Katrina's Travels

More photos from my November 15 visit to Point No Point.This set includes the lighthouse, driftwood, and boats/ships.


Lighthouses on the west coast are very different from lighthouses on the east coast. I'm used to lighthouses that are either tall buildings or buildings up on stilts, not low buildings like this one.





( More lighthouse photos )

The beach was full of driftwood, some of which had been arranged into various stacks and shapes.



( More driftwood )


There were plenty of boats/ships going by out in the Sound - everything from apparent Canadian navy ships to tug boats to small sail boats.



( More boats/ships )

I think I'll move on to birds and other critters next time.

I back-tracked from Port Gamble and found the right turn to get to Point No Point. There's a long stretch of beach to walk on plus a trail that goes through a marshy meadow then up into the woods. I started out on the beach. It was about 55F, which I considered plenty warm for mid-November. I left my jacket in the car, rolled up my jeans and took off my sandals. Eventually I decided to walk in the water instead of on the sand. Other people were wearing their winter coats. I think they thought I was strange. When I talked to one of my cousins who is kind of new-agey about it later, she said I was grounding myself in the Sound. I think she made a valid point about that. I didn't think about it that way when I was doing it, but it did feel like there was more importance to it than just getting my feet wet.




This is the view from the edge of the beach near the parking lot.










( More scenery )

By the time I was done, the blue sky was gone and this is what it looked like.




By the time I got back to the car to go back to my uncle's house it was raining. That's the Pacific Northwest for you. If it isn't raining now, it will be raining soon.

Coming up next: lighthouse and beach photos.

I spent the nights of November 13 and 14 at a friend's house. It was comfortable and quiet, unlike my uncle's house. She left early in the morning to go to work and a bit later I left to catch a train into Seattle. When I mentioned that idea to my friend she didn't know anything about a train. Fortunately, I'd done my research and knew that the station wasn't far away. I found my way there with only minor difficulties. The train was there and waiting when I arrived, although not boarding yet.




Soon it was time to get on the train and eventually it left the station. If I remember correctly the ride was something like an hour and a quarter. It was comfortable and ever so much less stressful than trying to drive into Seattle. I positively hate doing that and it seems to be worse every time I'm there. Looking out the window I managed to spot The Mountain (AKA Mt Rainier). My mother had made me promise multiple times that I would say hello to The Mountain for her, so I thought "hello" at it. It failed to respond and went back into hiding soon after. I saw it again a little bit on the way home, but through the train window was the only view I had of it. Can you see it in this photo?




I arrived in Seattle and walked from the train station to Pike Place Market. The first time I can remember going there was when I was 15, most of 42 years ago. Thinking about it that way makes me feel old.




I promptly headed for my Mee Sum, my favorite Asian pastry shop. I bought a bagful of sesame balls, pineapple buns, and coconut dream buns. Sesame balls and pineapple buns can be bought from the pastry shop in Washington DC's Chinatown but they don't taste nearly as good as the ones at Mee Sum.




After that I made a more methodical wander through the market. I wanted to check out artist Ed Newbold's booth. He's been at the market for thirty-some years and I've been buying his prints for a good many of them. This time I was looking for a print to go in a frame with pretty blue matting that I'd bought at the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore a while ago. I ended up with this print featuring swallows. I got a print for Crazy Mother for her birthday as well. I also needed to buy lots of tea and a few spices from MarketSpice I've been buying tea from them for about 25 years, since back in the days of pre-internet mail order where I sent them a filled out form and a check and they mailed me tea in return. I find it ever so much more satisfying to buy it in person but they no longer keep all their teas in stock at the store at the market. I bought some other odds and ends as well, but those were my real targets. Somewhere in the middle I went to the Thai restaurant Jasmine and had Bathing Rama for lunch. Bathing Rama is chunks of chicken and veggies in a peanuty sauce. I've never found it anywhere else, so I always have to go have it when I'm in Seattle. Other Thai restaurants sometimes make a dish called Swimming Rama. That has some similarities but isn't the same thing at all. They don't always have it on the menu when I go, but they're always willing to make it for me. If I ever get there and find that restaurant gone I will be sorely disappointed.

I took quite a few photos, although I somehow didn't bother taking a photo of Marketspice.

( Photos here )

I spent too much time at the market and didn't end up with much time to do anything else. I made a quick stop at Uwajimaya, the big Japanese store to look for a couple of things, but didn't find them and another quick stop at the Japanese dollar store Daiso where I got a couple things but had to make a quick retreat back to the train station so that I'd get back in time to have dinner with my friend. We went out to a Thai restaurant that was delicious. It was terrible to have to eat Thai food twice in one day. (Not!)

There were so many other things I'd like to have done in Seattle, but I only had time for one day there, so shopping and eating were what got done. (In the end I did spend a piece of another day in Seattle but that's a different story. I'll get to it soon.)

These are the last of my photos from my drive across Washington on November 12th.

The closer I got to White Pass, the worse the weather got.




This is the pass itself - not particularly exciting.




( More photos )

Eventually my view turned into this.




And not too much later I was across the mountains and while there was less fog, there was still rain.




Then I got to the interstate highway and drove north to my uncle's house in Lacey. I am not fond of driving on interstate highways, but sometimes it is the appropriate way to go.

Continuing west on towards White Pass....

The closer I got to the pass the greener and wetter things got. This is definitely a big change from where I was a few hours earlier. It wasn't raining yet, but it sure looked like it wanted to.




There was a tunnel, which led to forested hills.




Soon I came to Rimrock Lake where I could pull off the road to take photos in a few places.




( More photos of Rimrock Lake and the surrounding area. )

After passing the lake, the highway was surrounded by forest.




( More photos from along the highway )

Driving towards and over the mountain passes in Washington is always interesting because the difference between the east and west side is rather extreme. Where I live, if you go over the mountain, the other side still looks the same. Not so in Washington. The east side is dry and either relatively bare with sagebrush or if there is forest it is mainly Ponderosa Pines. The west side is wet and full of a very different kind of forest with ferns, lichens, and moss all over the place.

In these photos I'm driving towards the Cascades from the east, on the White Pass Scenic Byway. White Pass is the southernmost of Washington's passes over the Cascades. (I took the northernmost pass going the other direction later in my trip.)




This is the Tieton River, which the road followed for a long way.




The hills here are still relatively bare and rocky.




( More photos from along the dry side of the White Pass Scenic Byway )

And then the relatively bare hillsides disappeared completely and gave way to forested mountains.






to be continued....

I had a nice comfy and quiet room at the Motel 6 in Yakima. I didn't realize it when I checked, but when I looked at where I was in the morning, I had the room on the second floor that that was over top of the office and not connected to anything on either side, so no noisy neighbors. The hotel was in the middle of a commercial district with nothing but other big buildings in sight so no hotel view photo this time. There was a California Scrub-Jay in a tree near my room though, and it was cooperative about having its picture taken.




There are several species of scrub-jay. The California Scrub-Jay is the one that is found in the coastal areas of the west coast. It used to be mostly in California but it moved north to Oregon and Washington. Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay is the inland western species. When I heard the jay at the hotel, I was hoping it was a Woodhouse's because I haven't seen one of those in several decades, if I've seen them at all. (I've been too lazy to check my records on where I saw scrub-jays when I was young and they were all considered to be a single species.) But no, the inland scrub-jays in Washington are the California species. The coastal species moved inland there rather than the inland species from the south moving north.


I wanted to stretch my legs for a while before spending the day driving so I went over to the nearby Yakima Greenway and spent about an hour wandering around there.




The main trail is paved and I suspect it is on an old railway bed. The stretch I walked on goes along the Naches River and there were some ponds/small lakes on the other side of the trail. I saw a variety of common western birds there.







( More photos )

After stopping at the spot with a gorgeous view I continued onward towards Grand Coulee Dam. I didn't stop anywhere lese, but there was definitely more scenery along the way and not much traffic so I got some photos from the road.

This rock was at the side of the road next to someone's driveway.




The house in this photo looks tiny compared to the landscape it is in.




( More scenery )




Grand Coulee Dam is impressive. It is a mile long, 550 feet high and 500 feet thick It is the largest producer of hydropower in the US, and allows for the irrigation of well over half a million acres of farmland. I'm pretty sure I was inside it as a child, back in the days when they gave tours of big dams rather than being scared of terrorists. Now there's a little museum about the dam but no approaching the dam itself. I managed to visit the museum before closing time but it was getting late so I didn't spend a lot of time there.




Panorama and more photos ( behind a cut )

After the ferry crossing, I took a scenic route across the Colville Reservation. This area was more forested than the areas I went through earlier in the day. Eventually I turned south again on SR-21 which goes along the Sanpoil River. There wasn't anywhere to stop so most of the photos I got were from the road.







( More scenery and some turkeys )

Sunrise seen from my hotel in Spokane Valley




On November 11th I left Spokane to head west across Washington. In theory, the drive from Spokane to Lacey, where my relatives live, is 316 miles and should take about 5 hours. In practice, it took me two days and I don't know how many miles. I'm not very good at travelling in straight lines or on interstate highways. I went a short way on I-90 before getting off onto US-2. I had some ideas about where I might stop along the way, but no fixed plans. When I saw a sign pointing to Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area I decided to turn north and check it out.

( Some scenery photos )

The first significant stop I made was at Fort Spokane.



Visiting an old military installation seemed like an appropriate choice for Veterans Day. The fort was built in 1880 and used by the military until 1898. After that it was used as an Indian boarding school and a tuberculosis hospital. Like pretty much everywhere else I went on this trip, the visitor center/museum was closed for the winter. November is not the right time to do touristy things in parks in Washington.


This is the closed visitor center and museum, which was originally the guardhouse.




( More photos of historical stuff at Fort Spokane )


Besides the historical remains, I enjoyed seeing a few birds and photographing trees and scenery.



( More photos )