White Bike

Not all bikes come in bright colors. Not all bikes come with motors. I've been around lots of motors lately.

Who We Are

In case you forgot what we look like. Busy with car museum (personalized bricks purchased to support the museum) and other volunteering. More pics and posts to come.

Porch and Yucca

I've been photographing my plants and starting a file with the pic and other info about the plant. Turns out straight shots of plants for such purposes are not very blog-worthy, they're just pictures of plants. But, I liked the porch shadow in this one.

Jazz Festival

Headliner for this year's Cathedral Park Jazz festival was Karrin Allyson with Nancy King as special guest. This year we attended all three days, the weather was just warm enough and the crowds were so great - as usual. Free concerts bring out the kids and babies and people sit around all day long. Wanna come up here for next year's?

Pretty in Pink

The Glads are out!

Dancers at the Festival

Cathedral Park Jazz Festival has a Blues evening on Friday nights. Dancing with a camera in hand.

Windscape

What else can we do to change a landscape?! Well, it's time to be home to change my own landscape.

The Comforts of the Car

How lovely to just lean back, look up and out of the sunroof and snap away. Still in upper Washington.

Windmill Garden

Why don't we make some of these? Our basement is filled with materials such as old decorative gardening things and rusty fence parts, worn out tools . . . And then just paint them a bright color. Oh, and then put them all into a fenced 'garden' somewhere around the Grand Coulee Dam.

Dandelion

Always so beautiful, but difficult to photograph: Another back lit image. Wish I knew how to dodge the center of this one a little bit darker like in the old, actual darkroom days.

Grave of Chief Joseph

We drove pretty much due south from the great parks of Alberta into Washington State. North of the Grand Coulee Dam we found the small town where Chief Joseph is buried.

Lake Louise

Naturally we saw the most photograped lake in Canada - I reckon. Very touristy, but oh so beautiful.

Canada Geese in Canada

Canada geese raising their families. This was during our two-day stay in Banff National Park in Alberta.

From Farmland to Rangeland

The scenery on our route east through Montana was repeated in reverse on our return route through Canada. Going home we saw the land turn less green and more hilly as we drove. Finally we could see the Rocky Mountains again.

Wide Open Spaces

I truly couldn't get enough of the wide, open spaces. I remember hearing the Scandanavians settled in the great plains because the long grasses waving in the wind reminded them of the sea. I suspect it had more to do with what land was available when they arrived. That and all the promotion of the plains they got from the railroads trying to get people to settle along the RR lines.

Farm House

Part of a corporate farm now, and not worth anything to them, this is the farm house where I lived in the '50s. Each time I see it, I expect it to the be the last time. Another building I've documented over the years.

Granville Grange Hall

This old building has been my favorite landmark between Minot and Upham, ND, for years and years. One day I'll gather up all my pics of it over the past 40 years. Recognize it?

One in Hand

And another critter out for breakfast. We, having had our own, were more in mind of another Starbuck's which gave us plenty of industrial coffee and an internet connection.

Ms. Porcupine

Not far from the grass with the grasshopper, we found another resident out for a morning stroll, looking for breakfast I reckon. Also backlit and so far away, we couldn't believe we had spotted her.

Grasses

Oh, not nearly as sharp as some insect photos :) but when I looked at this photo at home, there was Ms. Grasshopper. The backlit grasses lit up the prairie ground and caught my eye over and over - I couldn't get enough of them.

Bananagramming it . . .

Didn't forget to bring our favorite game along - and didn't lose a piece. We came up with a new category called 'vacaction word,' meaning a word we were unsure of but without a dictionary we'd just decide on the spot whether it was acceptable. Here we are the morning after the big wind storm still at Fort Peck in Montana.

View from Inside

Put up the tent for our third night and very strong winds came up. Had to stay inside to keep it on the ground. Exhilarating!

Driving Through the Middle of Montana

Here we found painted sheep, not the Painted Desert. Every day - and every night - was filled with weather. Wonderful, wet, windy, wondrous.

Keeping an Eye on Things

An easy thing to do - everything we saw on our trip was either thrillingly beautiful, happily familiar, excitingly new, or mind-bogglingly thought provoking. Am I turning this blog into something for recording the progression of places and events while pictures that are simply great shots get put aside as the days are slip by and post-trip-pic build-up is starting?! Oh, what's a person to do! So many pictures I don't know what to do!

Tree Eyes

Walked through the campground after breakfast and found trees staring back at me.

Farm land near Walla Walla, WA

We left home Tuesday around noon on June 28. We slept our first night just out of Walla Walla, after driving through wonderful farmland.

Homeward Bound

Welcoming us home: still 80 miles away but so familiar, Maryhill Musuem, tiny on its ledge, has a permanent display of windmills, a rotating display of freight trains, and an annual show of ripening peaches. Not sure how to pick up where I left off with this blog, but after two weeks and 1,000 pictures, I may post a recap of our trip through the high plains and mountains of the west. Maybe I'll unpack first.