Lavender Festival

Friday, July 19th, Bonita and I went to the yearly Lavender Festival in Sequim with Don, Darlene and Sid. It was a pleasant day with pleasant company and good weather. This festival is always more interesting to the gals but us guys enjoyed tagging along. We saw aging hippies, artsy-craftsy folks and got to pet some nice dogs.

Hot dogs were 5 bucks - Yum! View the whole photo set on my Flickr gallery.

Hike at Stan's

Thursday, July 18th, Al and I were invited to Hike at Stan's place in Gig Harbor. Stan has an exercise walk around his property and some of the surrounding neighborhood that gives him 3.7 miles. Here we are standing in front of one of the two small ponds on his property.

Stan knows his plants and says this is an Onion Plant in bloom. The stalks must have been four feet high.

This is a huge Maple tree. Stan says it is the biggest tree on his property. I think it would have taken all three of us with our arms extended to reach all the way around this monster! Some of the branches seemed larger than most Maple trees as well.




Look for the whole set of photos on my Flickr gallery.

Hurricane Ridge with the Suttons

Saturday, July 13th, I went with the Suttons and two of their church members, John and Robert, to Hurricane Ridge. To my surprise the whole crew wanted to climb to the top of Hurricane Hill.

These pretty things are called Flox and are prolific in the area. They appear in purple color as well as white.

We saw a three-point buck, several two-point and a doe. This is a great place to take kids since the deer can be seen close-up.

We came, we saw, we conquered! The views from atop 5757 ft Hurricane Hill are spectacular. We could see Port Angeles, Victoria and all the northern Olympic Mountain range.



My gallery on Flickr contains 41 photos and 3 videos.

Mount Walker Day Hike

Thursday, July 11th, I went again with Al and Stan to Mount Walker. We agree Mount Walker is the ideal hike for us. It is just south of Quilcene only about an hour away by car, two miles to the summit on a good trail with a constant grade. We use it as a fitness test - how long did it take to summit this time? Views, flowers, Grey Jays always make it interesting. And in the time spent together we solve all the world's problems - if only the powers that be would listen to us the problems would soon be resolved, right?

Here is a portion of the Rhododendron forest we walk through. The Rhodies are typically 15 feet high.

This is a Rhododendron "tree" - again about 15 feet high. I have never seen trunks this big on a wild Rhodie.

Stan calls this a "Star Flower." My camera overexposed the bright white flower.












You can see all the photos I took at Mount Walker on my Flickr gallery.

Day Trip to Hurricane Ridge

Tuesday, July 9th, we went to Hurricane Ridge, stopping for breakfast in Poulsbo and lunch in Port Angeles. We stopped in a couple of thrift stores along the way. We really beat the heat! Instead of 80 degrees in Bremerton it was a comfortable 70 degrees on the ridge - and spectacular views.Port Angeles is in the distance with the Straight of Juan de Fuca covered in fog. Above the fog is Victoria on Vancouver Island. Click on the photos for a larger view.

This panorama photo only shows a quarter of the Olympic Mountains view (or less!)

This a zoomed-in photo of Mount Olympus from the Hurricane Ridge parking lot.

Deer in the parking lot is great for tourists, especially the kids. We saw two this day and they came within a few feet of us.


See my Flickr gallery.

Hiking at Mount Walker

Al Lind and I went Thursday to Mt Walker just south of Quilcene. It's an excellent two mile exercise walk in tall Fir forest. The wild natural rhododendrons are just beginning to show blooms and the next few weeks should be spectacular. Many of the rhodies are older have trunks the size of small trees!

At the top - viewpoint you can see Mt Baker and the local Grey Jays always come out to mooch food.

I can stand like a tree branch and hold a peanut half in my fingers and the jays will perch on my fingers! Fun stuff.

There were quite a few Trilliums showing near the trail this year.

The little bluish flower on the right is a wild orchid. It was only about four inches tall.


Click on any photo and it will display full size. In addition, you can make your browser display full screen and then press the F11 key and the images will fill the screen. Enjoy!

Early Rhodies!

I found these real early blooming Rhododendrons a couple blocks from our home. They started blooming about a week ago. February - amazing!

We Still Got the Snow

One of the reasons we moved into town was to avoid the deep snow that seemed to always fall in greater abundance in Mason County. Over the last ten days or so Belfair has gotten about 14 inches. Where we are now in east Bremerton we have gotten 'only' about 12 inches. It has been just as difficult to get around in this area with ice chunks in many of the local streets.

I took some photos of the snow here and put them up on my Picassweb albums.

I'm Back!

I'm back - after a long process of moving. Somehow, apartment living isn't quite like living in a separate house. I miss our home on the lake and I keep telling myself that it was indeed time to move on.

We tried to cram 1759 square feet of possessions into a 980 square foot apartment! Even with a generous storage unit and leaving some possessions behind we still have too much stuff. So, some is given to family, some is stored with friends, some goes to Goodwill and some goes to the dumpster.

Whew! It took more out of us than we thought it would. Finally, after three weeks, we are starting to recover and feel like doing some of things we looked forward to in Bremerton.

I took the snowy Olympics mountain picture you see at the top of this blog on November the 4th while we were still at the lake. The sunset picture was taken on the 15th from the third floor stair landing of our apartment building.