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Pacific-North-West Roadtrip Archive
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July 7, 2014
Two young men look out over Libbey Beach.
Above: Rick on the ferry to from Port Townsend to Whidbey Island. Below: We met a few of my family members at a beach house rental. This is the view of Puget Sound from the back deck. (Click on the below panorama to expand it.)
Our fourth cousin Peggy showed us this house where our great-great grandparents, Thomas Nunan and Elizabeth McCrohan, lived before there was an addition in back. It must have been one room downstairs and one upstairs, where they raised their 12 children (a few died very young). Peggy talked her way inside and we got to look around.
We spent a day at the family cemetery in Oak Harbor for a potluck reunion and semiannual meeting about cemetery business. The site is for decedents of Nunan, Davis, Morse, O'Leary, & McCrohan - the original Irish pioneer families of 1858. My family are decedents of both Nunan and McCrohan.
After the reunion, we headed to the northernmost tip of the island, Deception Pass, where a bridge connects to the mainland.
We spent the rest of the day checking out beaches, sunsets, and wheat fields with farms.
Whidbey Island between the wheat fields and the coast along Ebey's Landing. (Click on the above panorama to expand it.)
beach (13), birds (32), cemetery (11), coast (49), eagle (2), family (46), HDR (3), micah (14), panorama (4), rocks (10), sunset (34), trees (34), whidbey-island (15)
Pacific-North-West Roadtrip (8), Sunsets (33)
June 22, 2014
After leaving a beautiful wedding in warm Eugene, Oregon, we were surprised to find snow surrounding Crater Lake. (Click on the above panorama to expand it.)
Wood Priestess of the snowy mountain...
I love snow and it's been too long.
Fun in the snow!
Luckily, the wedding favors included crocheted hats.
Above photo of Arianna Helen and below photo of us were both taken by Rick Roller.
arianna (37), crater-lake (1), lake (9), mountains (10), oregon (5), panorama (4), rick (17), snow (30), trees (34)
Pacific-North-West Roadtrip (8)
June 14, 2014
Daily Bird Pottery is a friend's parents' pottery business, where she also works doing the business side of things. They have a beautiful storefront and studio on downtown Water Street.
Western Tent Caterpillars were all over the region.
We happened to be in Port Townsend on the day of the Rhododendron Parade.
birds (32), caterpillar (1), creatures (54), friends (12), moth (1), parade (1), port-townsend (1), pottery (1), raccoons (1), road-trip (27), washington (2)
Pacific-North-West Roadtrip (8)
June 10, 2014
View of Mt St Helens (above) and Mt Hood (below) from Powell Butte Nature Park, Portland, Oregon.
In the above photo, Mt St Helens is the tiny white lump on the bottom left, Mt Hood is the little white mound on the bottom right. (Click on above panorama to expand.)
flowers (49), hike (5), mountains (10), oregon (5), panorama (4), portland (2)
Pacific-North-West Roadtrip (8), Portland (2)
June 3, 2014
We stopped near Lake Quinault for a short walk to see the "World's Largest Spruce Tree" in the rainforest village. On the path was this fallen, mossy, decaying tree that looked like a dragon.
Salmon berry flower and fruit.
Above; the world's largest spruce tree. A 1000 year old Sitka Spruce, it's 191" tall and 58'-11" in diameter!
Below; in wet regions, sitka spruce trees more successfully germinate and grow atop a fallen tree than on the forest floor. They send roots down around the rotting log and as the dead wood of the nurse log decomposes, the roots become more apparent like long legs for the living tree with the bole of the tree suspended in mid air.
Falls Creek waterfall before it feeds into Lake Quinault.
Above; our one little stop at the Pacific ocean side of the Olympic Peninsula.
Below; one of the many tall spruce trees in the Hoh rainforest.
The trees in the Hoh rainforest become buried in moss, sometimes adding more weight to the tree than the tree itself and breaking off limbs from the weight.
Sitka spruce trees in a "colonnade" after the nurse log has rotted away. (Click on panorama to expand.)
Tiny flowers growing among the moss on a decaying log.
coast (49), hike (5), log (2), macro (11), maple (1), moss (3), olympic-forest (1), panorama (4), slug (3), snail (1), spruce (1), trees (34), washington (2), waterfalls (5)
Pacific-North-West Roadtrip (8)
June 1, 2014
We took a walk along the Rogue River the morning before heading home on our last day of vacation, and came upon, literally, piles of empty exoskeletons left behind by metamorphosing dragonflies.
Crowning madrone.
daisy (1), dragonfly (3), exoskeleton (1), flowers (49), insect (32), oregon (5), rogue-river (1), trees (34)
Creatures (75), Pacific-North-West Roadtrip (8)
May 31, 2014
While passing through and visiting in Portland, we had a couple hours to explore so visited the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. We had a blast playing with the interactive exhibits, learning about LASERs, solving puzzles, and getting so caught up that we missed our planetarium show.
Paleontologists hard at work. The one on the left was actually very friendly and willing to answer questions. It was incredible to watch them carefully grinding away stone to uncover fossilized bone. The talkative Paleontologist volunteer was working on uncovering, out of a single solid chunk, a skull and other bones that once belonged to an aquatic beast that resembled the loch ness monster.
I love this beautiful 150 million year old Mesozoic proto-bird.
We played "Connect Four" using robot arms. Then the robots "danced" for us and showed off their precise articulation.
The cool, geeky tiles in the restroom had science, chemistry, paleontology, and mechanical themes.
arianna (37), artifacts (1), degree (25), industry (1), oregon (5), portland (2), rick (17), robots (1), science (2)
Arianna (26), Degree (69), Pacific-North-West Roadtrip (8), Portland (2), Science (1)
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Arianna Helen