Train Chasers!

RING RING (it's Rach calling) "There's something going on down here, at the railroad tracks by highway 18, there's lot of people with tripods and cameras hanging around all up and down the tracks..."

So begins our quest for the day.  Then the texting started (Rach is black, I'm red):

10:06     There's more where the tracks cross

10:06      Must be a special train coming?

10:07     You should google it!

10:08     I am!

10:08     Well hurry up! Chop chop!

10:09     Not finding anything... And someone keeps texting me!

10:10     Tony says it's Thomas, but it's old people out there with tripods so I don't agree.

10:12     I keep getting info on the band Train instead of the choo choo type, they must  be coming to White River

10:13     Try locomotive?

10:14     Now it's finding loco

10:17     Oh well, you guys should just go down there

10:17     I am

10:19     Good!

After a quick run into the bedroom to throw on some clothes, hair into a pony tail, then a FAST trip down the hill, find a parking spot and ask someone what's going on:

10:26      It's a steam loco coming from Tacoma

Then I contact Rick and he ends up coming down too.  I find a front row seat on a concrete platform with some kind of railroad controls in a metal housing, right next to the tracks (I'm actually about 10+ feet from the tracks).  We wait and wait and finally hear it whistling off in the distance!  Tooooot!  Toooot!  It rounds the bend but isn't what I was expecting, an old iron horse type old-west locomotive (bummer).  Instead it was one built in 1941 and retired in 1957 and has been doing excursions since 1974.  Wikipedia even reports that in 1983, a poll of Trains magazine readers chose the 4449 as the most popular locomotive in the nation.

OK, so it creeps by, people paying $129+ for a 6 hour train ride hanging out of boxcars and windows, obviously having a grand old time.  We get our shots and I'm greeted back at my car by a surly "policeman" (aren't all policemen surly?) claiming that I was stumbling and likely to have gotten hit by the train and was trespassing on private property.  Turns out he was a BNSF police - I didn't know there was such a thing!  He looked at my ID, wrote down some info in a small notebook and told me I got a warning. (I was NOT stumbling and nowhere near enough to have gotten hit, but now I know better!)

We decide to head up the freeway to the crossing in Covington since it's going so slow we'll beat it easily, even if I was detained by a railroad cop.  When we got up there there was another crowd gathered, waiting and making driving treacherous.  Lots of passers by stopped to ask "What's coming?" and we got a "Ooh!" when we'd share that it was a vintage steam locomotive.

After that shooting we headed home and did some putsing around the house and figured out a good spot to get it on it's return trip and the right time to be there.  We found our out-of-the-way spot and began the wait.  I think we were there about 4:45 or 4:50 even though we figured it'd be there about 5:30.  I mean, once it's past it's past, can't re-do!  So we waited and waited.  We picked spots that were maybe 100 feet apart so we would text each other while we waited.  It was 5:29 and I asked "Should we wait another 5 minutes? 10?" and I could hear Rick's phone chirping.  He was in mid text when we heard that same Tooooot!  Toooot! that we'd heard a couple times already that day.  Pretty good timing!  That time I got a lot closer to the tracks and moved out of the way safely but was still close enough to feel a good "whoosh!" as it flew past, a lot faster than it had in the morning, it was headed downhill now...

We rounded out the day with some take-out from the Fred Meyer deli and a JW party at a park, a going away party for some and a graduation party for another.  It was nice weather but cool in the shade and there were plenty of folks for Rick to meet.

Not quite the day we were expecting to have!  But a nice divergence from the regular weekend doldrums...

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

This is a test of 2 types - first it's testing to see how blogger presents video and secondly the video itself is a test. 

I viewed a video a couple years ago and was inspired by it, it was scenes of Venice set to music.  Each was a mini-video clip of a beautiful scene with a little motion in it.  I decided I wanted to try the same thing. So when we were on Kauai last year I took a number of short videos of some pretty scenes with a small amount of movement in them - a bobbing ship, crashing waves, palm fronds blowing in the tradewinds.  I finally put them all together with some peaceful slack key Hawaiian music.  

Being that the camera was not of the standard that the Venice video was shot using, the video is slightly substandard.  But as I said:

This is only a test...

Sister Golden Hair

It's been quite a while since we got down to Chehalis to visit Rick's cousin, Melinda and Danny, and their mini-donkey farm. No, the farm is not mini, it's the donkeys that are!

They have a shindig every year and always have the best food, Danny is a great BBQer. They seem to have seafood a lot but this time it was ribs and bread and salad. They also had munchies so when the meal was served we were already half full. But we thoroughly enjoyed the food nonetheless. I was so stuffed by the end that I could barely take a couple bites of the red velvet cake (which was amazing BTW!).

While we always enjoy the food it's the farm that we look forward to. You just never know what will be the "star" this time, one of the dogs? Or maybe the horse (which was recently sold)? This year it was a chicken named Sister Golden Hair.

I was so happy to see the chickens all out scratching the ground where the garden has been and will be again this year, once the weather warms up enough to plant. And Danny and Melinda kept pointing out one chicken, "Sister Golden Hair, she follows Melinda around and likes to ride on her shoulder even!" they'd say.

Part of the visit always includes having the border collies bring the herd of donkeys into the barn. This year was no different, it's always fun to watch those dogs work the herd. But when Melinda started to get out some of the yummy grain mix that she gives, I think mostly as a treat, the chicken began to take notice.

The first group to get the oat mix (does it have molasses on it?) was too large for the chicken to weave through but the next group only numbered 3. Melinda was walking toward a feeder while the dogs rounded up the 3 geldings but between Melinda and the donkeys was a cute golden chicken. They were all in a line and the chicken was in front.

Melinda scattered the feed into a metal trough feeder and the chicken jumped right in. She began pecking and you could hear every "peck - peck, peck!" The donkeys stayed at the opposite end of the feeder and when she had to shake her feathers they all scattered! "Wild chicken in our feeder!"

Besides the antics of the star chicken Danny kept demonstrating his new ring tone - a donkey bray! In response to the ring tone all the donkeys would chime in - most, if not all, the 15 or so of them! What a hoot!

And, of course, the dogs. Sweet Sadie finally died a year or so ago with her bedroom slipper feet, we miss her. But they have a cute pair of border collies, brother and sister named Fly and Rex (after characters from the move "Babe") and the newest addition, a border collie mix named Annie. Annie is a little too tightly wound and is always involved in everything. Her eyes are a little too wide open which goes along with her hyper-personality. She has a cute trick that they had to teach her to help cool her off since even heat exhaustion doesn't seem to slow her down. They tell her to go get in her "hot tub". Not hot, just a large drinking tub full of water. Silly girl goes over and lays down in it!

An extra object of entertainment this time was Melinda's cute blonde, blue-eyed 2-year-old nephew, Archer. He was a busy boy but pretty good for a 2-year-old. He was quite the mockingbird, he repeated EVERYTHING!

After everyone left Rick and I stayed on for another hour going over our Iceland picture book and giving some pointers on how to use their new DSLR.

Can't wait for next year's wing-ding! Thanks again, guys!

Another Grandbaby - Another Baby Shower!

Yes, I mentioned back in December that Shirley's pregnant, due in late August. And with the progress in technology now you have to ask to NOT be informed of the sex of the baby. Well, that's what Shirley did - for a while.

I don't know whose idea it was but the plan was for Rachyl to throw a shower for Shirley and make the sex of the baby known to Shirley at the shower. All the guests would know and be able to buy gifts accordingly and the surprise wouldn't be the shower itself but rather the color of the shower.

So a Garden Tea party theme was chosen and the hunt was on for all the appropriate decorations and food for the party. I didn't realize it til recently but the location was also determined - my place. Rach says "Well, yeah, YOU have the garden!" OK, I'm glad my yard is finally appreciated and being used for special functions but this is now 3 years in a row: Rick and my wedding in '09, Kevin and Shirley's "Re-I do" last year and the baby shower this year.

We all visited thrift stores regularly looking for teacups, teapots, saucers, pretty serving platters, etc. We got a nice collection and other decorations were planned. Rach and I had a weekly "Survivor in the hot tub" time that we switched for the last couple weeks to watching in the living room and working on decorations. Rach wanted tissue paper poof-balls and then the apparently now-mandatory diaper cake. I knew how to do the poof-balls from my youth, we made a dozen of those and looked for nice diaper cake designs on the web, we made a BEAUTIFUL diaper cake!

Part of a tea party of any kind is flowers and it was a perfect time of year for that! I just visited a couple of the multitude of empty houses around and picked the flowers left to fend for themselves in the neglected yards. In the process I discovered a house slated for demolition that had not one blade of grass on the whole lot - it's covered with blooming plants! Now we have a plant digging expedition in the plans, Denny, Rach and me someday soon! Ooh, fun!

The day of the shower arrived cool and threatening to shower but, for the most part, stayed dry. The guests arrived with all their pink bags and decorated onesies. Rachyl had to text Shirley that she could not leave her house until 10 minutes after the hour, to assure as many guests present as possible to witness the unveiling of the sex of the baby to Shirley.

Kevin met her at her car, blindfolded her and led her into the yard facing away from the party. Rachyl gave her a gift, a onesie with the ultrasound picture showing the baby's gender that we family members received weeks prior attached via an iron-on decal and wrapped in 3 layers of tissue paper. She had the appropriate squeal when she finally got through all the paper and turned around and screamed at the pukingly-pink party that greeted her! Then she yells "it has a vagina!" OK, I guess you could say she was thrilled with the news. She researched how to improve the chances of conceiving a girl and pulled it off!

The party was very nicely done, the decorations were beautiful, the food was delicious (Shirley made most of it, to keep her occupied) and I believe everyone had a decent time. The hot tub was the gift table and it was covered. She got a beautiful hand-me-down bassinet as well as bags of other hand-me-downs.

Near the end of the party Heather brought a gift and then the men and children also came to help un-party my house. All in all a very good event.

The very next day Denny asked me to come down to his house. He had an ultrasound picture to show me - Heather's pregnant too! Due in early January!

Uh-oh, that means another shower.....

On the Loose in the Palouse!

Just before starting this blog I was perusing a site I subscribe to that was addressing all the photography diversity we are offered in this state. One of the areas of mention was where we headed to this weekend - called the "Palouse". There is a town by that name but what most people are referring to when they describe it as I just did was the area of rolling hills covered by wheat fields in a patchwork design. If you can find a hill high enough to see for a distance it makes for some pretty amazing scenery. There is one hill in particular that many photographers have climbed (in their cars) just for this purpose called "Steptoe Butte". It's a 3,612 foot tall cone-shaped, quartzite butte that looms over the rolling hills surrounding it.

I had seen some amazing photos of sunrise on Steptoe Butte among the wildflower blooms and overlooking the green rolling hills. I wanted to take a shot like that of my own so researched when those wildflowers were most likely to be blooming. A local photography group was planning a wildflowers-on-Steptoe-Butte shoot in early April so I figured that a couple weeks later would be safe. Well, it turns out not this year.

We took off after Rick got home from work on Thursday and as soon as possible turned onto roads other than the main highways. Our first venture off the main drag offered views of the Puget Sound Energy Wild Horse Wind Facility's many gigantic wind turbines as well as less traffic! We were enjoying our drive. We got to our hotel in Colfax about 8:45 PM, grabbed some fast food for dinner and made our plans for the next day. Kinda...

Our day started with a nice breakfast in the only restaurant in town that offered breakfast, the "Top Notch Diner". I personally totally enjoyed our time there, it was a typical small-town America diner with the vinyl seating and chrome edged tables. The waitress washed the dishes by hand and the cook sung (sang?) while he worked. I could see him cook and he was enjoying his work so much it made ME happy!

After breakfast we decided to check out the Butte views. It was a bit hazy but the views were good. The fields were also not planted as much as we would have like but there were many that had begun to grow and others that had been disked and were ready for planting. The checkerboard was there but the color was not so much. There was a smattering of wildflowers but nothing that could be put into a nice shot. The top of the butte was frozen and I was grateful I threw my warm coat in the trunk. We wandered around and took pictures as the air was clearing and then headed out for... who knows?

We headed north a while and accidentally ran into one of the highlights of our trip just outside of Oakesdale, a yellow bi-wing crop duster! We chased him down and kept moving our car between passes so we could get him at every possible angle. Before he took off when he was done he did a fly-by for us.

Our trip to the Okanogan area went so well that we were thinking this would be similar. Turns out that while the Palouse area is scenic it's also very consistent. No matter what road we chose to explore we pretty much knew what we would see.

So we opted to wander into Idaho and see the other things that I found on the agenda of a photography group field trip, the town of Wallace and the "ghost town" of Murray. It was a bit of a drive but Wallace was well worth it. Unfortunately we didn't know that Murray was NOT worth the drive, up and over a hill where snow was falling and around and not worth driving back to Wallace. Idaho is a very beautiful state, it was still covered with a lot of snow in areas, the trees were not yet leafing out, nothing blooming. It actually looked a lot like home a couple months ago when I was so very uninspired to take a picture of ANYTHNG! We ended up doing a lot of driving and not a lot of photography that day.

Before we tucked in it for the night we wanted to hit the butte again for the sunset. We were a little ways out yet and I found a road on the map that was a little more direct from where we were, but it turned out to be a dirt road. A real NICE dirt road! We left a lot of dust flying as we flew down that road doing about 50!

The next day was our long, slow drive home. I chose a road different from the one we drove in on and we had a great time shooting the small towns, more rolling hills, classic trucks, tractors and cars rusting in the fields, abandoned buildings, grain elevators and all things farm-related.

Another highlight of our weekend was a fortunate turn down a small dirt road. We spotted a noisy group of calves penned up beside the road. Then I spotted the cowboys, saddled horses and a campfire and realized what we had stumbled upon - we found a branding going on! Rick wandered up to the people to let them know what we were doing (everyone is suspicious of people with cameras) and they invited us to stay and even come into the pen to take pictures! They do it the "old-fashioned" way, with lassos and cowboys on horseback because the new way (guiding the calves through a chute) ends up injuring the calves more. The "old way"
assures that the calves are completely disabled. Since there is so many operations done at once it makes perfect sense to me. It looks cruel but it's just a momentary twist of the arm to keep them immobilized while it is branded (I can still smell the burning hair), vaccinated, ear tag applied, bulls are "banded" (causing castration) and wormed. Then they're good for quite a while, the only thing that may have to be repeated would be the vaccination and/or the worming.

The drive was pleasant and uneventful until we reached our final highway on-ramp. Turns out some idiots were racing on Highway 18 and one went out of control and slammed into oncoming traffic, killing another driver. So the highway was closed and we had to detour about 16 miles around through Issaquah.

All in all another successful road trip!  All 977 miles of it!

Iceland - Day Four

Ah, bummer! Our last day. :-(   It was an awesome experience. I'll tell you what, the people who live here have to be extremely tough. This is NOT an easy place to live. But it's a cool place to visit!

So we had our last breakfast buffet, I had an open face sandwich and fruit, it was yummy. And I snagged a couple of their tiny little muffins (I think they were chocolate chip) on my way out for later on.

We had a list of things we had not yet experienced in the vicinity of our hotel and the airport so we got started knocking them off. But it was raining and VERY windy. I tried looking to see how windy it may have been and it looks like the sustained winds may have been around 50mph. I don't think I've ever experienced that kind of wind before. We saw a truck with the driver's door hanging upside-down like it may have gotten ripped from the driver's hand and flung open HARD. After seeing that I became very aware of what was happening when I opened my door. We actually opted to turn the car around to let out whichever one of us needed to get out, if the wind was blowing against the door it could not be opened and if it caught the door it would be torn from our grip, so we had to open only on the leeward side.

So we started with a trip back to the Gróttuviti lighthouse at the end of the peninsula that Reykjavik occupies. I won't continue to remind you of the wind but as you read this remember that extreme wind permeated everything we tried to do this day. It also included some rain and/or snow to sting our faces at times.

Next we finally got to the most-photographed landmark in Iceland, the Hallgrimskirkja Church right smack in the center of Reykjavik. It's an awesome structure even if it is made 100% of concrete. My focus in going was the trip up in the tower to avail us of some town shots. The uppermost part of the tower had openings to look through so the wind and rain came right in those openings. It was crazy! Very sturdy though, in all that wind I didn't feel the slightest movement being nearly at the top of the 244 foot tower!

We then aimed for the Harley Davidson dealership and found it closed. We found lots of stuff closed. On the way there we passed another JW spot, I think it must have been a depot maybe. We also hit a grocery store to pick up some souvenirs (up to this point we did NO shopping - cool!) and the Iceland Excursions office to pick up our little lunch bag that accidentally got left on the bus. We were getting comfortable driving around town.

Off to the Reykjanes Peninsula, home of the Blue Lagoon and the Keflavik airport. I wanted to visit the town at the end, Gardur, to get more lighthouse shots and then visit the town of Keflavik for some fishing marina shots. We also grabbed lunch before we had to get on our long flight home. We didn't mean to but we found a restaurant done up in 50's Americana decor, you know, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and red and white vinyl seats.

The flight home was fairly uneventful, bumpy, long, and when we were ready to land we had to circle around to allow time for the runway to become available. The picture at the beginning of this blog is tracking of our flight that's available to view on the seat-back screens at every seat. See? We had to circle around and this proves it!

Will we go back? We both agree that we'd love to see much more of this strange, extreme land. The next time it'll be in fairer weather though.

Iceland - Day Three

We didn’t get up and out as early as I was hoping to but Rick was having headaches and problems most likely stemming from a lack of sleep so that was more important.  He went to bed with a cool washcloth laid over his eyes and was snoring in no time.  So when we awoke at 8ish it was a good thing.  I did then, however, start pushing him to move ahead, get that shower, eat, etc. so we could get out before noon.

We had our buffet breakfast and headed toward Vik.  We retraced some of our travels from the night before and then we were in fresh territory.  One of the first new towns we passed through was Selfoss and I found a Kingdom Hall!  Rick doesn’t have to be told any more, he just pulled over.  It was a little baffling, though.  It was 10:30 on a Sunday morning and there were no footsteps or car tire tracks in the snow that had fallen overnight.  There wasn’t a sign so I couldn’t see when the meetings were held.

After passing the town of Hella we turned off the road toward Keldur.  It was a nice side road and we stopped and met some horsies.  I’m gonna call them horsies because they are small horses yet the people here get offended if they are referred to as “ponies”, yet being so small it’s hard to call them horses.  So horsies it is.  The ones we stopped to meet were wonderful!  They were clean and friendly.  We got to the Keldur area and found our first old sod house so popular here in past times.  We found out on our tour that they opted to use sod on top of wooden frames because they had cut down all the trees and hadn’t enough wood any more to build with.  They also used rock but the roofs mostly were what the sod covered.  The little place in Keldur was very small and situated right on a creek so it wasn’t a house.   Rick thinks it may have been a bath house.  I dunno.  (apparently we missed the main attraction here, some of the oldest houses in Iceland, I'll have to take better notes the next time!)

As we left that area and headed back out to the Ring Road as they call the main highway that circles the island we spotted some horsies playing.  They were rearing up and running and just having a good time.  We just had to stop and shoot the fun! 

Then it started to snow.  It got serious enough at one point that I was thinking we wouldn’t be able to complete our quest to reach Vik.  But Rick felt OK and we trudged on.  He was right, we went through rain, snow, graupel, and everything in between.  As we reached Vik it cleared and we had sunshine!

Before we got to Vik though we passed a neat waterfall, Seljalandfoss (all the waterfalls end with “foss”) and then another old homestead.  We’d planned to stop and see Skogafoss but decided to just shoot for Vik.  We’re so glad we did.  It was the strangest place to find in Iceland.  It was a beautiful black sand beach with rock structures in the water similar to our Washington coast “haystacks” and then we found the cliffs made of basalt columns.  I’m glad I researched all that because we never would have even known it was all there if I hadn’t.  It was the best part of the day.  We had to do a lot of exploring to find it all. Then Rick saw some other things that piqued his interest and we had to go find them too, all the while getting different shots of the beaches I just described.  We ended up on top of a cliff to see a lighthouse.  The car was rocking in the wind when we parked.  When we got out and attempted to walk toward the lighthouse it was blowing so hard I honestly didn’t think I could do it.  But I found a method and got out there.  It was a crazy drive up a switch-backed dirt road covered in places with snow but we feel that if you don’t make the effort to go the distance you miss the best stuff.

We tanked up the car (approx $7.50 / gallon!) in Hvosvollur, then continued on to Hella and tanked up ourselves; we got a beer, that is…



Then the drive got fun.  We hit some snow and the wind was fierce, so much so that even at 50mph the snow in the headlights was still going sideways.  It wasn’t sticking to the road, for the most part, but there were occasional patches of snow inches thick and yards around, so when you hit one of those doing 50 it was scary.  We had to knock the speed down a bit.  Having just had a pint of beer though, I quickly had to go to the bathroom.  It got worse, the snow and the need to pee at the same time, my need was becoming painful.  I finally told Rick to just pull off.  He found a side road with a spot to easily turn around and I relieved myself in all that wind and snow!  I was laughing hysterically when I got back in the car – it was such a weird thing to do!  Hey – everyone’s gotta go sometime!