Seattle

 Photo Diary
1999

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January - The Gallery

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February - The shutdown

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March - The First Visit

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March - The Journey

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April - Settling In

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May - Looking Around

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June - Summer Solstice

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July - Life on the lake

 

August/September

An unexpected ending

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Seattle Photo Diary 1999

Mount Rainier

We set our sites on a Saturday drive to Mount Rainier.  We left Seattle on a cloudy day with some scattered showers, but it was warm and promised to be a beautiful weekend.  The drive was beautiful, and we got a small taste of rural Washington, but  we never actually saw the peak.   Little did we know that we were embarking on an adventure that would show us the extremes of Washington weather.

Scattered showers turned to snow as we wound our way up the slopes of the mountain.  Ten miles up the road from the park entrance we found ourselves in a glacial wonderland.  Mt. Rainier is surrounded by a ring of 26 glaciers, giving it the distinction of the most glaciated mountain in the continental US. The native American name for the mountain is Tahoma.  The mountain is an important element of native folklore, and was considered by many tribes as taboo, which is not surprising due to eruptions both 2500 and 1500 years ago, the first of which blew an estimated 1800 feet off the mountaintop.

 

 

We drove our trusty Ford mini-van on toward Paradise Valley, crossing some spectacular bridges and along dizzying cliff faces.  We passed over the bases of a glacier or two, then stopped to think things over as snow flurries danced around us. We decided against trying to reach Paradise Valley cuz' a blizzard was a comin' and we knew we better turn back!  We turned around and headed down the mountain just as it began to snow heavily. 

 

 

 

We made it back to the park entrance and wandered around in the woods for a while.  By then it was getting dark, and the ground was too wet to travel far.  On our way out of the park we stopped to take some photos of the Skunk Cabbage that grow beneath the pines in the lush swampy land on lower slopes of the mountain.

 

 

 

 

 

Wet can be beautiful as demonstrated by this contemplative moment among the skunk cabbage.