ramblings of a Seattle travel, food and photography hound
Despite the wettest weather we've had on record, signs of spring are everywhere in the Pacific Northwest. I visit the Bellevue Botanical Garden at this time of year to admire the plants, flowers and trees that remind me that this is the season of rejuvenation. The garden is undergoing extensive renovation to improve the visitor's experience. Remarkably, admission... Continue Reading →
It amazes me that seabirds can find comfort in daunting places. Below an overlook somewhere south of Cape Perpetua on the Oregon coast, I saw this gull resting on a rocky ledge high above crashing waves, not bothered by a stiff wind ruffling its feathers nor a loud colony of sea lions barking from the beach below.
I kept my eyes open throughout Death Valley for signs of wildflowers. It was one reason why we wanted to visit. Last year, the national park experienced a superbloom that happens once in a blue moon because of specific environmental conditions. It's not enough that California got literally drenched this January and February, a record downpour that broke a years-long... Continue Reading →
From a distance, it could be mistaken for snow, a vast, flat valley of blinding whiteness. Except the temperature is 100o F (38o C). And it's Death Valley. The field is instead a salt flat so big that from the middle of Badwater Basin, it seems to stretch to infinity, if it weren't for the abrupt Panamint Mountains jutting up that... Continue Reading →
Part of the thrill of walking on the intertidal lava rocks near Cape Perpetua in Oregon is to watch the seething currents offshore. If I stood too close to shore's edge, a sneaker wave could easily claim me victim. Yet, there are sheltered tidepools that are a remarkable contrast to the chaos nearby. Devil's Churn is a narrow channel that... Continue Reading →
Driving on my current roadtrip, I was hard-pressed not to stare at the explosions of color on the southern and central California hillsides. Not only were the hills an uncharacteristic green, but they were carpeted with mostly yellow wildflowers, some of them so densely packed and widespread that the effect was immediately mesmerizing. The recent historic rains... Continue Reading →
It was just to take a quick look at Pismo Beach State Park in California. My wife and I wound up hanging around for almost two hours, enjoying the ride in our Jeep rental onto the sandy beach to watch the pounding surf. Then, we noticed what we first thought were sandpipers but were instead whimbrels. If... Continue Reading →
They were everywhere, the caterpillars of the white-lined Sphinx moth, in a field of wildflowers at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in southern California. I saw one, then noticed more—and more. Some plants had as many as four chomping away at their flowers. What seemed like different species of bug turns out to be the same,... Continue Reading →
It was surprising to me that there is so much exposed salt at Death Valley. Ancient lakes didn't have an escape route to the oceans, so they simply dried up and left behind enormous salt deposits. At the Devil's Golf Course, salt got sculpted into complex, intricate formations from weathering, a phenomenon that prompted the National Park... Continue Reading →
My breath is taken away every time I see Mount Shasta from Interstate 5, just south of the Oregon-California border. Even when skies aren't always clear, its majesty dominates the horizon. Today, spectacular lenticular clouds were hovering over the mountain.
zoomeboshi 