Showing posts with label Washington. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

2018: Bellingham & Glacier Trip

The pictures from the trip out to Washington & Montana have actually been up in the Cloud for a while now, but I never got around to putting up a blog post. I'm doing that now.

Horton, Who-Hearer
The Cat in the Hat
Carly shows the Wolf how it's done
the Tooth Fairy




a big flamingo checks out Carly

We started the journey with a side-trip to Abilene, to see the city's wonderful collection of sculptures around the downtown area. Along the railroad tracks that delineate the city-center's southern edge, there's a garden of statues representing characters from Dr Seuss, along with a few others; and at the convention center, a few blocks north, is a children's literature sculpture garden. And there are a few other statues scattered around between those two spots. Even though I don't know a number of the stories represented (having been a child back before the printing press was truly established), I enjoyed them all.












for scale, note the passing 18-wheeler
While we were in Colorado, where Carly would spend her vacation partly at Rancho Mojón and partly at Golden Pound, I took a day-trip up to Nebraska, where my sister is working in a clinic. Along the way, I stopped to see a fairly extreme example of religious fervour, in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming: a collection of statues, including a gigantic one of the Virgin Mary.










Then we went up to Bellingham, Washington, for a soccer tournament, and a little hiking at Whatcom Falls, Mount Baker and Stimpson Preserve.
at Whatcom Falls Park
Stimpson Family Nature Preserve

snow field, Mt Baker

some random waterfall

Picture Lake













 After the tournament, we drove east to Glacier National Park, making stops at places along the way.
another random waterfall


Kootenai swinging bridge


Kootenai Falls


At Glacier, we spent a couple of nights in one of the old lodges built by the railroad to coax visitors to become customers, and the day between exploring Going to the Sun Road.
view from The Loop

400' waterfall


Jackson Creek

Goose Island
Jackson glacier
 

Construction of that road was an engineering marvel, back when it was built. It's the park's only through route, and it's where everybody goes. It wasn't as crowded as I'd feared, but there were a lot of people.

Next time I go to the park, I'll visit one of the other areas, north or south of Going to the Sun. (By then, there probably won't be any glaciers left, but I'm sure the park will still be there, and worth seeing again. Even though, as I write this, I see that the Going to the Sun Road is currently closed because of wildfires.)

There are lots more pictures from the trip; if Google is to be believe, you can see them by clicking on this link.

Enjoy.

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Beginning of the End of the Road

What that means
Our last day in the condo in Birch Bay was a quiet one; I went up into the town, such as it is, to have lunch with the Church Lady and the Perfesser (Buttermilk didn't want to go). We picked a place called CJ's Beach House, with a deck overlooking the bay; we chose it just because of that deck, and because, well, there aren't a whole lot of options in the little shoreline community of Birch Bay. As it happened, the place wasn't bad. The food was good with the exception of the shrimp used to top the seafood salad; they were small, cold, limp cocktail shrimp, so if I were to ever go back I'd order something else. But the service was very good and the ambience, featuring the bay across the road (with almost no traffic), was superior.

After that, we went back and fetched Buttermilk and forced her to indulge in some ice cream from the C-Store in town, then dragged her up to the little miniature golf place for a round. (I won't mention who won; I've already taken all the bows I'm going to take.)

In the evening, the Perfesser mentioned that he wanted to try something called a "poutine," which we had seen on menus in a number of places. It was described as french fries covered with sausage gravy, and he thought, repulsive as that sounded, that we ought to at least try it. After all, we wouldn't go to Delaware and not try scrapple, would we? We recalled, perhaps incorrectly, that Bob's Burgers & Brew in Ferndale had had it on their menu, so we went to the Bob's location in Birch Bay ... which didn't have it. Not only did they not offer it, the hostess wasn't entirely sure what it was. "Is that that Canadian thing with the gravy? Yeah, we don't have that." Ah, well, so we have at least one thing in Canada to look forward to besides the 2015 Women's World Cup.

What that means
(The Birch Bay location of Bob's Burgers & Brew was nothing special: I opted for a New York steak, which was a mediocre cut served slightly overcooked and, all things considered, slightly overpriced by local standards, and, it naturally follows, grossly offensive to the sense of value honed in south Texas.)

Then it was back to the condo for a last round of margaritas.

Morning comes, and off we go. On the way down to Sea-Tac, we stopped off at Burlington in response to the powerful and ineluctable call of Lafeen's Donuts. This time, it looked like hundreds of people had read and believed my previous post, as the display cases were stripped nearly bare. I could not, therefore, get an exquisitely light French cruller, nor a thick, fruity apple fritter; but had to settle, regrette rien, for a chocolate-dipped old fashioned doughnut and a blueberry fritter. (It's been almost a week and writing this makes me think of contacting them to enquire about a care package.)

Then it was down to the long-term parking where I'd stored my little convertible during the Group Tour. A quick goodbye to Church Lady and the Perfesser (because by now the rental charges on the anemic Rogue were accruing hourly), then throw our stuff in the Roller Skate, and we're off for home, the long way.

The first order of business was lunch, which we had at Las Palmas, a Salvadoran restaurant just down the street from the parking lot, where I had eaten a pretty good breakfast two Sundays before. Salvadoran food is similar in many ways to Mexican food, of course, but with a tropical twist that makes it identifiably different, certainly from the Tex-Mex variety that's so common in my home town, and from the more exotic varieties that are available in many places in south Texas. My own experience with Salvadoran restaurants back home is limited -- I can only think of two that I've been to, though I've been also to Honduran and Costa Rican restaurants, which I think are indistinguishable in any meaningful way from Salvadoran cuisine.

What that means

Our lunch wasn't quite as good as that breakfast, but it wasn't bad. I had a spinach papusa and a papusa revuelta (if memory serves): beans, beef and cheese on a thick, pillowy tortilla. Both were ordinary-good, neither was exceptional in any way. Overall the place was good enough to recommend but not good enough to recommend heartily ... except that it was cheap. And when I compare the prices I've seen around Seattle to the prices I'm used to around San Antonio, I think Las Palmas is an excellent place for lunch.

N.B.: Las Palmas appears now to be out of business (2020).

By the time we got to the freeway after lunch, we had discerned that the air-conditioning in the car wasn't working. That's not a big deal, I suppose, in Seattle, even in August, but we had six days in the desert southwest ahead of us. In fact, the drive across eastern Washington was looking like it would be hellish. But first, we decided on a stop at Snoqualmie Falls, it being a beautifully clear day, and much cooler up in the mountains.

After all the build-up to Snoqualmie Falls -- it was on the list of Things To See four years ago, and again two weekends before, and I never managed to get up there -- you would think a curmudgeon like me would have been disappointed. I wasn't. It is a beautiful waterfall, in a nice setting, with a pleasant lodge above it and not really all that many people for a magnificent summer Friday near a big city. In fact, I wish it had been another day, when I didn't have to get back in the car and head on down the road. It would've been real nice to have spent more time there.

We drove, top down, across eastern Washington. Boy, was that a mistake. Generally, my rule is this: if it's not raining, the top will be down if the temperature is more than 70 and less than 94; between 55 and 70, and between 94 and 97, it depends on other factors; but at 55 or less, and 97 or more, the top will be up. But then, I usually have air conditioning. Not this time, so I left the top down even though it got to 103, and nary a cloud in the sky. (Some smoke from the continuing wildfires, but that hardly qualifies as the silver lining in that particular cloud.)  So when we pulled into Baker City, Oregon, we were a little crispy around the edges. (After that, no matter the temperature, if the sun was up, so was the top.)

Baker City is a charming little community in eastern Oregon, once a stop on the Oregon Trail, later
Geiser Grand Hotel
(and still) a center for local agriculture. In the 1880s, it was prosperous enough to have a landmark hotel, the Geiser Grand, which was renovated about 20 years ago and returned to its former glory. I don't usually stay in such luxury, being too cheap to throw much money at a place to be unconscious; but every now and then I like to splurge, and in all honesty it wasn't really that much -- about what you'd expect to pay in a Hilton Garden Inn (which I'd never stay in, given a choice) or a Marriott. For the price we got an elegant room with a king-sized bed, a 14-foot ceiling and huge bathroom. The kind of hotel where they have embroidered bathrobes hanging there for your use. Not quite the Plaza, but beats the hell out of any Hilton Garden Inn.  Outstanding service, too, except in the bar.

twilight in Baker City
It was just coming sunset when we arrived, and it was First Friday, when this surprisingly arty little town has its monthly gallery walk. There were rumblings of distant thunder and not many people on the streets, but the several galleries in the town's Historical District around our hotel had a number of patrons in them, and enough interesting artworks visible through large windows that I would have been happy to browse among for a few hours -- but it was already pretty late and we were hot and tired and in need of a drink, so we passed on all the galleries and just strolled down to the one tall building in town, around that block to the courthouse, and back to the hotel bar. Then we retired to our room and slept the sleep of the exhausted cattle baron.

compare this to May 2013
We had no specific plans for the next day, except to get to Panguitch, Utah, so as to be within striking distance of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. That didn't stop us, though, from taking time to see Shoshone Falls, in Twin Falls, Idaho. I had been there a year ago on the Western Circuit (an excellent trip that, I'm surprised to discover, I wrote nothing about; though I posted lots of pictures), and was as impressed as any yokel by the massive amount of water cascading over the cliff. That was in May, though; in August, it's not quite the same experience. Still nice, pretty, unexpected in such a desert, but not awesome.

There aren't a whole lot of towns in Utah south of Salt Lake, but Panguitch, a town I stayed in with a friend a couple of years ago, is a pleasant little town with almost all the motels in Southern Utah (it being 20 miles from Bryce Canyon and close also to Zion National Park, Cedar Breaks, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Capitol Reef, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon). It also has at least one good restaurant, the Cowboy's Smoke House. (Don't get the brisket; it was dry two years ago and is still dry, but the sausage is very good and the pulled pork is outstanding. So is the service. The prices are reasonable but they only take cash. They're open, and packed, until 10.)

What that means
In the morning, we headed for the Grand Canyon. We had breakfast at the unexpected Bäkerei Forscher in Orderville, Utah. What is a high-quality German bakery doing out in the rural wilds of the Colorado Plateau? Well, obviously, they're doing a successful business, judging from (a) the big, clean, sparkling new building beside the highway and (b) the display cases that looked like everyone in Utah had been there that morning before us. From what was left, Buttermilk had a nice rhubarb streuseltaler, moist with a nice crunchy topping; while I had a vanileshiffen, which had a very good cream filling inside a slightly dry bread shell (which made it perfect for dunking). The prices were not as high as at similar snooty bakeries back home. The counter help, which may or may not have been German, was a little vague in replies to my enquiries about their offerings, so I gave up. (Besides, I didn't really want to know about the pastries, I wanted to eat them.)


(This is getting too long for most people to bother with reading, so I'll break it off here and continue it on another post.)

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Two Days

for maximum coherence, read all the posts from this trip in order, starting with THIS ONE

There is a yarn store half a mile up the road from where we're staying in Birch Bay. This became important and required a visit of some protraction on Sunday morning, as soon as it opened. The Perfessor took the opportunity to acquire a novel from a local writer who was sitting under an awning at the Birch Bay Public Market nearby; the novel turns out to be a good story badly told, but he's going to read it if it kills him.

Following that utter waste of valuable time, we drove down to Ferndale, a small town between Birch Bay and Bellingham, where there is a bowling alley. (Not for nothing are we the Once-a-Year Bowling League.) But before we embarrassed ourselves on the lanes, we checked out Pioneer Park, a collection of 19th Century log buildings from around the area brought together as a sort of tribute to local history. And indeed our visit turned out to coincide with the biggest event Ferndale has to offer, Old Settlers' Weekend. The park was crowded with visitors ... well, okay, not crowded, but decently attended. The usual vendors were out in force, offering trinkets and craftwork and the sorts of odd products one normally will see only on late-night cable TV; also there were those who would persuade others of the rightness, if not righteousness, of their cause. Republicans were registering voters and some pipeline promoter was there to prove how valuable its own particular version of environmental disturbance was. And, of course, there were the food vendors, and in addition to the usual carnival-grounds choices, there was a booth set up by a group of young Ukrainian and Russian immigrants and descendants to sell foods from those lands. I tried the dumplings (I forget the Russian name; variniki, perhaps), which contained potatoes and onions wrapped inside (they called the wrapper a tortilla, but it clearly wasn't; I guess that's proof that the word "tortilla" is now fully English) and crumbled bacon and sour cream on top. Dee-licious!

I spent half an hour on a front porch talking to an interesting Marine veteran from Massachusetts who gives the impression of being somewhat addled, though that could be the effect of long years spent in Alaska.  After that, we had lunch at Bob's Burgers & Brew, the local outlet of a regional chain. Way too much food, good service. It was also right by the bowling alley, where we all did so abysmally that I shan't report the results in detail here. Suffice it to say, we all need practice.

We went from there to Honaker Homestead Park, which features two attractions: a fragrance garden and a farmstead. The fragrance garden is a small plot of ground planted with aromatic herbs and flowering plants. It includes Tennant Lake and has a 40' tower for wildlife viewing. I didn't see any wildlife, but got nice pictures of Mount Baker.
The fragrance garden

The farmstead is the legacy of the Honaker family, of Swedish origin. The patriarch was an accomplished architect back in the Old Country, but apparently not happy. He upped-sticks and moved to New Zealand, then to California, before landing in this remote corner of Washington around the turn of the 20th Century. Having designed his own farm buildings, they are somewhat nicer than your run-of-the-mill farmhouse and barn. The barn (and a sort of farmyard petting zoo) were open, but they didn't have enough volunteers on hand to open the house.
The Honaker barn. It's full of old farm
equipment, but a little short on
explanations.
Following all that excitement, we retired to our condo for crispy beef with noodles and broccoli and, of course, margaritas. Everything's better with margaritas.

Monday was our day to explore the North Cascades. First stop was for Second Breakfast at Lafeen's
Where doughnuts come from
Donut and Ice Cream shop, where we had perhaps the best doughnuts In The Entire World. Thus fortified, we embarked on our trek. Our plan was to visit Raser State Park, for eagle viewing, then stop at a number of sites in and around the complex of recreation areas and parklands that make up North Cascades National Park. But en route, we decided to go in reverse, and so drove all the way out to Washington Pass, some 150 miles east, and make our way back along the Cascade Highway. It was a good choice.

Washington Pass offers excellent views of some stunning mountain scenery, with the added attraction of birds. Loud birds. Bold birds. One sat on a tree branch not six feet in front of the Church Lady long enough for her to get a really clear photograph. While she stared at it, another bird flew down and hovered behind her. A shame we didn't get a picture of that.

Our next stop was at an overlook from which you can see in the distance the mountain where Jack Kerouac and his friends served as fire-watchers in the 1940s. Then it was on to Diablo Lake, one of a series of reservoirs formed when Seattle City Power dammed the Skagit River (pronounced Ska'jit) in the 1930s. The lakes are fed by glacial melt and maintain a startling turquoise colour, a fact I remembered clearly from my one previous trip down this highway four years ago. 

Gorge Creek Falls

Ladder Creek Falls
Just below Diablo Lake is Gorge Lake, and the stream that flows out from there, Gorge Creek, drops in a falls right next to the highway. A similar falls come down a few miles farther on, behind the Gorge Lake Power Plant, at Ladder Creek. Both of these falls are gorgeous.


By this time it was growing dark, so after a brief stop to see an elk herd grazing in the near distance, and a quick swing through Rasar State Park to determine that it wasn't really worth a stop, we headed home (with a stop for a relaxed dinner at The Farmhouse in Mount Vernon, a sort of less-rustic Cracker Barrel). Just another enjoyable day.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Busy, Busy

for maximum coherence, read all the posts from this trip in order, starting with THIS ONE



On Friday, we crossed on the ferry from Swartz Bay, north of Victoria, to Tsawwassen, south of Vancouver, and drove down to our condo in Birch Bay, Washington -- enduring a long wait because of the ludicrous and specious security procedures at the border; procedures which Canada has apparently copied in retaliation, judging from the line waiting on the northbound lanes.

The condo is a nondescript little complex on the one road in the area; tiny seaside cabins across the street in front, a creek behind. Nice enough inside, and with all the necessary accoutrements: utensils, cooking gear, fireplace & television. We spent some time settling in, then headed up to the grocery store -- and, more importantly, the liquor store -- to stock up. We cooked (skillet chicken & rice) & ate in after a pitcher of margaritas had worked their mellowing magic. It was not a tragedy.

This one I actually liked
"Endangered Species"
a quicksand hot tub?
Yesterday (Saturday) we started exploring the area in earnest. First was a small sculpture garden at Big Rock Park in Bellingham, a large town about 15 miles south of here. The park features about 30 works of art placed along gravel pathways among the trees: a gorgeous setting for what I could describe as the usual assortment of mediocre post-modern sculpture with a couple of more interesting pieces accidentally included.
"Ooh! What's that smell?"




Next stop was Whatcom Falls Park, where the US Government, following a previous Republican-inspired economic meltdown, built some charming improvents around a stream with a couple of waterfalls, for the employment of that generation and the enjoyment of subsequent ones.




What that means
Still in Bellingham, we drove down to the city center and walked along pleasant streets, having lunch at the Mount Bakery, a trendy (but not too trendy) small eatery featuring quiches, crepes and baked goods. I had "crepos rancheros," an excellent crepe filled with poached eggs, onions, peppers, tomatoes and a mild salsa, with a side of black bean and poblano soup. I followed it up with a nice marionberry scone (because they were out of peanut butter pie, which I really wanted). It seemed just a little overpriced, which, in this area, is probably normal.
Mount Bakery Cafe on Urbanspoon

After lunch, we walked across the street to the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention, a place filled with odd and rare old devices from the dawn of electricity: Tesla coils and old telephones, radios, televisions, galvanometers, and all the things used to bring mankind to the understanding we now have (some of us, anyway) of electricity and its applications. Best part of the visit was the show they put on once a day, where a man dressed as a mad scientist demonstrates (without really explaining) static electricity and the operation of a Tesla coil. He does some interesting tricks, lighting fluorescent bulbs without connecting them to anything, and putting a volunteer in a giant metal cage and running two million volts at it. Fun for kids, as much fun for grown-ups.

We took a short walk around the city center before heading back to the car and up to Big Four Mountain, east of Granite Falls. There used to be a big resort hotel there, but it burned down in the 1940s, and now it's just a part of the Mount Baker-Snohomish National Forest. So of course the entire area was beautiful, and it would have been perfect in a convertible. We found the trailhead and hiked up toward the mountain.

The mountain is called Big Four because there's a place near the top where, when most of the winter snows have melted away in the spring, snow in the shape of a numeral 4 is left in a low area for a good long while. That, though, isn't the attraction that brought us to the mountain. We were there to see the ice caves that form at the bottom of the mountain. Snow falls from the upper parts of the slopes down near-vertical cliffs that range from two to four thousand feet. It forms a large pack at the bottom, and then snowmelt running down the mountain runs in at the top and out at the bottom, forming large caverns entirely of ice. Of course, with those cliffs and that snow there's a strong likelihood of avalanches, and even now, in mid-summer, the resulting caves could collapse at any time. Somebody dies in there every ten to fifteen years, but that didn't stop a lot of people from running around in the caves with their children. It stopped us from leaving the trail, which is on slightly higher ground 100 yards or so away.... Most of us, anyway; I told myself I didn't come all that way to stand that far back and look, so I climbed down onto the talus deck and approached nearer to the caves, mentally calculating how far a total collapse of the ice would move out away from the mountain wall. (Not all that far, because there's not all that much snow and ice left at this time of year.) I stood in front of the largest cave to get a picture and to feel the alternating hot and cold breezes as winds came first off the mountainside to my right, and then out of the cave in front of me.
 
Big Four Ice Cave
click here to see all the pics
from the Condo Week

What does all that mean?
And that was the first day of Condo Week. On the way back we stopped for dinner (not at Subway: Buttermilk and Church Lady wanted something "more interesting") at Conway Pub & Eatery, in Conway, Washington. It was about 9pm when we arrived and the place was a-jumpin'. It was karaoke night, and everybody was singing along. Loud? You betcha. Crowded? You betcha. Fun? You betcha. All the locals getting drunk -- why, oh why could I not find places like this when I was young and single and willing to sleep with anything that seemed likely to move? But the beer was cold and the food was good. The burgers were gigantic, the kind you cannot get your mouth around but can only nibble along the edges; the fries were perfectly twice-fried and plentiful, and the service was cheerful and efficient. Prices seemed high to my South Texas sensibilities, but not too high, so I guess they're perfectly in line with what locals would expect; about $10 for a burger & fries, if memory serves. (Sometimes it does.)  All in all, a super-fun place to eat and drink on a Saturday night, and the kind of place where, I bet, if you show up twice you're as good as a local.
Conway Pub and Eatery on Urbanspoon

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Sleepless in Seattle

for maximum coherence, read all the posts from this trip in order, starting with THIS ONE.

Not a clever title, I know, but I thought it was appropriate Saturday night, about one in the morning when I left downtown Seattle to return to my dingy hotel room in Sea-Tac. I went downtown with the idea of taking some night pictures of deserted streets, but (A) my camera battery died and the spare was back in the hotel room; and (B) the streets weren't deserted. Turns out downtown is a happening place in these parts. There are clubs and crowds and more street-people than you can shake a stick at, much as you'd like to. I saw the Gum Wall and the ferris wheel and the Space Needle (from a distance) and had a yakisoba hot dog from a food truck; got into a conversation with the guy behind me in line and now, of course, we're like Best Friends Forever. He and I walked around for a couple of hours and talked until I couldn't stay awake any longer and went back to Sea-Tac.

My plan for Sunday was to go first up to Snoqualmie Falls, then come back to the hotel and do my laundry. Big day. I got as far as the parking lot before deciding it was too cold and wet to go up in the mountains for lousy pictures of a beautiful waterfall, so I surfed the web for a while. Then my new friend Mick (a southern boy, from Mississippi, who used to live in New Orleans, so we had lots to talk about) called and invited me back into the city. Met him on the street corner where we'd said goodnight and he took me up to Pike Market for a newspaper and Ranier cherries and a cabbage (he also likes to cook, so that's more we have to talk about) and, of course, coffee (drinkable; what a pleasant surprise, though he had to make fun of me for just ordering regular coffee), and then we went up to his apartment, on the 24th floor of a building right by the art museum (gorgeous view; wish I'd thought to take the camera with me then, though it hadn't occurred to me until just now that I could have taken pictures of it. If you lean waaaaay out and look left you can see the Space Needle), and we sat out on his balcony and ate cherries and talked for a while. Then I went back to Sea-Tac and did my laundry. Big day. Big day.




magnolia
Yesterday I drove my Western Washington loop, going through all the remaining counties in that part of the state. Along the way I saw the state capitol complex at Olympia, where I was surprised to see magnolia trees. Not big ones, but successful ones, with big blossoms just starting to come out. The capitol building itself is mostly unadorned. The dome seems too large for the building, but not too out of proportion. The office buildings surrounding it are designed in such a way that they all seem very small, though they're not, really. Inside, the building is remarkably plain compared to every other statehouse I've ever been in: understated. The best thing about it is that I was made to feel welcome there. Nobody made me walk through a metal detector, nobody insisted on seeing identification or logging me into some kind of mock-security register of Potential Terrorists Come To Bring Down Western Civilisation. Not at all like the statehouse in Kentucky, for example, where I refused to go in because of all the asinine rigamarole they demanded. The only questions anyone asked me were (1) what's my zip code (for the tourism statistics) and (2) "Can I help you find something?"
Star hydrangea

My next stop was in North Aberdeen, out near the coast, at the Kurt Cobain Landing, a half-assed memorial to the late grunge rocker thrown together at a spot where he used to hang out under a bridge when he was a kid. I'm not a big Nirvana fan, but there aren't many things out on the fringe of America to use as an excuse to visit those counties. The Landing has a sculpture of an electric guitar and some quotes from The Great One on signs and walls; the best part was the easel, empty, labelled "Kurt's Air Guitar."

Willapa NWR
Followed US 101 south from there to Cape Disappointment State Park, near the mouth of the Columbia River. I have a couple of theories about why it's called that. The park has some nice views of the beach (called Long Beach, "the longest driveable beach in the world" at 27 miles), and two decrepit old disfunctional lighthouses, and, of course, views of the mouth of the great river.

decrepit lighthouse A

decrepit lighthouse B
not Long Beach
After that, it was a scenic drive up the Columbia to the freeway that brought me back to Seattle. I did get one clear glimpse of Mt St Helens (which, on my previous visit to this area, had been entirely shrouded in fog), but when I got closer it was hidden behind lower intervening hills; and later, as I approached Seattle, Mt Ranier stood out clear, though getting a picture of it was a real challenge, since the only clear shots were from the freeway. I finally gave up and settled for a picture with a bunch of phone lines in the way.