great winter could not remedy after 5-7 very dry years. 

Random people taking selfies on the bridge.  lol  I got there pretty early (around 8:30 a.m.) per Rose's advice, and there were already about 10 cars in the two parking lots (that I could see).  

This is the first landing above the main landing (which is where I took most of the pictures above).

This is the first switchback on the trail up to the bridge.  It's a fairly easy trail at this point, but I still had to stop and catch my breath. 

The next few pictures are taken while on the bridge.  You can see the water flowing out of the pool at the bottom of the falls and down a shallow rapids under the bridge.

Although there are signs asking people to not throw anything in the water as there are fish, etc., in the water, you can see scores of coins below the bridge.

This is the lower falls and pool at the bottom viewed looking over the side of the bridge. 

Just beyond the bridge is another little landing where you can stand.  Be careful though if you have a camera!  It's a spray zone!  Along the path I saw a few "locks of love".  This is the first one I noticed, which is probably because I was changing my lens and trying to protect it from the spray.

And the top of the falls as seen from the little vista (with a bigger lens).

I saw my 2nd lock of love just a little further up the path.  I like this one best.  Not only for the pretty green color but because the inscription says "Until the wheels fall off".  

Now that's a good view of love!

I had some grand idea that I might be able to make it to the top of the falls, but I found out differently by the time I reached the first of eleven (11!) switchbacks to get to the top.  I was already quite winded and time was flying by.

So this was where I turned around and told myself I would lose some damn weight and come back here and conquer it all!  The path takes a right turn here and you can see how steep the hill is getting by looking at the trees. 

I headed back down and stopped on the bridge once again to check out the scene.  Now there were a lot more people heading up!

On my way back down I noticed another lock that I hadn't seen previously. 

And a bright spot of yellow flowers in the dense green. 

I made it to the bottom and waded through the throngs of people that were now crowded onto the bottom vista. I'm not kidding!  There was at least 50-75 people, most of them wearing purple shirts so I took that to mean they were a group. 

I headed back to my car which was parked in the overflow lot between I-84. 

35 miles back to Portland!

But first I wanted to stop and walk to the river to see if I could get some shots of the pilings in the water.  I headed West on I-84 and stopped at a small park with a boat ramp.  I took a trail through the dense trees and foliage until I reached the river.  

My view was perfect!

It was so lovely and peaceful!

And the black sand beach was covered with little shells!

Speaking of shells, on the walk back to my car I had a bit of a scare.  I saw what at first glance looked to be a large turtle/tortoise stuck in a tree!!  

Upon closer inspection it turned out to be some kind of fungus/mushroom.  Thank goodness!  lol

So, the moral of this story is this:

Humans!  Stop doing stupid ass shit such as throwing smoke bombs into canyons!!!

Fire is beautiful in the right setting but your errant idiocy just torched a bunch of beautiful land, not to mention history and animals!

xoxo

Nikon D3300

Boat Trip - Exploring Grays Harbor, Washington

After our morning spent at the Satsop River,  we headed to the Westport Marina to meet with Lee, Sabrina, and the kids.  Robert, Angela, and the kids were going to spend the rest of the morning/early afternoon Pokemon hunting while Lee took me, Sabrina, and Verna out on the boat.  We were hoping to see some whales, as Lee had seen some a few days before.  

Our ocean-going vessel!

There were sooo many cool things to photograph as we left the marina!  Everything was a wonder to my eyes and lens.  There were so many pelicans, cormorants, and seagulls around and the lines and structures of the marina made for perfect perches and perfect photographs.

There were also some very interesting sights to see amongst the boats themselves. Including the gorgeous gray backdrop of the stormy sky behind this blue and white boat.

And this fishing boat, which had sunk in its mooring a couple days before.

That's a quarter of a million literally down the drain!  Or, me being cynical, maybe it's a happy insurance claim.

Westport has a really lovely marina and it's punctuated by a very large and beautiful American flag flying in the breeze.

Across the opening of Grays Harbor lies Ocean Shores.  We stayed at Ocean Shores many, many years ago and I remember it being wonderful to be right there on both the Pacific Ocean on one side and the bay on the other.

As we made out way out towards Ocean Shores, we saw some sleepy sea lions tanning on a navigation buoy.

Perfect for two!

It is SO cool to be out on the water, right by these huge ships!

This is the beach of Ocean Shores.  It looked so fascinating with all the driftwood, and ships sailing by out to the sea.  Someone even built a teepee which gave an air of what this place may have looked like hundreds of years ago.  I could almost see the Quinault or the Chehalis peoples walking these beaches in my mind's eye.

Meanwhile, back in the present, we got to see a lot more of the native marine life!  This buoy was Cormorant Central!

And we saw some dolphins!  Yay!  There were 2-4 and they were really, really quick!  So yay for shitty pictures!  But an amazing experience!

I swear they had heads.  No!  They really did!  I'm hoping Sabrina got a picture with their heads.

I think this is the closest I got. lol

And this IS a head!  But it's an adorable Harbor Seal, not a dolphin.  haha

We saw another ship heading out of the bay, so we decided to follow it.

Literally!

We were putting Westport well behind us at this point.

We caught up to the ship...

 ...but - oops - it wasn't sailing anywhere.  It was at anchor, which was also really cool!

And pretty soon, we'd left it in our wake.

And all the land too!  We were now in the open ocean!  Hello beautiful Pacific!  To my surprise, my sister IL said she had never been out on the ocean before.

I confess, I've been on the ocean just a few times.  Once in Monterey, CA on a whale-watching expedition with my family.  I got sick once we found the whales and the boats stopped moving forward, so that sucked.  And in Hawaii, we went snorkeling on a Catamaran, and once again I got sick!  Shite!  I did end up throwing up on that trip and then I felt much better and was able to enjoy the rest of the outing.  The other time was in New Zealand where I didn't get sick at all.  Lee's boat was about the same size as the one in New Zealand, so I was hoping for the best.  Plus I took a couple Bonine before we left!

I didn't get sick!!  Yay me!  No one did, so it was a very successful outing.  And fun.  Did I mention fun?  It was soooo fun.

The ocean is amazing by the way.

We saw what appeared to be a bird party going on, so we followed the flying pelicans and headed over hoping that they were attracted by whales feeding.  Birds like it when whales drive schools of fish to the surface.  Feast for all!

We didn't see any whales, but we did see more and more birds flying over.  In addition to the pelicans and gulls, there were also murres, which we had seen at the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma and I had seen at a distance at the Point Reyes Lighthouse near San Francisco.

Pretty soon there were tons of birds congregating just outside of Ocean Shores.

It was amazing!  And more on that in the next post.  

xoxo

Nikon D3300