Deception Pass Trip/Bucket List Cross-Off Mania, Part I

For my birthday weekend, I went to Deception Pass. If  had planned the weather, it couldn't have turned out any better. I managed to keep my camera in the bag until just north of Everett, when I took a name of some unnamed peaks. (That is to say, I just don't know the names of the peaks...they do have names though. And I know they're part of the Cascades.)

Then we saw some trees that reminded me of the Seahorse trees that I saw on the way from CA  when I moved here two years ago. This photo was taken when going 62 mph. I am continually impressed by the quality of photos taken (a) through the car window (b) speeding down the highway.

This is the first of several bridges and "fields" of snow that we saw as we trundled along at a moderate clip along the highway. Gorgeous!

Twin Bridges was next. The view was awesome, and after several unsuccessful attempts through the window at full speed, with guard rails that were throwing off my photo groove, Ridj was very accommodating and pulled over so we could traverse the walkway and get a picture of the beautiful view. It was about half a mile from the car to the middle of the bridge. We had to jump over a little ditch to get to the walkway and the grass was springtime soggy.

Here I am leaning against one of the rails that was so offensive at 60 mph from the car. Let me tell you, I was glad to have them when I was on foot!

The bridge kept going forever - I think I thought at least five times, "Just ten more steps and I'll be in the middle of the bridge and I can take my picture!" and I was in such a good mood that in the end I just broke into a run to get there because I was so excited about the view. We watched a speedboat go through the opening. 

I have no idea what the other side of the two bridges. There really are two, one for each direction of traffic, with about a 20 foot gap in between. It didn't seem like a good idea to see what was on the other side of the bridges, seeing that I would have to dodge cars, make a flying leap, and dodge more cars immediately after in order to get a good view. (We didn't end up taking the same route on the way home, else I would have shown you both views.) This view is the one that made walking a mile worth it:

Left: Me trying to take a picture of myself with the dry bridge in the background. The zoom was off, so it didn't work. So here, I have shown you myself and the dry bridge (right). Just not  in the same picture, as originally planned.

Left: On the walk back to the car, we saw Industry. So I took a picture.

Right: I think this might be Mount Baker, but I'm not sure. I seriously spent several minutes on the internet trying to figure it out, but to no avail. Maybe my Google skills just aren't up to par anymore?!? Hope that's not the case...but anyway, if I'd had a map, I would know what the peak was. Sigh. Maps are useful!! Instead, I had to resort to Google Images, which is much more hunt and peck.

Regardless of interwebz skill, the mountain is beautiful.
   

Bucket List Cross-Off #1: Anacortes

This is downtown Anacortes. We meant to go here, but because we didn't have a map like last time, we took a "wrong" turn (which wasn't wrong at all, just wasn't what we were anticipating, but it all turned out better than good) and went to Anacortes before Deception Pass, when I hard originally intended to go to the Pass first. It's a bigger town than Sequim, but still feels plenty touristy. I had never seen a purple crochet wrap covering a lightpole and a (payphone?) together before.  Apparently it does its job pretty well.

We were hungry so we decided to eat at Mary Ann's Kitchen.

Rating: 4.0 stars. Because it's so small, if you hit it at just the wrong time, it's easy for you to wait awhile for your food. It appears it's one of those places that a whole bunch of friends decided to open one day. It's in a house (as you can see) and you had to go through the kitchen to get to the bathroom (odd, in a commercial establishment). There was a ficas tree in the bathtub (even more odd; bathtubs and the tree). They even provided reading material (odder still!). It was good food though. I got biscuits and gravy and Ridj got the breakfast burrito. Both were delicious. 

Then we got back on the road to go to:

Bucket List Cross-Off #2: Deception Pass

 Deception Pass is one of the most photographed places in Washington. and on a day like we had on Saturday, I can see why. The bridge was made in 1935, for a cost of $450,000. Last year, it cost more than that just to paint the bridge!

We got out of the car and this is one of the first glimpses I had. the sky was so blue - not a shred of cloud was to be seen - and the wind was just cool enough to feel good without being biting.

This one *almost* reminds me of a postcard picture.

Now that I'm looking through these, I'm thinking of all the other awesome shots I could have done with this setting - more playful, etc. I have actually taken to just toting my camera with me almost everywhere just because I want to be ready to document something if I feel like it.

One of my best friends lost her hat here.  So that's why in some of the pictures I have a hat on and some of them I didn't - I had Ridj put my hat in his pocket so it wouldn't blow away because I was paranoid about losing it. There were only a few gusts that I think would have taken it, but better to be safe than sorry - especially since this is my new favorite hat.






Here are a couple gorgeous views that do not need any of my narrative chatter to enhance/dilute their awesomeness.

We "hiked" down a little bit so we were sitting really close to the edge of the water. If I were a mountain goat I could have gotten all the way down to the edge, but it would have been quite the puzzler to get back up again without some heavy duty gear. It was nice to sit in the dappled sunshine and just relax - no talking, just breathing. There were people close, but not so close we could hear them, so it was really relaxing to just...be.

Here's a close-up of the bridge (which is awesome, btw) and another of me. The play of the water over the rocks behind me was really cool to watch.

That was on the "sound" side. On the other side there were some really cool small islands (see behind me) and there were also some gorgeous houses. On days like that day, it would be totally awesome to live there. For the other 92% of the time, it wouldn't be so much fun - especially when the wind whipped through. I can only imagine how bitterly cold it can get - the cold wind, accentuated by the artic current...brrr. Good thing it wasn't cold!! :) It was so beautiful.


While we were there we also saw an eagle that was super huge, no butterflies, and one really big fat seal. He was drifting along and I said to Ridj, "Oh, look, it's a giant log." And then I followed the eddy/current pattern with my eye and thought, "There's no way that could be a log!" about the same time the seal extended its flippers and came to the surface. I tried really hard to capture him on camera but all you can see is the flat of the water right where he went under. (It's right in the middle of the photo. I'm not super tech savvy or I would just draw an arrow pointing right to it.

Ridj, with islands in background

From up on the bridge, the seal looked like it was at least 8 feet long, and was very fat. I was ooh-ing and aah-ing over seeing a seal in its natural habitat and saying how awesome it was. I was wondering if aloud if it were a seal or maybe a walrus because it was so big, and Ridj immediately shot down the walrus idea. I was curious: how did he know it wasn't a walrus, from 300 feet up in the air?

A good reminder...

Then Ridj told me about the "crappy walruses." I immediately was indignant for two reasons:
A. He had seen walruses in the wild (lounging on a submarine) and he hadn't ever told me! The naturalist in me was super jealous.
B. How dare he call them crappy!!!

He went on to tell me that because the submarines generate so much electricity, the water near the base is always warmer than elsewhere. And in this case, where there is warmth, there is food. And walruses follow the food, and they like to bask in the sun (or icky, dreary, overcast wet, as is more often the case), and in the midst of their basking, since they are not toilet trained, they leave their droppings (which are large, since walruses are large) on the submarine, and therefore it smells and they are also very territorial so it's hard to keep the submarine in tip top shape. Hence why they're "crappy walruses."

I wouldn't mess with a walrus glaring me in the eye who weighed at least eight times as much as I do. Just saying. Especially not since he probably has been in more fights than I've ever been in. Sure, I've got hands, but experience, extreme testosterone, and tusks count for something.

The walkways along the bridge are very narrow - two people can't walk abreast. They have walkways on both sides of the bridge, and since the bridge is in two pieces, at the midpoint you can walk underneath the bridge (which is what we did when we were "hiking" and cross to the other side. Crossing in the middle of the street is verboten. (For good reason - otherwise no traffic would get through all day!) It was a little crowded, and if there was a stroller-wielder or a dog companion that wanted to pass it made it a little difficult - not to mention people like me who held up traffic because they wanted photo ops. I'm glad it wasn't any busier! 

The set-up also made it difficult to take pictures. As it was sometimes I think Ridj was a little worried I was going to lean back too far and get clipped by a car.

Right: I particularly like this picture because of something that wasn't planned - it looks like the bridge is an extension of me, due to the way the shadow is situated. So now you can see what I was standing on, and me standing on it, all in the same picture. To use Ridj's catchphrase: Awesome.



Here are two small bays. Pretty as a picture, so I took one. :) The color of the water was so vibrant.


Then we drove into the park and went to the beach. I use "beach" lightly...once you've been to Dana Point, all other beaches just don't quite match up. (Then again, I haven't been to lots of beaches...so far DP gets the nod for best all-around though.)







There, I took more photos. There is one sequence that kind of made me laugh. (This story is entirely in my head, by the way...he had no idea what I was thinking, or even that I was taking any of the photos...except the first in the bunch.)

1. R: I'm so awesome. I can do whatever I want!          

2. R: I think I'll go be Captain Explorer.          

 3. Me: He's part mountain goat! Wonder what he'll find?

4. Me: Down he goes! 

5. Me: What?!?!?! I can't see him any more!
What if he fell in? Will I have to go try to drag him out?
What if I get all wet? I don't want to get all wet.
Help! 

6. Me: Safe and sound! Phew.
I don't have to go drag him out.
Wonder if he found anything interesting?

Turns out, the reason why he climbed down there in the first place was because he saw a large red something in the water. The tide had brought it closer and closer and he was curious and decided to go investigate. It ended up being a really big plastic kite. Of course, he had to investigate, because it was red. 


Right: Who's the Rabbit?
As an aside, I am reading Watership Down for the first time. So I when I saw this little guy, I literally yelled, "El-ahrairah!!" in which definitely made Ridj blink. "Stop, please!" I yelled, so I could take this picture. He braked and backed up, in an excellent recovery to my odd outburst.

I had never seen a wild rabbit before, much less a rabbit on the beach.

Totes cool, as my coworker would say.

Here is Cranberry Lake at thirty mph. We were so close to the water. Some people had just parked along the side of the road and gotten out camp chairs and read in the sun all day. Rockin' idea. 

What is not so rockin' is the idea to call it Cranberry Lake. The eight year old in me (the know-it-all one) wanted to cry out, "Anybody who knows anything about cranberries knows that they grow in bogs, not in lakes!" Maybe they named it because it looks like a cranberry from the air? I'm going with that option -- benefit of the doubt and all that, you know.

* INTERMISSION * ENTRE-ACT * THE THING IN THE MIDDLE * BREATH*

Sting*

The dictionary has three or four different instances. Including injecting small amounts of poison, feel/cause sharp pain, or upset somebody. But my definition sums them all up:

(verb) Definition: acute pain felt immediately after an encounter.

A few examples:
bee, yellow jacket, or wasp spike
dirt flung in your eye at high speed
blunt, unexpected rejection
knife bite from a cooking mishap

Note: Cutting up onions, sunburns, big fights, and mosquito bites don't count; they're in an entirely different class because they lack the immediacy factor. In such cases, yes, they all still hurt, but they usually get worse before they get better.

*Not the Paul Newman movie, not the Police frontman.

Day Tripper

Took a day trip recently to the Olympic peninsula. It was...beautiful. In a way, it was different than what I was expecting. But 'west side' Washington fed my soul in a way that hadn't been fed in awhile. Driving along, it reminded me of the trip I made when I moved here almost exactly two years ago.

The day started with a stop at the gas station in Poulsbo. The population of Poulsbo is just shy of 10,000. For some reason, I thought it was more than that.

I bought corn nuts, water, and a map. All essential traveling elements. (Thanks, Dad, for introducing me to Corn Nuts. Thanks, K-lo, for keeping the love for them alive. Thanks, mom, for giving me an appreciation for H2O, and thank you everybody who helped me learn to love maps.)

Hood Canal floating bridge @ Termination Point

I wish I could show you - I tracked our progress with special map markers. Maybe if I ever got a scanner I could upload it. Hmmm. I brought along the camera because I wanted to show off what it could do. My friend Ridj drove so I could lean out the window and take all the pictures you are about to see.

PS before the actual picture: I am very impressed with what my little $150 camera* (blog post in the making) can do. Just watch:

Look. Not very blurry, yes? Seriously, I just pressed the button. I was trying to capture something else, and when it didn't work and I got this sign in my sights instead, I just laughed and thought, if I were driving, that's what my tire tracks would look like.  Above, see three other examples of what my camera can do at 60 mph. I'm impressed.

And then, because I wasn't sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me, we stopped on the other side to take a pic or two. Look at that bridge! 

Right: Termination Point

But we weren't terminated...we veered off toward the 19. We meant to go somewhere else to see a lighthouse, but we ended up going to...drumroll...


Bucket List Item #1: Port Townsend instead.

Then we passed a tilty barn that wasn't a Pea in the Barn barn, or a Bill Peet barn...it was just...a tilty barn. And that's why I took a picture of it. I love my new camera!!



Left: Industry. Ridj is smiling because he thinks industry is the meaning of life.  I really like how the steam just rises up into the clouds in the horizon until you can't tell which is which.

Right: Dry Boats. = former industry? Future industry? Either way, coming from the desert, it is weird to see so many boats. And since there is water, it makes it weirder to see them while they're dry.

Right: Hometown Pride

Apparently being 2A high school state baseball champions was the last Big Thing to happen in town. Part of me thinks that's really cool. Also cool that the town thought it was cool enough to put up a We Are Awesome sign.

Right & Left: Downtown Port Townsend...from within the car. There are a lot of pretty, old buildings in the downtown area. It's also full of little specialty shops that are the hallmark of tourist towns. There are also some quaint houses. 







Left: Pseudo Lighthouse. That is to say, it was a house, and it was made to look like a lighthouse. Hence why I thought it actually *was* the lighthouse.

It's really pretty, and probably some rich person who loves lighthouses built it to mimic. They did a good job - it fooled me.

I was so excited!

But...it wasn't the real lighthouse. The real one is Port Wilson.  Ridj, who knows more  about the sea than I do, said we should drive around a bit. (Meaning, he wasn't fooled, but he was too polite to say that I was easily hoodwinked.) So we did. And we found the real deal.  I got close enough to touch it.

My first real lighthouse!

Left: New (functioning) lighthouse. I like the aesthetics of the old one better! As Harrison Ford/Linus Larraby said, "What kind of guy takes a job in a lighthouse?"

This is one of the prettiest things I've seen all year. I wish I'd taken a picture of the whole tree so you could see the awesome shimmery effect it had. Those regrets go right up there with no pic of Mt. Shasta and no pic of the Seahorse Tree. :( :( all the way around. But at least you could see that my camera, in some respects, acts like a DSLR. In other respects, it does not.

See my attempt to focus on the berry below. It was totally awesome and in a kind of weird way reminded me of a fat-bodied spider. Don't be grossed out, it is a friendly spider. And fat, so it won't want to bite you. But you can see that a DSLR would have been handy...

Lighthouse #2: Dungeness

Apparently this is new (ish). It was crazy - you could see over to Canada from some places. (!)


Bucket List Item #2:
Dungeness Spit

Here is my first view (on camera). Of course, again, here's where a DSLR would have come in handy. Or making a panoramic picture. The spit is approx 6 miles long. It's really truly awesome, as you will see later.

We walked down to the spit - it's about a ten minute walk. We didn't walk all the way down. The rocks were hissing at each other as they tumbled over and over, climbing each other like so many kids in one tub...


We weren't the only people there (as you can also see.) One of them took a pic of us on a huge old log.


Poor Ridj, my balance was awful so I was grabbing on to him to keep my balance.

Bucket List Item #3: Hurricane Ridge.

This is aptly named. 

Left: Here is the tunnel.

 It got crazier and crazier  as we went up the hill.
At the bottom, it was green and nice. Then:

Right: Fast-moving mist. It reminded me of Caradhras, in the Misty Mountains. Or maybe I'm getting my Middle-Earth geography mixed up. In any case, it was quite impressive. And cold.
   Then it was a mist blanket. 
And then there was snow on the side of the road.
   Then, you could see the snow line clearly. (Left)
Then, there was snow in the air.

Then, we couldn't see anything except snow if it was more than ten feet in front of us. We got out to explore. We were underprepared.

Below: Ridj is using me as a windshield. 

It was colder than cold, and the wind was swirling around us. I couldn't hear what Ridj was saying to me. We got out and then ice crystals started to pelt us from all directions at thirty miles an hour. We were outside under a minute and I definitely got windburn. Here (right) is a picture of the "view" at the top, where all the skiers were retreating. (The retreat of the skiers was definitely a sign to turn around and go back. Not being stupid, we heeded it and after our 90 second adventure, we did just that.)

 Right: Here's what I looked like immediately after. You can't really see from the picture how hard the wind was blowing. Trust me, it was hard.

The weather was definitely on the downward spiral on our way down the hill. (Below.)

 

Then we drove back through Port Angeles. I wish I'd gotten a picture of the golden elephant, but I was way too tired to even think about pulling my camera out at that point. I needed food and a bed! 

We hadn't eaten a very large lunch, and we were hungry! We both wanted to eat at a diner. We walked into one place and waited around for a couple of minutes and they didn't even try to come and seat us. So we left. Also, it wasn't *just* what I had in mind. 

Highway 101 Diner definitely was. It had the old-fashioned juke box, homemade pie, and, yeah, it was gooood. 

We both got the bbq burger. 

    Rating: 4.25 stars. Food: good. Burger was juicey...didn't taste like McDonald's. It tasted /real./ Service: she forgot my cole slaw side, but quickly remedied the situation when I reminded her. Location: Right on Hwy 101. Easy to find. 

(Ridj got the sweet potato fries and the milkshake. I ate some of his fries. And some of the milkshake.)

And then when we had stuffed ourselves, we drove all the way home.

THE END