Washington

Debris field at the base of the north side of Mt St Helens. This is much more interesting looking in the large (Lightbox) version.

Mt St Helens, and the debris field.

Castle Lake and the debris flow in Toutle River. If I have my angles figured out correctly, Mt. St. Helens is in the middle of the picture, covered in clouds.

A plaque at an overlook on the road (WA-504) to Mt St Helens describing the extent of the blast. The plaque, placed by the forestry products company Weyerhauser, denotes the edge of the blast zone. The plaque also includes two good pictures, taken not long after the eruption, indicating the damage to the forest and and forestry equipment.

The volcanic debris mudflow from the Mt St Helens eruption in Hoffstadt Creek, from the Hoffstadt Bluffs Visitor Center

Heading to a point to look at the Mt St Helens lava mudflows along Hoffstadt creek I, fortunately, saw some odd movement near the ground. Someone in front of me had walked by without noticing it at all, and the way it was nesting I barely saw it -- it became far more obvious in the time it took me to get the camera ready. While I don’t believe in magically prescient events, this incident of troubles with separating depth and field turned out to be a model for much of my trip out to the Mt St Helens area. A trip where you had to appreciate the subtle hints of power that you could see, without actually seeing the source of that power.

A still active logging facility on the bay at Olympia. Looking at the satellite view of this facility suggests that it serves as a point of transferring logs arriving by rail to ship.

A theme of this trip was commercial ports, so I had to find out what I could see in Olympia, the state capital -- that's the capitol building in the distance. The city had a relatively good park along the waterfront, with documentation of the history of the port. Like very many of the ports in the Northwest, this was once a port for lumber exports but the volume of lumber exports has reduced tremendously and, in some instances, has been replaced by recreational boat marinas -- visible on the left here. The marina on the left side of the picture is apparently Westbay Marina, I don't know why so many of the boatslips are covered.

Duckabush River emptying into Puget Sound (see adjacent picture)

There was nothing particularly special about this bridge other than that it is the style of bridge architecture used for crossings of relatively narrow rivers on US 101 throughout Oregon and Washington. Per Bridgehunter.com (an excellent resource), this is a 'rainbow arch bridge' and was built in 1934. Website: bridgehunter.com/wa/jefferson/1764B0000000

Dusk in Port Townsend, WA.

Just a little bit inland from the site for viewing the New Dungeness lighthouse.

Telephoto of the New Dungeness lighthouse, which is just over 2 miles across the water. The lighthouse receives visitors, but visiting it takes up pretty much of the day since it is 10 mile, roundtrip, hike along the spit (the website has views of the hike under ‘visit’). It’s also possible to get there by boat, including kayaking. (My preference would be to hike out, kayak back, but that would be difficult to schedule!) The lighthouse has operated since 1857 and was the first lighthouse on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The tower was initially 91 feet but due to problems with its initial construction, it was lowered by 27.5 feet in 1927. The website for the lighthouse has quite a bit of detail about it’s evolution over the years, including many pictures from its earliest days. Website: newdungenesslighthouse.com/the-lighthouse

What I was looking for, and was as spectacular as I expected, the New Dungeness lighthouse sitting on New Dungeness spit, a 5.5 mile hike from the mainland over what is little more than a high sand bar.

The last planned site for my 'coastal' trip was to visit the New Dungeness lighthouse area, but that turned out to be my second odd social setting of the day (the first was back at Hoh Rain Forest). Heading out to what I thought was going to be the best spot for viewing the lighthouse, I was on a local road that seemed to just wander into the sound – if you look closely at the satellite view you can see that there was once a very long pier extending from what is now the road (the pilings apparently aren’t visible at high tide). As I approached the edge of the sound, sitting in the middle of the road on folding chairs with a card table between them, were four people (around my age), drinking wine and apparently enjoying the sunset. The way that they were relaxing, I felt as if I had somehow driven into someone’s back yard and was concerned about invading a private space. However, since the road was clearly public, I walked up and said “excuse me, I’m just here to take some pictures.” What followed was actually a wonderful experience. It was two sisters, one of their male friends, and his new wife, having a small party celebrating the new marriage, but doing it there because local people didn’t approve of the marriage. To accentuate the rebelliousness of the marriage, they had decided to have just this small wedding party at the beach. They invited me to join them in wine and cake – I declined, but we chatted for quite some time about the area and, of course, politics. With the sunset, spectacular view, and warm chatting with complete strangers, it was a quite nice marking of the shift from 10 days of adventure to the need to head back south on busier highways. …… The cruise ship in the photo is, per the wedding party, an Alaskan cruise.

The first time I visited Lake Crescent, some time in the 1970's, I immediately felt as if I had been dropped into the Adirondacks of upstate New York. The dark blue of the waters and the heavy forestation down to the shore line were very similar to what I had seen in the Adirondacks and nearby areas. Adding to that sense of being in rural upstate New York are these classic Adirondack chairs, a style which was first created in the early 1900's by a man vacationing in the Adirondack mountains.

Dock and rental boats at Log Cabin Resort in Piedmont, a small community on the northeast side of Lake Crescent.

La Peol day use area and former resort area, on Lake Crescent. See nearby photo #1428