Carkeek seek and find.

After our carousel adventure on Saturday, we drove up to Carkeek Park to do some train spotting and tidal pool watching.

It was low tide when we were at the park. Low tide is great for searching for shells. Just make sure no one is living in the shells before you take them home with you!

See the oval critter in the middle of the photo? I know sure what it is, but a few years ago I did find one of these shells washed up on shore. Do you know what the name of this little guy is?

Sea anemone!

We spotted about 20 purple star fish! They are “technically” called sea stars though.

Hang on little guy!

This guy was looking for some noms. He let me get rather close to him too.

We walked up the beach searching for shells and waiting for trains.

The tide was super low! We walked on parts of the beach that we’ve never been able to walk on because the water was too high.

Here comes the sun!

And here comes the train! Our waiting finally paid off.

It’s comin’ ’round the bend.

Whoa baby! This is the biggest shell I’ve ever found at Carkeek! I brought it home with me. I’m thinking I want to put an air plant in it. I recently killed an air plant though so I don’t know if that would be the best idea. How does one kill an air plant?

Trains and Thai.

After work today we headed down to Seattle to do some shopping. There were also trains.

These guys are sharing ice cream. Or is that a microphone?

This is what a typical “Seattle” day looks like. It was grey and misting. But there were lots of trains so we braved the mist!

Eric was taking some photos with a film camera while I stuck to digital. I did take two film cameras with me, but I never took them out of the car. Bad me!

Driving in the city today reminded me of how bad a good portion of the drivers in Seattle are. It was really frustrating and annoying. And not to sound like the mother hen…people drive way too fast in the city and don’t obey traffic laws. Use your turn signal! To finish up our shopping/train adventure day on a good note we went to Araya’s for some vegan Thai food! Eric had some spicy noodles with tofu and I had red curry with brown rice. There were spring rolls too!

Wonderful weekend! – Friends, Volcanoes and Trains

My lovely friend Nicki and her husband Ryan were in Seattle Friday night!  They live in Delaware and have been on the west coast for their honeymoon!   We went to Bamboo Garden for some dinner. We ended up sitting there and talking for four and a half hours! We then stood in the parking lot at their hotel for another hour and a half. It was so good to see Nicki again! It’s been at least four years since I had last seen her. Meeting Ryan was great too! I was happy to finally meet him after hearing Nicki talk about him for many years! They’re so cute together!

Saturday morning Eric and I left around 8am for a trip to Mt. St. Helens. Juniper was trying to be extra cute so we would stay at home and play with her.

We picked up some Mighty O donuts for the trip.

Our mascot kept watch while we drove through Mt. Rainier National Park on the way to Mt. St. Helens.

Welcome!

Behind that cloud in the center of the photo is Mt. Rainier.

The fog clung to the mountains near Mt. Rainier.

We accidentally missed our road and drive 20 miles before figuring it out. We had to turn around and backtrack, but we did have this view!

There’s Mt. St. Helens with a little cloud cover!

We were going to see Mt. St. Helens via Windy Ridge. On the drive to Windy Ridge you can see more of the destruction and blast zone than you can going to Mt. St. Helens on the other side. The destructive power of nature is impressive, no?

There is only one road to Windy Ridge and it JUST opened two days ago! Much time is spent fixing the roads after harsh winters in the area.

This car (barely) survived the eruption of St. Helens. This was 9 miles away from St. Helens.

It’s the end of September and the wild flowers are still blooming!

Those light colored rocks are actually pieces of pumice from the explosion at St. Helens.

Weird little stump creepin’ down the hill.

The pumice is really light! They almost feel like you’re holding a handful of marshmallows.

Today was a rare day that I actually needed sunglasses!

That giant rock is called a hummock and it was actually part of the top of Mt. St. Helens that was blasted into the sky during the eruption.

Eric was busy taking photos on his vintage cameras!

And there’s Spirit Lake! The lake now sits 200 feet higher than it did before the eruption! Crazy!

The weather was beautiful for our trip!

There are hundreds (thousands?) of logs floating in Spirit Lake from the eruption. The force of the eruption pushed the water 800 ft. up the nearby hillside taking out thousands of trees along the way before it settled down…200 feet higher than before!

Yesterday was Nation Public Lands Day!

At Windy Ridge you can walk up roughly 3 millions steps…well…361 to be exact…to have a beautiful view of Mt. St. Helens and Spirit Lake. My legs are hurting today! While I was standing by my car after the walk down I could seriously see my legs shaking. I felt like a little baby deer!

Mt. St. Helens and Spirit Lake!

On the way back home we took a small road that is literally falling to pieces. It won’t be there for many more years! The ground from the blast just continues to settle.

You can see where the blast zone stops. There are lush pine trees just outside of the blast zone line.

We hit 65,000 miles while on that rickety back road!

And any trip isn’t complete without at least one train sighting right?! This is the Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad.

Fall is really here, huh?!

Good night and safe travels!

Have Love Will Travel- Day 3

We left Twin Falls, ID early in the morning. We decided to take a drive through their downtown. This little VW parking lot beckoned us to stop.

Some dark clouds rolled in early. Very threatening they were!

When you travel on back roads and through small towns you find great buildings like this! Why don’t we make signs like this anymore?! Signs now are cheap and dull.

Utah welcomed us with some big dark clouds.

Make sure you gas up!!

We were going to be traveling on a 100 mile stretch of old railroad grade. The road is all dirt so we were super happy to see those dark rain clouds give way to blue sky and sun!

This is the beginning of the 100 miles of railroad grade.

Get in the car and let’s go!

You can drive on most of the old railroad grade except for a few areas that have been routed around some old and brittle train bridges and washes.

See the jackrabbit bounces away? That’s the first jackrabbit I’ve ever seen in real life!

Here’s the long gone town of Terrace.

Terrace is the most intact town on the 100 mile stretch. There’s not much here, but there’s more than other ghost towns along the railroad grade.

Horned toad!

The desert really does get THAT dry.

I spotted this piece of an old glass bottle near Terrace. The only text you can read on the bottle says “Utah.”

This is where we almost got stuck in the mud last year! We had to off road in the Yaris and push our way through some sage brush. This year it was quite a bit drier so no off roading was required!

Utah is famous for it’s arches. We even spotted a few on the back roads.

At the end of the dirt road is the Golden Spike National Monument. This is where the last spike was driven for the first transcontinental railroad in the US.

Trains!

Near the Golden Spike is the Spiral Jetty. This was our third time visiting the lovely earthwork. The Spiral Jetty was designed by the artist, Robert Smithson…not to be confused with Robert Smith…although he’s wonderful too.

The Spiral Jetty sits in the Great Salt Lake. I love the pinkish water!

Eric and I hiked to the top where that sweet boy asked me to marry him! Note the jackalope in the lower right corner.

The Great Salt Lake can be nasty in some areas. People do swim in parts of the lake though. Next time we’re near Salt Lake City I must swim in it!

There’s the Spiral Jetty.

We drove a some more old railroad grade leaving the Golden Spike area.

We met our friend and host Mandy at Long Life Veggie House in Salt Lake City for some vegan Chinese food before heading to her house for the evening. To Fu World!

“It”s an entree? It”s a dessert? May be both!”

Every time we’ve visited SLC we’ve stopped here for food first thing. Tradition is nice!

SLC is tucked in the mountains with wonderful skies! SLC has some great old neon too! Probably the best neon I’ve seen in a town overall!

Have Love Will Travel- Day 1

We stopped at Mighty-O before hitting the road! Donuts are a must for a trip!

We stopped at Frenchman Coulee near Vantage, WA. We’ve been here about a dozen times but we love it every time we’re there!

I put our state map on the car! We traveled through two more states together on this trip so I still have to color those in.

Here’s my Grasshopper donut from Might-O. Mint and chocolate!

We’re in Cougs country! Eastern Washington is home to Washington State University. Go Cougs!

We travel on old roads and through broken down towns.

Palouse Falls!

Buzzy bee.

Near Palouse Falls.

 

I love the desert wildflowers!

Looking down the gorge at Palouse Falls.

Listen!

Someone made these fun metal cutouts of a Lewis and Clark camp.

We brake for trains and train stations!

Welcome to Oregon! And here’s a crappy picture!

Broken down.

We pulled over in Oregon for a stretch break and some photos with a massive dandelion.

I told him to dip me. “That’s a long dip down if I drop you.”

What a gorgeous old hotel!

The first night was spent in Baker City, OR. We brought a little cook stove along with us for this trip! Indian food was on the menu for the night.

Good night from Bakery City!

Three Days in John Day- part 2

We woke up bright and early and a little chilly (we were tent camping!) and promptly showered and headed off towards the town of Sumpter, WA. There was an excursion train we planned on riding and Sumpter was having a huge flea market! But first we stopped at the very very small town of Granite. They had a fun sign in town.

Granite, Oregon.

Sumpter Valley Railroad.

I need another bike. You can put this on the rails and go!

We round in the cupola of the caboose! There were four seats at the very top. It was super fun to ride up there.

Across from us was a women with her nephew. She wanted to take out picture because “No one has their photo taken while they’re on vacation any more!” I can’t smile on command.

The train takes you passed all of the old dredging areas from the gold mining days. I think it’s rather an eye sore.

The train arrived in Sumpter so we decided to walk around for a few hours. The train would later take us back to the station outside of town where we parked the car.

The flea market was awesome! There was actual “old” stuff there! In Seattle “old” or “vintage” items are crap.

We found curly fries too.

This reminded me of Pennsylvania.

There were some dudes making kettle corn in an Old West town. What a great surprise though! They were super nice dudes and they make some awesome kettle corn!

Flea market goods.

Don’t stand outside…and be miserable…come inside and get fed up!

The local church was also having a sale!

Look at all of that old camera equipment we found in the church! I bought a Polaroid camera and some old expired film.

Awesome lemonade, awesome stand, awesome old man working inside that large lemon!

An old firetruck.

I had an awesome time walking around and looking at old junk! I think Eric had fun too.

I passed on this fantastic cookie jar. I’m kind of regretting that now.

This hotel was also in the town of Sumpter. We want to stay here the next time we’re in the area!

Here’s a massive dredge that was used for gold mining. This was actually a museum that you could walk around inside. It was huge.

We walked around and waited for our return train…and waited…and waited…and guess what? It broke down! The railroad workers had to drive us back to our car! It was kind of a bummer.

When they took us back to the train station they showed us around their train shed. There were plenty of trains to look at and discuss and plenty of spare train parts.

Awesome van!

It was a little chilly the whole time we were in Oregon!

This is the train that broke down.

This friendly volunteer was telling us about the piece that broke on the train.

East Broad Top is in Pennsylvania! They have a few hopper cars that were from East Broad Top so they repainted the cars and re-stenciled them.

After leaving Sumpter we drove to the Baker City area. We were driving on some old back roads in search of wagon wheel ruts from the Oregon Trail. Most of the back roads are open range so cows and babies were everywhere! The little guy on the left was nursing when we drove by. He stopped nursing to look at us. Mama then nudged him to get him to start nursing again. SUPER CUTE!

And we found those wagon wheel ruts from the Oregon Trail.

We made it back to the campsite before dark and we had time to lay in the tent and look at pictures. We didn’t have a fire pit which was kind of annoying, but I guess you can’t really complain when camping is only $10 a night! And that includes showers!

This was my favorite treasure I found at the flea market. A horse and a squirrel? I couldn’t just leave it there!

Day trip to Frenchman Coulee and Taunton- part 2

After some fun at the gem shop we finally made it to Frenchman Coulee! We found this waterfall which you can also see from the other side of the coulee.

And this is the view we had of the coulee!

Our jackalope mascot, Roama (also known as Timber Rattler), ventured to the coulee with us.

More lovely desert flowers.

So dainty!

Wonderful yellows!

And look at those deep purples!

These might be my favorite desert flowers.

When traveling you should always take a roll of toilet paper with you! I discovered a sad porta-potty without toilet paper and I was super happy to have this guy with me!

There are sand dunes in the coulee. You can see them in the distance. The hike back to the sand dunes was roughly one mile. We gathered up our cameras and water and got walkin'!

There was a rough path going to the sand dunes and trails leading to places where climbers like to go.

More dainty flowers.

Flowers and sage brush.

These are rather pretty.

Sage brush as far as you can see!

This was looking back towards the car. You can see a tiny speck in the distance that is the car.

Happy hikers!

And there are the sand dunes!

That is much steeper than it looks!

The sand dunes are way bigger than they appear from the road. Eric went hiking towards two other dunes in the area.

I brought my Polaroid camera with me to take some desert shots.

We had gorgeous weather for this trip!

I decided to hike to the top of the dune.

It was a steep hike! I was huffing and sweating when I made it to the top.

Steep! Get movin' legs!

View from the top!

I sat down for a rest on the top of the sand dune.

Sandy ripples.

We noticed this line of greyish dirt along the trail. Can you guess what it is?

It's Mt. St. Helen's ash!!

After leaving the coulee we ventured to the town of Taunton.

We traveled on a very small back road with open ranges. We didn't pass another car the whole time, but we did pass a mama cow and her baby!

Baby stood up and stretched.

Baby was also kind of suspicious of us. Little baby decided to hide behind mama.

And this is Taunton! There was never a town here, but there was a substation for the railroad.

Here's the substation.

It's been abandoned for quite some time.

The substation is in rather bad condition.

It's pretty trashed inside.

Eric and I love investigating old buildings!

Why not?

Chop shop?

These stairs lead to the lower level of the substation. That stuff along the wall is bird droppings! It was rather smelly and dirty so we opted to not go downstairs.

Best wishes to you substation!

People had carved their names into the side of the hill behind the substation. I used a pocket knife and did the same!

Thanks for following along with us! We had a great trip with great weather and photos! We're already planning for our next day trip! See you on the road!

Day trip to Frenchman Coulee and Taunton- part 1

Yesterday Eric and I went on our first day trip to central Washington this year! I love the Washington desert! I took about 230 photos and I’ve whittled it down to 125 or so to share with you. I’m going to split our day into two separate blog entries so you’re not overwhelmed with photos! Also, Eric and I have a travel blog called Hey I’m Over Here. Click the link to visit our travel blog for even more fun and photos from our trip. We have a Facebook page for our travel blog too! Feel free to like us to stay up to date on our adventures!

We headed east on I-90 through Snoqualmie Pass. As you can see they still have a ton of snow in the pass. And that snow isn't piled up snow from plowing...that's just normal snow fall that hasn't melted!

These are ski cabins for rich people. I bet they don't dig themselves out.

In Easton, Washington we spotted this guy. Eric's a train guy so we stopped for some photos.

We were even able to walk inside of the train car!

This was also in Easton.

Roslyn, Washington. This is where Northern Exposure was filmed!

Roslyn had some fun murals. I think this one looks like Ron Swanson from the show Parks and Rec!

Marlon Brando.

Back on the road we spotted some windmills. Over the past few years Washington has been installing more and more of these in the central part of the state.

We were chasing down this train to snap a shot of it with Eric's Holga camera. A stop sign in the middle of nowhere made us abort the operation.

More windmills. There was a visitors center for the Wild Horse Wind Farm. Apparently that's what they're calling the windmills. We stopped by to check it out though.

These things are huge!

The drive to the visitors center was three miles out of the way, but we've driven longer distances to see less exciting things!

Windmills!

In the distance to the right you can see Mt. Rainier. And in the distance to the left you can see a tiny bit of Mt. St. Helens!

Mt. Rainier.

Mt. St. Helens!

It was warm and sunny and windy on the top of the hill.

Hedgehog cactus! See them there in the middle of those rocks?

Look how big the propellers are! Scary big I might say!

We brought Mighty O donuts along with us on the trip! It was donut time after we got back to the car from the visitors center.

Here's the Columbia River! There used to be a ferry here so you could cross the river. That was many many moons ago and now there's a big fancy bridge to take you to the other side.

This is looking down the Columbia. The fancy bridge is way off in the distance.

Old ferry waiting lines.

We drove a short distance to a higher elevation, but in the same area, to go to the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park. Those chunks on the ground are actually petrified wood!

Petrified wood and desert flowers.

Looking up the Columbia again. Those trees at the bottom left is where the ferry used to pick up the cars.

We had petrified wood here AND petroglyphs!

These are not their original location though.

These were originally a few miles north of here.

Someone decided to build a dam and if these were still in their original location they would currently be under water. Dams are destructive.

These are just awesome!

More chunks of petrified wood.

The Ginkgo Gem Shop is right beside the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park. They have a store, but behind the store they have a bunch of rocks and petrified wood that you can sort through and buy!

Petrified wood! We have a piece of petrified birch wood we bought a few years ago.

And of course the gem shop has some dinosaurs in front of their building!

Dinosaur friends!

A lovely day, no?

Come back for part 2 tomorrow!

We took advantage of the warm sun today!

Today is was sunny AND warm. I was in short sleeves all day today!

After a quick stop at the record store we went to Bamboo Gardens for some vegan noms! My bowl was literally bubbling when they brought it out to me.

We had to purchase a few goods from Uwajimaya, a fantastic store, in the International District. This sign was in my way so I just decided to include it. Get out of my way sign!

These dragons keep watch over the International District.

From Uwajimaya we walked to the King Street Station to watch for trains.

No train things yet.

We waited and waited.

Hurry up train!

Goodness! Adorable.

We were about to give up on the train watching.

There we are!

But then!!

She's coming round the bend.

Hopper.

Boxcar.

Coils.

It was a short train, but it was a train.

Byee!

We had a mini photo shoot when we came home. It's kitten love!...too bad the photo was so washed out.

Love.

I was feeling a little bit like Lori from The Walking Dead today.

See Lori here!

Juniper loves coming outside with us.

Sleepy baby.

Until next time!