One, the light is changing with the angle of the sun. Even when it’s warm and sunny, it looks different. And the nights cool off considerably more. We’re down to thirteen hours of daylight (from sixteen on the summer solstice), and losing several minutes a day.
The other is a bit more cheerful.
Cyclamen neapolitanum
This little clump of hardy cyclamen thrives in the dry shade by my front door, puts out pretty leaves every winter, dies back in the summer, then, once I’ve forgotten about it, does this every September.
Which makes sense. Last Sunday, I decided to go out to the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge — the main link doesn’t seem to be working for some reason, but this one should — which occupies most of the estuary of the Nisqually River (the one I showed you the glacial headwaters of last week ). It’s the largest remaining undeveloped estuary on Puget Sound, and the site of a heated battle between developers and preservationists back in the 1970s, which resulted in the creation of the refuge.
The refuge used to be mostly diked farmland, and a few years ago, the management decided it would be better for the critters if the dikes were removed, so they were, and a beautiful two-plus mile boardwalk replaced the dike trails. The boardwalk leads to a gazebo at the very edge of the estuary, where you can see open water and most of the southern end of the sound.
For some reason, on this trip I didn’t see any critters on the way out to the gazebo except for gulls, but I saw lots on the way back. I’m not sure why that was.
The trail to the head of the boardwalk is mostly a boardwalk, too, and traverses forest of bigleaf maple and black alder. In spite of the trees, it’s mostly wetland, and this time of year the water is covered with bright green algae. Jewelweed blooms this time of year, too.
The boardwalk leading to the estuary boardwalk.Bright green algae covering the wetland.Jewelweed blossoms.
Then the forest stops and the estuary starts, and the sky opens up.
Out of the forest and onto the tideflats.You can see the gazebo at the end of the boardwalk, just to the left of the end of the bluff (not the dock and building, to the left of that). The white spots are gulls.Looking back towards the twin barns (there really are two, although you can only see one of them in this photo) at the beginning of the estuary boardwalk. The parking lot’s about half a mile past that.
I walked all the way out to the gazebo, which, like I said, is over two miles one way. The clouds kept coming and going. I kept wishing they’d stay, because it was warm, and out on the tideflats like that it was humid. Under the clouds it was fine. Under the sun, it was sweaty.
On a clear day, you can see all the way up to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge from the gazebo, a distance of somewhere between 15-18 miles as the gull flies.
If you look very closely, you can see one of the uprights on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, dead center.
And then, on the way back, I saw Critters. With a capital Cr.
An egret. Isn’t he gorgeous? What I really want to know is how he stays so white out there in the mud.A great blue heron. I saw about half a dozen of these coming back, but this one was the closest.Another heron, who really isn’t headless (see his reflection?).My birder friend says this is a hawk, probably a red-tailed hawk just because they’re so common here.And, as the enthralled little girl I was watching this fellow with said, “a bunny!”
I also saw a lot of swallows out swooping around eating mosquitoes, but they were moving far too fast to photograph.
All in all, a wonderful day out at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.
State trooper Daniel Reilly never thought he’d wind up in his stepmother’s favorite movie. Chasing a suspected drunk
driver through Washington's desolate Okanogan Highlands is part of his job, but crashing his cruiser and waking up in a ghost town sure isn’t. And when that ghost town starts to come to life?
His version of Brigadoon is not a carefree musical.
You can read the first chapter by clicking on the cover. Take a look at pictures of the real Okanogan Highlands here. And take a look at Sojourn‘s research pathfinder here.
Tell me what you think! I’d love to hear it.
Sojourn will be available for pre-order by the middle of September, and for purchase in October, 2014.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided that since I didn’t see quite as many wildflowers at Sunrise and Hurricane Ridge this year as I would have liked, I would make a trip up to Paradise, on the south side of Mt. Rainier.
Paradise was purportedly named by Virinda Longmire, one of the early settlers at the foot of the Mountain, who was said to exclaim what a paradise the flower-filled mountainside was. I have to say I agree with her.
A trip to Paradise in the summertime has to be carefully planned, because of how popular it is. You don’t want to go on a weekend, and you need to arrive fairly early, even on a weekday, because the parking fills up. There’s a yellow light on the side of the road at Longmire (about ten miles inside the park entrance) that blinks when the parking areas at Paradise are full, and a sign that says you won’t be able to stop there but must keep moving on through when the light is blinking.
The park service used to run shuttle busses to Paradise to help with the congestion, but they’re not running this summer due to budget cuts.
At any rate, I arrived at Paradise around 10:30 (it takes about 1½-2 hours to get there from my house), which was in time to snag a spot.
The trail I’d had in mind today was the Nisqually Vista Trail. It used to be one of the most popular trails in the park, but ever since they tore down the old flying saucer visitor center near its trailhead a few years ago and built the new one over closer to the Inn, people seem to have forgotten about it, which is wonderful from my point of view. In spite of the crowds everywhere else, I ran into maybe a dozen people on the entire two-mile loop.
And this is what I saw:
Mt. Rainier from the Nisqually Vista Trail, and wildflowers.Lupine and paintbrush and bistort and…I’ve only seen white lupine a few times. Usually it’s blue or purple.Lupine, etc., along the trail.Pink monkeyflowers, which like their feet wet, so you usually find them along streams.Like this one.A close up of scarlet paintbrush, although this one’s more coral-colored than scarlet. The colored parts are actually bracts surrounding the inconspicuous flowers.Mt. Rainier and the Nisqually Glacier, where the headwaters of the Nisqually River originate.A close-up of the snout of the Nisqually Glacier. Even at that distance, the sound of the river pouring from the glacier is very loud.Closeup of some heather blossoms.A patriotic view of red paintbrush, blue lupine, and white Sitka valerian.Pure blue gentians, which grow profusely along the driveway between the lower parking lot and the visitor center.
Lots and lots of wildflowers. A beautiful Mountain. And an excellent view of the Nisqually Glacier.
All in all, a terrific day at Paradise.
I also stopped in Longmire on my way back, which is the site of the first settlement in what is now the park, and hence the place where they emphasize the history of our fifth national park. I wanted to pick the brain of the ranger on duty at the museum there about some resources for my next novel, and to poke around.
One of the old busses that used to take people up to Paradise a long time ago, parked at Longmire.The Longmire Museum, one of the oldest museums in the national park system.
And that was my last summer visit to Mt. Rainier this year.
I have finished the revisions for Sojourn, my seventh book and my “highway patrolman crashes his cruiser in the wilds of the Cascade Mountains and ends up in the local version of Brigadoon” story (sans music). It has gone off to my beta reader.
I will be putting a sample chapter on my website this weekend, and will post again when it’s up.
Now to go buy my chosen stock art for the cover (it’s already chosen, and the cover created — I just need to insert the proper art where the comps I played with are).
Well, sorta. This past weekend was the steam event at the Foss Waterway Seaport, in Tacoma, Washington, which sounded like a lot of fun.
Which it was. I knew before I arrived at the museum that they’d done a lot to it since the last time I’d been there, mumble-odd years ago, and they have. The museum is housed in what was once one of the largest wheat warehouses in the world.
An interior view of the wheat warehouse in Tacoma, back in the day when wheat from eastern Washington would arrive by train at the port, to be transferred to clipper ships taking it around the world. Photo linked to from the Foss Waterway Seaport Museum.
By the time the museum was conceived, the warehouse was falling to ruin, but it’s been extensively remodeled and is now quite the showplace, although you can tell it’s still a work in progress.
The inside of the Foss Waterway Seaport today.
When I bought my admission ticket Sunday afternoon, the woman handed me a sticker and said, “This will get you a boat ride, too.” I looked around, and asked, “where?” She laughed and told me to go back outside and down the gangway to the dock.
The Foss Waterway Seaport dock.
So I did. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, warm enough that the breeze off the water of the Thea Foss Waterway felt wonderful.
Three boats were running that afternoon, taking turns giving people a spin out on the water.
One of the two boats I didn’t ride in.The boat I rode in, The Vital Spark.
The name of the boat I rode in was The Vital Spark, and I got to sit right next to the little steam engine, which was cool. I’d never seen one running up close before (I did get to see a steam engine at the Golden Spike National Historic Site earlier this summer, but while I saw the engine, and I saw the locomotive moving down the track from a distance, I didn’t get to see the engine actually working).
The Vital Spark’s engine.
It looked and sounded just like the one in the African Queen, except much cleaner and in better shape. The captain even blew the whistles (there are three of them, in gradation from softest to loudest).
Looking out towards Commencement Bay, from the deck of The Vital Spark.
We went out to where the Thea Foss Waterway meets Commencement Bay, then turned around and came back.
The view back towards downtown Tacoma and the 11th Street/Murray Morgan Bridge. Murray Morgan was a local historian who wrote a terrific book about the history of Tacoma and environs, called Puget’s Sound.
And who is Thea Foss, you ask? Well, if you’re old enough, you may have heard of Tugboat Annie. Thea Foss is the real woman Tugboat Annie was — very loosely — based on. Mrs. Foss was a Scandinavian immigrant back in the 19th century who, with her husband, started Foss Maritime, which became the largest tugboat company on the U.S. west coast. The story goes that while Thea’s husband was away from home doing carpentry work, a disgruntled fisherman offered to sell her his boat, and when her husband came home, it turned out she’d made more money with the boat than he had with his carpentry. And so a business was born.
Part of the Foss exhibit in the museum.
The museum is well worth a visit if you visit Tacoma. And if you happen to be here on the last weekend in August, see if they’re offering steamboat rides, too!
I will post more photos of the hike I took at Sunrise a couple of weeks ago soon, but this is the one I’m posting on Senator Patty Murray’s site. In honor of the 98th birthday of the National Park Service, she’s holding a contest for photos taken in Washington’s national parks. I figure she’ll probably get dozens of pictures of the Mountain, so I’d be different.
Again, completely different. What would be perfect from my point of view and what I can find stock images of are two entirely different critters. Like I said in a comment on the previous post, what I want is a nighttime scene of a dirt road with the rear end of a pickup truck disappearing around a bend in the distance, pine trees crowding either side of the road and only visible because of headlights shining on it from the camera's point of view. But fat chance of finding that in a stock photo [wry g].
The water in this one actually does portray a scene in the book, come to think of it:
And, no, since the whole image is all of a piece (except for the clock superimposition), I cannot remove the clock from the guy's body. That's more graphics skills than I possess.
And here's the other one. Not hilly enough, but works otherwise. Sorta.
The fuzzy part where the edge of the front image (wrapped around the spine) meets the solid gray back was deliberately made fuzzy by me because of POD technology, which has a 1/8" margin for error when it comes to having the edges of images match up precisely with the folds. The fuzziness masks that.
So, do either of these covers yell "woo-woo adventure story" at you?
So. I'm almost done with the revisions for Sojourn, aka the New Thing, aka my "state trooper crashes his cruiser out in the wilds of the Cascade Mountains and ends up in the local version of Brigadoon" story (sans music).
You know what this means! Covers!
And here's what I've come up with so far. Tell me which one would make you pick the book up off the shelf, and which one wouldn't (and why for either/both would be brilliant). They are numbered for your convenience.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Note. I'm pretty sure you can't read the blurb on the back, but it's just placeholder text, not the real blurb (actually it's the blurb for Finding Home). Just so you know. Oh, and yes, the photos are comps. I will buy and pay for the piece I finally end up using.
Earlier this summer, I was persuaded (and wisely, too), to update the covers of my Time in Yellowstone series to better brand them and to make them look more professional.
Today I received the proof paper copies in the mail, and here they are!
I really had the best of intentions, but here, five days later, is the second and last day of my friend’s and my trip around the Olympic Peninsula in July.
Both of us woke very early that morning (I’m talking six a.m., which is the middle of the night for me normally), but fortunately, the little restaurant attached to the motel was open. It did breakfast about the same way it did supper — I asked the cook/waiter if I wanted a single pancake or a short stack, and he said I probably wanted a single pancake. I don’t know what this trend is for restaurants to serve pancakes the size of Mt. Rushmore, but the one I ate about half of definitely fell into this category.
We were on the road by seven. Lake Crescent is beautiful at that hour of the morning. Alas, I wasn’t awake enough to think to stop and take photos, but here’s one from a previous trip. Lake Crescent is actually quite gorgeous at any hour of the day.
Lake Crescent at sunset, on another trip.
Our main stop for the day was Hurricane Ridge, so after stopping to get gasoline, we took a right turn in the heart of Port Angeles and headed up into the mountains.
The road up to Hurricane Ridge is seventeen miles long, and gains 5242 feet in altitude, straight up from sea level, so you can imagine how winding and steep it is. There are a couple of tunnels, and lots of pull-outs to enjoy the view across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island, but you can’t really see the Olympic Mountains themselves until you’re almost to the top.
We stopped at a trailhead along the way that I always stop at. It’s usually a good place to see yellow monkeyflowers. This time there were no monkeyflowers, but there were several large clumps of larkspur, of a type I’d never seen before.
Tall larkspur at trailhead on Hurricane Ridge Rd.
From there we went on up to Hurricane Ridge itself, where we got out and walked the paved pathway up the hill to the viewpoint, where in one direction you can see back towards Vancouver Island again, and, if you turn halfway around, you can see the heart of the Olympic Mountains spread out before you.
The view north towards Vancouver Island. One of the weird things about this part of Washington is that most of the radio stations you can get reception on here are actually in Victoria, BC, Canada.The Olympic Mountains, from the trail at Hurricane Ridge.
I was a bit disappointed in the wildflowers this year. Most of them had already come and gone by the time of our visit, except in very protected, north-facing slopes.
The last of this year’s lupine in a sheltered spot at Hurricane Ridge.
But it certainly was deer season. We saw at least three or four, and after my friend called it a day (she was still sore from the walking we’d done the day before) and went to sit on the deck at the visitor center to enjoy the view, I strolled further around the paths and saw a doe with a fawn. So that was fun.
Deer at Hurricane Ridge.Doe and fawn (fawn still has spots) at Hurricane Ridge.The Olympic Mountains and the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center.
I also saw some other critters.
A butterfly along the trail.A raven prowling the bistort (the white fuzzy flowers) along the trail.
When it got to be lunchtime, we drove back down to Port Angeles and ate, and then set out on the three-hour journey back home.
And that was the second day of our trip around Olympic National Park!
Repeating History is being featured today on Becki Wilhelm Ford’s blog at http://themusingwriter.blogspot.com/2014/08/book-feature-repeating-history-time-in.html.
9:30 Sunday evening (PST). Anyone else having problems getting Facebook to load? The sites that say whether there's a problem or not seem to think it's up, but I can't get it to load.
The third week of July, a friend and I decided to make the loop around Olympic National Park, which occupies the heart of the Olympic Peninsula and is encircled by U.S. 101, which makes a horseshoe at its northernmost reach.
Neither of us had done the route in a long time — not since my nine-year-old car was brand-new, to be precise. The weather at home was hot, so the idea of heading to the coast was very attractive, too.
The only problem was making reservations for a place to stay, since the whole loop is about 360 miles, which is a very long day if you’re actually going to stop and walk around anywhere. Olympic National Park is a popular tourist attraction, plus Forks, which is a good midpoint stopping place, is still a favorite of Twilight fans, so this took some finagling with less than a week’s notice. After a few calls, though, we finally ended up reserving a room about fifteen miles outside of Forks. I’ll tell you a bit more about that in a bit.
We headed out fairly early, and, after picking up what I always think of as an insta-picnic at a Subway in Aberdeen, added some north to our west.
The road from the south to the coastal section of the park is mostly an endless progression of farmed forest and clearcuts, but once in the park itself, things improve drastically. We drove past Lake Quinault, and stopped briefly at Kalaloch, but our first goal for the day was Ruby Beach, where we ate our picnic then walked down to the beach itself.
Seastacks and creek estuary at Ruby Beach.Cobbles at Ruby Beach, some flat enough to skip. Or to stack.
It was pleasantly cool and cloudy there, which was terrific after the heat inland. The short trail leading to the cobble beach was a bit difficult for my friend, who has some mobility issues, but she made it. And the views were well worth it. We had fun trying to skip stones into the water, too. I used to be good at that, but I’m not anymore. Not enough practice, I guess.
A rather odd — I’m not sure what to call it — was interesting, too. But I have pictures, so I’ll just show you.
What someone with way too much time on their hands did at Ruby Beach.More mini-cairns.And more. This was only a very small part of the display.And more. I’d be willing to bet over a thousand of these rocks were stacked like this.
Literally hundreds of the cobbles were stacked up like this, all over the place. I have no idea who did it or why, but it was kind of cool.
Then it was on to the rainforest. The rainforest along the Hoh River thoroughly creeped me out the first time we visited here when I was a kid — I always felt like something was going to reach out and grab me. But now I appreciate it much more, although I still like the Carbon River rainforest on Mt. Rainier better. I’m not sure why.
Emerald green moss at the Hoh Rain Forest.Looking up into vine maple leaves and huge evergreens.Trees in the rainforest grow huge.This will give you some idea of the scale of these enormous trees. And don’t they look like they could reach out and grab you?
The rainforest along the various rivers running west from the Olympic Mountains to the ocean is very rare. Most rainforests are tropical, but this rainforest is in the temperate climate zone. It’s very beautiful. My friend and I got out and walked the shortest of the trails, the one called the Hall of the Mosses, which I think she might have considered to be a bit too long. Still, as you can tell from the photos, it was well worth the time and the energy to walk it.
By then it was getting to be late in the afternoon, so we drove on through Forks, which, if it weren’t for Stephenie Meyer, would just be another everyday western Washington logging town, and to our motel, which, as I’d figured, was basically a hunting lodge in the off-season, with all that implies (and some — the TV remote from heck — it doesn’t). Still, it was a place to sleep, and the attached restaurant was running a special on ribs, which we both chose. I haven’t eaten that much meat at one sitting in years.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make my annual wildflower reconnaissance up to Sunrise on Mt. Rainier. It was a beautiful day, if a bit too hot in the lowlands, the best kind of weather for escaping to the Mountain.
So I got up early, and packed a lunch, and made the two-hour drive — only to discover that the story we’d been seeing on the news about a 64-year-old man who’d gotten lost on the Wonderland Trail would have a direct effect on my day, as well as the day of a lot of other people hoping to visit the park. Not nearly the effect it was having on that poor hiker’s day, thank goodness, but the search and rescue effort had closed the parking lot at Sunrise so that the helicopters from Joint Base Lewis-McChord could use it as a landing pad.
So, now what to do?
I hadn’t driven all the way around Mt. Rainier in at least a dozen years, and to the best of my knowledge I’d never done it in a clockwise direction. I’d also been intending to go to Tipsoo Lake, just inside the eastern border of the park almost to Chinook Pass, for a long, long time. I was already headed in that direction, and had a good jump start, so, I thought, looking at my full gas gauge, why not?
Tipsoo Lake isn’t more than about ten miles to the southeast of the turnoff for Sunrise, on the road that leads to Yakima. It’s a beautiful alpine lake which, in still and sunny weather, reflects the Mountain in its water. Today wasn’t still, but the view was still pretty spectacular, as were the early wildflowers. I was surprised to still see snow on the ground, too, which made me wonder if I was really missing anything by not going to Sunrise — I’m not all that fond of hiking in the snow.
Mt. Rainier from Tipsoo Lake.Snow on the shores of Tipsoo Lake.A pasqueflower at Tipsoo Lake.A whole field of avalanche lilies and false hellebore at Tipsoo Lake.And a close-up of an avalanche lily or two.
After an enjoyable hour on the footpath encircling the lake, I headed south — and downhill a few thousand feet — to Ohanapecosh, at the southeast corner of the park. Ohanapecosh is back down in the deep, lush forests that surround Mt. Rainier, and a trail winding through them is appropriately named the Grove of the Patriarchs. The grove itself is on an island in the middle of the river, reached by crossing a sturdy but fragile-feeling suspension bridge, which gave me the weird sensation of still feeling like I was on it even after I was back on dry land.
The Grove of the Patriarchs trail.Across the Ohanapecosh River suspension bridge on the Grove of the Patriarchs trail.Sun glowing through vine maple leaves.This gentleman was posing for his companion, but I thought he made a good marker for the scale of these trees.A gorgeous old stump.
From Ohanapecosh I drove up Stevens Canyon, which is a spectacular drive clinging to the sides of cliffs and passing through avalanche chutes.
Mt. Rainier from the lower end of Stevens Canyon.Looking back east down Stevens Canyon.
The Stevens Canyon road leads up to Paradise where I had planned to walk the Nisqually Vista Trail before heading home. However, when I got there, I discovered that Paradise was still snow-covered, in the middle of July! Normally the snow is almost gone by then, but we had a very late winter this past year, and a very heavy snowpack, and it was still snowing up there in May.
So, as I said, not being a fan of hiking in the snow (and the main reason I’d wanted to hike the trail being wildflowers), I decided to head on home.
Not exactly the day I’d planned, but I’m still glad I did it. It’s fun to explore different parts of familiar places, and Mt. Rainier is just about as familiar to me as my own back yard.
I’m just really sorry they never found that poor hiker.
Just out of curiosity -- is there such a thing as a book plotting method that doesn't start with "brainstorm as many scenes as you can come up with, then juggle them till they're in the right order"? Everything I've been able to find in the last twenty years of writing seems to boil down to that, and that's not the way my brain works. I would love to do more planning so I don't waste so much time, but that's not the way for me to go, thanks.
After four novels, I really want my writing time to be more efficient, but this isn't helping...
It’s a virtual book fair, and it’s taking place over on Facebook. Dozens of indie authors showing our wares, with excerpts and giveaways and even virtual party food.
I didn’t think marketing my book could be fun, but I’m actually rather enjoying myself over there.
Come stick your head in the door. I promise we won’t bite…
It takes five hours to make the — relatively — straight shot from Spokane on home. If you don’t stop anywhere. I’ve driven this stretch so many times I’m pretty sure Kestrel and I could do it in our sleep.
It’s not like we’d be missing a whole lot, either, at least for the first three hours. It doesn’t take more than about a dozen miles headed west from Spokane before you’re out of the pine forest and into the high desert, alternating between irritated croplands and plains of sagebrush.
On the bright side, you do start getting glimpses of The Mountain (aka Mt. Rainier, aka how I know I’m really almost home) from as far away as Ritzville, about sixty miles southwest of Spokane, given decent weather conditions, which include clear weather on both sides of the Cascades.
I had decent conditions two weeks ago today, and here’s the photographic proof.
Mt. Rainier from just west of Ritzville, Washington, a distance of roughly 160 miles as the crow flies.
After I passed Ellensburg, and I-90 turned northwest again towards Snoqualmie Pass, I got this nice shot of what I think might be Mt. Baker as well, although I wouldn’t swear to it. The shape’s right, anyway.
What I think is Mt. Baker, from I-90 west of Ellensburg, Washington.
And that was the last photo I took on this trip. I climbed up over Snoqualmie Pass and got stuck in construction traffic (they’re redoing the interstate over the pass, which involves taking things down to one lane all the time and closing the highway altogether at night so they can blast rocks), but I still made it home by about 2:30.
My condo hadn’t burned down and the cats were still alive (and shot out the back door like furry little cannons when I opened it), and, while this trip was too short, it was good for my soul.
I was gone for ten days and drove roughly 2500 miles. My father would have approved
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