It's Certainly NOT Texas

As our time up here in the 'Great Northwest' - yes, that's what they call it, dwindles, I wanted to write some observations about Western Washington. As the country becomes more and more homogenized, I've been tickled to find that while a Target up here is just like a Target everywhere else, there are some regional differences that stick up and out and massage my funny bone as well as my appreciation for this culture.


First, let's talk Mount Baker. Talking about Mount Baker is the equivalent of talking about the weather in Texas. When we first arrived, people would invariably say: "Have you seen Mount Baker?" I was so tempted to say, Well, yes, I do take my eyes off the ground occasionally." These people have a justifiable if maddening obsession with 'their mountain'. It is very beautiful, and it naturally draws your eye. Now, depending where you live, in Western Washington, YOUR mountain could be Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount Sauk, Mount Baker or the Pickett Range, or any other dozen of visible mountains I could name for the next three lines of type, but you get the idea.

People say things like: "Mount Baker's really looking good today as if the mountain got up that morning and decided to wear a new outfit." Best diplomatic answer, is "Yes, I just love seeing it." What I sometimes think is: "No, I liked the vintage Jackie O it had on yesterday." As winter has approached, the Mount Baker conversation centers around snow - "Well, Mount Baker got dusted last night." I always envision God with his can of Snow Pledge merrily spraying. This "isn't our mountain great" conversation, tends to stall a bit on days where the clouds hang low. Then the talk switches to Burlington Hill. (Yes, there's a big hill on the edge of town - think Cedar Hill in Duncanville, Texas, or Berry Hill in Tulsa, Oklahoma.) You can always see the big brown/green pimple, which is what I'm reminded of. It is good for cell phone towers and I do like the lighted cross on the top of it.

Living in a farm valley has been like living in a foreign country. It hasn't been as radical as living in New Orleans was, but it's a close second. When you enter Skagit County, there's a sign that looks like an interstate sign which announces you can get InFARMation at AM 1630. I tuned in to see what was offered, and I was treated to the September Farm Report. Now, it's November, and they are STILL running the September Farm Report. It is scintillating, but I need my farm news updated. For those that have to know - the potato crop was down this year as was the corn crop because of lousy June weather. The real blow was there were no peas planted in Skagit County for the first time in 100 years because the pea processor went out of business. However, to everyone's relief, the apples, cherries and berries were A-OK as were the 40 kinds of pumpkins grown here. I personally think that 40 kinds of pumpkins is overkill, but as the Concrete Queen, who am I to judge?

An offshoot of farm living is the amount of local produce that flows out into the grocery stores, the Food Coop, a locally owned food store cooperative that sells all local produce as well as those baffling brands of stuff you've never heard of but know are good for you. The local food especially flows out into the restaurants. We have one blip of chain restaurants - they huddle for protection around the cute little minuscule Mall. The rest of the restaurants vie with one another for who can serve the most locally grown food. We have organic, range raised, hormone free, antibiotic free, pesticide free, food out the wazoo here, and is it ever yum. Since food is actually SEASONAL - what a concept -, you can't find strawberries in November in these restaurants - instead it's 40 kinds of pumpkin. Just kidding......well, sort of.

If we're going to talk about food, then let's talk coffee. Yes, it's true. This part of the USA is coffee crazy. These are the folks who have infected the rest of the country. The Starbucks phenomena is well documented, but did you know that Starbucks actually boosts local coffee kiosks? A coffee kiosk is a very small free standing building ideally with asphalt on both sides for double drive thru where you can buy a bazillion different hot and cold drinks including every coffee concoction you can imagine as well as the Zen tea thing. What they can't seem to make up here is a decent glass of iced tea. Nobody drinks iced tea. Even these local restaurants who pride themselves on the quality and taste of their food serve that horrible fountain generated iced tea that has that slightly carbonated aftertaste. After trying and trying to get a decent glass of iced tea, I gave up and now I drink weirdo coffee drinks like everyone else. Here's a list of my favorite kiosks within a 10 mile radius of my house: Whidbey Island Coffee (closest thing to a chain - have at least 3 free standing buildings I know about), Coffee Pronto (only thing people seem to want FAST up here is coffee), Jitterbugs (coffee jitters have replaced ragweed allergy as the most common ailment here), Latte 'Da (way too cutesy - but it has a big Maxwell house type cup outside of it), Beans a Brewin' (just to let you know there's no instant coffee in this part of the country - it gets stopped at the state border), BIG FOOT Java (I have no idea what this name means), Expresso Connection (we like our coffee on steroids, thank you), I Wanna Moka (coffee and chocolate - what's not to like?), and drum roll, please - it's not the name that got me Javazone - it's their slogan: Warm Up Your Trigger Finger (must be transplanted Texans, don't you think?)

Before we leave the farm topic, let me just say that this is an equal opportunity farming community. We don't discriminate. If you can grow it, by God, we'll welcome you into our farming community. We have seafood farms - yes, the underwater farms that grows shellfish and oysters. We have mushroom farms - love the name: The Two Sisters Mushroom Farm. We have flower farms - I really want to see this valley in April. We have berry farms - strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries. We have tree farms - not just Christmas trees either because another peculiarity up here is the propensity to multi-task your plants. Some people landscape with trees. Forget bushes. Forget flowers - just plant trees in an interesting configuration in your front yard. This seems a little short sighted to me because what is a pleasing configuration now could be a nightmare in 20 years. My favorite two little multitasking plants are: (1) the pencil thin evergreen tree that is used for fencing. They are planted in rows and serve the same purpose as chain link or board. You can actually go out and buy them from tree farms. (I'll take 40 feet of 6' high - can't stand seeing those neighbors anymore.) This little evergreen is always planted in multiples and always in straight rows. The second multitasker I like which is also a modified fence is the popular tree. Now having grown up in Oklahoma and traveled thru West Texas, I've seen rows of popular trees planted as windbreaks, but I've never seen them with 10 foot diameter trunks and 100 feet tall. Now, this is a windbreak! You can always spot the old ones - just look for the turn of the century house or barn - the poplars marching down the landscape next to those buildings are guaranteed to be the ginormous version.

As an Oklahoma girl - I grew up in the the land of Indians (literally), I have felt at home up here because of the number of native American tribes. The names though are so foreign. In Washington you have the Snohomish, the Stillaguamish, the Snoqualmie, the Sauk, and the Sualitte. The Makah is a relief after all those 'S's". What seems to be left of these people are three things: The names of rivers, casinos, and artists.

I have one final bone to pick. It's the only thing about living up here which has DRIVEN ME NUTS!!!! It's the weather. Now, everyone is thinking: "We told you, Jan, that you would hate all that rain." WRONG. It's not the rain - which is actually very pleasant, and not that all pervasive. It's the lack of weather prediction. I'm looking out the patio door into the bright sunshine as I write this - but the PREDICTION and the little picture on my computer is for non-stop rain. The forecast changes every 12 hours. Sometimes I think it changes every hour on the hour. This is absolute torture. I want to know when it's going to rain. I want to know when the sun is going to shine. I want to see that clearly defined front with that little red or blue line marching across the weatherman's green screen. This capricious weather forecasting is making me gnash my teeth. I don't like surprise weather, and that's all they have up here.

Oh, I could go on and on: Sloughs (pronounced 'slew') are the Washington form of canals that connect natural waterways, multi-variety evergreens, trees that in Texas are bushes (cedar and holly for a couple), clear plastic baby stroller covers with baby INSIDE, the potato store, and the death wish motorcyclists and bicyclists. Oh, and there's the art work in one town depicting the famous people of the town of Anacortes for past 100 years - scattered like cardboard cut-outs stapled to the buildings. There's the Loggerodeo with the results of the chain saw competitions over the years scattered on main street of Sedro-Woolley. The snow goose migration, the glass sculptures, and the flowers in such abundance that no one seems to appreciate. However, that's enough entertainment for one blog.

If you want to see the pictures that accompany this one, click on the embedded web site: http://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/WashingtonBizzarities?authkey=Gv1sRgCOLLuIShgO2M7gE##

From Picasso to Planes to Rocks

This will be my last travelogue written about western Washington since we have less than 20 days before we leave on a meandering, leisurely drive down the northwestern coast on our way to our next destination: Arizona. We were so fortunate to be here when the Seattle Museum of Art was hosting a major exhibit from the Picasso Museum in Paris. Picasso was such a successful artist at such a young age, and he was also so prolific that his "estate" is actually a museum which is a collection of not only his own work that he kept, but also the work of other artists he admired and BOUGHT during his lifetime. His museum holds 50,000 pieces of art. It's being renovated, and 150 pieces of Picasso's artwork is being exhibited in limited locales for the next couple of years. That's the exhibit we got to see.

Picasso lived to be 91 years old, dying in the early 1970's. He worked until a few months prior to his death. His life was colorful and spanned several great art movements, some of which he started. Most people remember him for his cubism - pictures made out of planes and angles. In fact, the Fort Worth Modern owns one of the pictures from this period. What most people don't realize is the cubism period, a movement he invented with George Braque, was a very small sliver of his career. While most artists with any longevity don't stray very far from what seized their imagination when they were forming their artistic vision, Picasso was just the opposite - constantly changing his style and approach. One of the amusing aspects of the exhibit was the interpretation that every time he changed the love of his life (and he became entralled with several women over the years), the new relationship changed his art.

The exhibit was an appealing combination of great pieces of art together with quotes from Picasso written on the walls and audio commentary that helped me understand the flow of his work. One of my favorite quotes was: "It took me 4 years to learn to paint like Rembrandt, and a lifetime to learn to paint like a child." The exhibit was breathtaking, and I was exhausted by the end of it. Picasso was an overwhelming presence on whatever stage he chose to leap onto - and I could see why he was able to sustain his place in the cutthroat world of art. To be successful in your own lifetime, it takes more than luck, more than talent - it takes a supreme egotism. That quality was still so obvious and, he's been DEAD for 40 years. I can't imagine how much more magnetic he must have been alive.

We perused the rest of the museum casually until I came across this piece which stopped me in my tracks. This is by a Korean artist (Do Hu Suh) who had 40,000 dog tags created and stamped with nonsensical words and numbers. Then he created this piece of art from those dog tags. Isn't it magnificent? It's about 7 feet tall and the expanse on the floor is about 20 feet across in diameter. I thought this piece was amazing on so many levels. It was astonishing and at the same time thought provoking.

Seattle, or should I say Everett and Renton, is the hub of airplane manufacture since Boeing has been located here since the early 1930's. About that time the US government first contracted to fly the mail around the country instead of transporting it by train. Wilhelm Boeing was one of the first pilots to get a mail contract and that business was the foundation of Boeing. It quickly evolved into building passenger airplanes. (One interesting fact: Boeing was so convinced that people wanted to fly instead of take the train that he always insisted there be space for a few passengers on his mail planes. Those early passengers usually had to sit in what we would consider today the cargo hold on lumpy mail bags. He was a visionary, though, considering we fly today almost at the drop of a hat.

Today Boeing offers a factory tour through the largest building I've ever been in. This building is where they actually build planes. The guide told us that you could take Disneyland (the amusement park) plus twelve acres of parking and it would easily fit inside this building where planes are built. The doors are the size of football fields. They building was approximately 11 stories tall. I mean impressive. They use three wheeled bikes to ferry parts and messages around the building. They work 24/7 and the plant is considered to be its own town - with police and fire departments, dry cleaners, grocery stores, and other amenities. They have their own airport since they fly in parts needed for the manufacture of the airplanes. The tour guide joked that it wasn't uncommon to see a two seater Cessna getting ready to take off with a huge 787 jumbo jet behind it waiting for its takeoff. There are numerous restaurants inside the manufacturing facility, some of which we could see on the edges of the assembly floor. There are doctors, nurses and even a small hospital. 30,000 people work at the Everett plant with an equal number working at the Renton plant - thus Boeing employs over 50,000 people in this area with a plant on both the northern and southern ends of the Seattle suburbs.

It was hypnotic to watch airplanes being built. They have different styles of assembly lines depending on what type plane is being built. (Stationary vs. moving) They have just designed a new plane - the 787 which is built with composite material. The new material makes it lighter but tougher, and the new plane has a redesigned engine which is so quiet that we watched a new 787 coming in for a landing going right over us, and you could barely hear the engine. It's also very fuel efficient. The wing has also been redesigned and it swoops up at the tip. It gives the impression that this plane just loves to fly.

I like airplanes, and they are an intregal partoof the history of 20th century United States. They did a nice job with their museum. Here's a picture of some of the hanging planes in the museum. They were just rabid about NO CELL PHONES or CAMERAS on the tour, so the museum was the only place you could take pictures. It's easy to see why - on the tour you literally stand above all assembly action, and it would be easy to photograph. We didn't feel like a visit to this part of the country would be complete if we didn't tour Boeing, and it was worth the trip.

We've discovered that November in western Washington is pretty sleepy. It feels like everyone goes into slow motion and almost hibernation. All the summer activities are definitely shut down. I noticed that when the first snows began falling on the mountains, everybody and everything just halted. There was not only a definite shift in the weather into winter, but also the people changed. We also saw the last of the dahlias this week - no more weekly fresh flowers in the house. My last bouquet has about 2 days left on it. I'm going to miss those.

We did attend a Rock and Gem Show in Sedro-Woolley last Saturday. Rocks are big here. Lots of people collect them since there are some interesting ones - amethyst geodes, embedded fossils, and a huge variety of speciality rocks. One of the things I've noticed in the small towns I've been exposed to is that their local clubs not only use their common interest to socialize, but they also use their clubs and societies to support their communities. The show we went to had a purpose: They raise money for college scholarships. The Sedro-Woolley Rock and Gem Society is giving two college scholarships this year for kids who want to study geology. They had a great turn-out especially when you consider the town has a population of about 2000 people.

My last pictures are of the holly TREE that's across from the Burlington Library. I was amazed the other day when we walked over and I passed this tree. The picture on the right is the entire tree and the picture on the left is a close up of the leaves and berries. It's gigantic, and in perfect tune with the upcoming Christmas season. Isn't this tree beautiful?

Thanksgiving

As Thanksgiving approaches, that unique American holiday that is common ground for all Americans. This holiday is all encompassing and all accepting. Since we are so diverse both ethnically and politically and just about every other way you can think of, it's refreshing to realize that we all hold this holiday in common. It's simple - a day for thanks.

While I've always said you can line up 10 Americans and ask a question and you will get 10 different answers. I suspect that if you ask this question, "What do you think of when you think of Thanksgiving?" - at least 9 people would say 'food'. (There's always one perverse person, that's why I didn't said 10 people would say 'food'.) I digress. My point is this. While you begin to contemplate what you are going to eat, and what you are going to make, and what you are going to buy to take to Aunt Fanny's house, please take a few minutes and contemplate how Thanksgiving must seem to that one group of Americans who can't/don't celebrate the holiday of food and thanks. You know who I mean - the hungry ones among us.

I've found two websites that will allow you to stand up and do something about what I consider to be a national disgrace. How in God's name does the wealthiest county on earth tolerate a single member of their citizenry being hungry? I can't imagine anyone who thinks it's some child's 'choice' to be hungry. I'm not going to cite statistics - you all should know them by now - Lord knows I've talked about them enough. I'm just going to list these two websites and you can do as you please. My friends will be clicking.

http://www.kraftrecipes.com/huddleforhunger/home.aspx

http://www.hungeractioncenter.org/newsletters/1010.aspx

Happy Thanksgiving.

Rare Sunny November Day in the Northern Cascades

Today we had the last day of three days of sunshine. This many consecutive days of sun is very unusual up here at this of the year. It was interesting to hear people commenting on the joy of "November sunshine". Everyone was talking about the wonderful weather, and everyone was finagling ways to get outside and stay outside. It was actually 66 degrees yesterday afternoon. When we saw the forecast, we immediately began planning outdoor activities. One of them was to return to the lower elevations of the Northern Cascades and do some easy short hiking before the area snows moved down into lower elevations and closed the main road through these mountains.

Snow has begun at elevations over 4000 feet, and one day a couple of weeks ago we looked up at the mountains that ring the farmland valleys and found new visible snow. It was as if the mountains had gone into their closets, found their pure white winter coats and put them on. The change was that obvious, that startling, and that sudden. We realized that if we didn't take advantage of these sunny days with relatively high temperatures that the opportunity to revisit this area before we left Washington was going to be gone.

I think the most interesting scenery I saw today was a trail of cedars. Now, Washington cedar trees are not Texas hill country cedar trees. Some of the oldest ones I saw today were a couple of hundred feet high, and several feet in diameter. It was almost a disconnect for me to look down at the ground and see the cedar needles on the ground that look exactly like the needles off the cedar BUSHES in Texas. In Washington, you can't even put your arms around the trunks of the cedars, and the cedar branches start so high up that you have to look straight up directly up into the sky. I loved this trail because it had SIGNS. I love trails that have informational signs. Today I got a bunch of trees identified, and learned what happens after an area of forest experiences a fire. I won't bore you with all I learned, but it was the best kind of trail. All the maples and other deciduous trees have shed their leaves, so while walking this trail, our feet made that shush, shush sound as our feet shuffled through the fallen leaves. And it smelled like autumn today - crisp and clean with wiffs of decomposing leaves.

Another interesting facet of today was we got to see Newhalem which is a town founded in 1922 in the middle of the Cascade Mountains. It was built to house the work force that was imported to build a series of three dams on the Skagit River. (Yes, this is 'our' Skagit River that runs through Burlington.) I found out that this river starts at the Canadian border and empties into the Puget Sound. Today Newhalem is one street of 'company houses', a general store, a community center, and a resident artist who has designed a 'power temple' inside the town park. There's a restored locomotive as a tourist magnet. The preferred landscape method in front of the houses is to use different kinds of trees in interesting patterns. This place is a bizarre combination of tourist attraction and people who actually work and live in the middle of this wilderness to run the power plants and maintain the dams built in the 1920's. North Cascade National Park envelopes these dams and this town. This 'town' is less than a mile long and sandwiched between Highway 20 (one of the few roads up there) and the Skagit River. They've built a great suspension bridge over the river and it was super fun to walk across.

It is so quiet in these mountains once you get off that one main highway, it's instantly relaxing. There is so much vegetation that the oxygen levels are elevated and the air up here makes hiking such a pleasure. We did one trail through an old growth forest down to the river. As an afterthought, we took a 300 foot boardwalk trail right beside the Visitor's Center (which is already closed for the winter) and stumbled into a view of the Pickett mountain range. This is the most wild area of the Northern Cascades and is utterly without any trails. This range is a string of mountains that are about 7000 feet tall. These mountains weren't even traversed by alpine climbers until 1963! Even today, only the most experienced climbers go into this part of the park. If you want to see all the pictures from this day trip, click on the following link and scroll through the pictures until you see River Loop Trail - that's where today's pictures start.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2010Tour5CascadeMountains?authkey=Gv1sRgCOGn9vDHlquLgwE#

This was a great day. We've almost into countdown of the days we have left up here now. We are leaving at the end of the month with extremely mixed feelings. I'm so glad we got to enjoy the Northern Cascades one more time. I think we are getting ready to experience the typical autumn northwestern rainy weather - the next 10 days' weather forecast - no hint of any sunshine whatsoever, and forecast of 'showers' each day with precipitation chances ranging from 30% to 60%. It will be a quiet, soft intermittent rain not raging thunderstorms with accompanying lightening that we get in Texas. This is a part of living up here, and I'm eager to see what it's like for every day to be overcast, cloudy and with rain a real possibility. I'm wondering what adjustments that the residents make to accomodate the weather. It will be fascinating to watch for those accomodations. I'm hoping the rainy climate is going to make me appreciative of the Arizona climate we'll be rolling into in December.

Did You Ever Have Just that Perfect Day?

Have you noticed that some days are just better than others? We had the perfect day this week which was a microcosm of everything we love about being up here in the Northwest. First and foremost, the weather was absolutely perfect: cool and sunny with a blue sky dotted with snow white puffy clouds. You know, the kind of sky you see in picture postcards. We've quickly learned that when nature gives you a sunny day up here in October, it's your duty to spend it outside. Drake loaded the bikes on top of the car, and off we went.

First stop was another bike trail that is just north of us that skirts Samish Bay. While the trail was not a good as we had hoped - we only did about 2 miles - the scenery was wonderful. On of the surprising aspects about the fall season is that there really isn't any 'color'. There are a few yellow trees among the evergreens, but it isn't the multi-color extravaganza that I sort of expected. I guess that treat is for next fall in New England.

We decided to go into Fairhaven which is the old part of Bellingham and is filled with Victorian houses and buildings that are the remains of the salmon canning industry that shriveled up and died around the turn of the century. This part of Bellingham is now where the art crowd lives. The shops are cute and there are a lot of galleries - including he Good Earth Pottery Gallery which handles around 50 potters from the Northwest. Well, I was in heaven. We spent about an hour in that place picking out some gems that I couldn't live without. Fairhaven also sits right on Bellingham Bay and they have a wonderful walk along the harbor which includes a boardwalk right out over the water. A leftover remnant of the salmon canning factories is this brown lump in the bay - which we originally thought was a big rock. Instead of being a rock - it's actually sheets of tin leftover from making cans. The companies just pushed the tin sheet remnants out their dock doors and gradually, they fused together to make a big lump of tin in the harbor.

This entire area is scattered with Native Indian Reservations - the Swinomish, the Snohomish, the Lummi to name a few. They all have their own casinos, so Drake has been able to indulge his love of playing blackjack. We dropped into the Lummi Casino for an hour - casinos are great places to find clean bathrooms when you're traveling. We wound up winning $38 - not a fortune, but it paid for lunch at the Colophon Cafe in Fairhaven - one of the many restaurants up here that base their menu on locally grown food. Drake has become something of a connoisseur of salmon sandwiches. My speciality is fish and chips and micro brews.

As the day wound down, we realized that there was going to be a terrific sunset. That's another surprising thing - they don't have that many great sunsets up here. There's a local highway called "Chuckanut Drive" - isn't that a fun name - I love to say it out loud. Anyway, it winds south along the shore between Bellingham and the Skagit Valley, and there is a restaurant we had marked down as someplace we wanted to try. The Oyster Bar sits right on Samish Bay, high up on a bluff, and we arrived just in time for the sunset and a lovely dinner. Part of the 'farming community' that we live in not only farms on land, but they farm the water too. The Taylor family raises shellfish - including oysters (huge ones - each about the size of a chicken tender). Again, this restaurant uses as many local foods as possible, so not only were the oysters homegrown, but so were the potatoes, and all the vegetables on the plates.

Speaking of the farming community, I have loved living in a farming valley that claims to be some of the richest farmland in the USA. This is a partial view of the Skagit Valley. There are mainly family farms here, some of which go back five generations. They raise 90% of the red potatoes consumed in the country - at least that's what the InFARMation radio station claims (AM1630). They also raise berries, vegetables, flowers, specialty meats (like bison), and some wheat and hay to feed their dairy cattle and there's a thriving cheese industry. There's a real movement here to preserve farmland.

I think the recession hit just in time. Drake jokes that every house is for sale here, but the truth is that you can see lots of 'second homes' and rural farmettes up for sale now. Most of them have been built in the past 5 years on farmland. We wanted to buy some cider (both hard and soft) and we only had to drive 2 miles from our apartment to find both. Here's a great picture of the produce shop of the Gordon Skagit Farm - it's 3rd generation and has been in the family for 3 generations. I had no idea there were so many varieties of squash and pumpkin (about 40 types were for sale here - including heirloom varieties that have been raised since the 19th century). We got our soft cider here as well as a small pumpkin to decorate our doorway for Halloween. Then, we motored another mile down the road to the Tulip Winery which makes hard cider in addition to wine. Boy, is that stuff tasty - about 7% alcohol volume. We are currently trying two types of hard cider. It's funny to drink something that tastes like apples with a kick.

The final perfection up here for me is the flowers. I send out my 'weekly flower picture' to a few friends who I know love flowers. I buy fresh flowers (dahlias) for the house every week. They are so common up here that the price is $.20 a stem. Here's a picture of this week's flower arrangement. Cheers!

We've still having a great time, and next week it's a trip into Seattle to see the 150 original Picasso paintings and drawings from Paris on exhibit at the Seattle Museum of Art. We'll probably make it a big day trip with other stops. Until then.........oh, and GO RANGERS!

Deception Pass

Deception Pass is a really ominous title, isn't it? Not to worry - it's a real place not a state of mind. A little geography/history lesson to start. In 1792 George Vancouver, a British sea captain/explorer sailed into this area and promptly started exploring and naming mountains, bays, islands and pretty much anything he could chart. He gave names to 75 geographical places overriding Spanish names which were already in common usage. Of course, this was the third time around for the naming. Those pesky Indians already had names for everything. Then the Spanish sailed up from California and they re-named everything. However, it's Vancouver's names which have mostly survived and appear on the maps although the Indians got to keep minor rivers - like the Snohomish, for instance. Most of Vancouver's names came from his crew. Puget Sound - after his young lieutenant Peter Puget. If you had any rank at all in the crew of Discovery (the name of Vancouver's ship), you got something named for you - including the beloved Mount Baker, named for Vancouver's third lieutenant. (Mount Baker is the snow covered mountain that the Skagit County crowd is so proud of - and with reason, it's a beautiful mountain.) Plus, Vancouver did a little brown nosing - Mount Hood is named for one of his superiors.

One of the missions that Vancouver wanted to fulfill, and thus cement his place in history, was to find a waterway passage big enough for ships which could be sailed eastward into the land mass. Since trade (and thus wealth) traveled via water during this time period, this was a major objective of any exploratory voyage. Now we're back to Deception Pass. Think of an hourglass with bulbous portions of the glass being bays and the restricted neck being a passage between the two bays. Initially, Vancouver was certain he had found that inward passage, but he was DECEIVED, and what initially looked so promising turned out to be a narrow neck between two large bays - thus the name of the pass: Deception Pass. The pass is really quite impressive, and it was easy to see why Vancouver felt tricked.

Until the 1930's you had to use a ferry to travel between Fidalgo Island and Whidbey Island - the two islands the pass dissects. These are two islands that are part of a scattered island barrier chain along the Washington coast. Then the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) arrived and built a bridge as well as a park. Parts of their work is still visible. You can walk across this bridge - along with the 16,000 cars that traverse it daily. There's a pedestrian walkway on both sides, and you access the 'other' side by traipsing down 3 flights of stairs , crossing underneath this massive bridge, and walking up 3 flights of stairs on the other side - it's quite a sight.

We hiked the coastline across from the bridge up and down the little hills and along the coastline. We saw the bridge from across the bay, and when we went onto the bridge, we saw the hiking trails we had just came from as we stood on the bridge. This was a terrific hike for me - not too much elevation change, but heavily forested with breakout views of the shoreline and bays. The 50's temperatures are perfect for hiking. We've had a surprising number of non-rainy days. There's been lots and lots of sunshine which I didn't expect at this time of the year. We completed our day with a meal at the Fidalgo Drive-In which specializes in seafood sandwiches and root beer floats. Yum.

We also had another experience here at the Skagit Wildlife Refuge - think bird sanctuary - specifically for migrating birds. We discovered a flock of about 10,000 snow geese resting in the sanctuary. Now, they do allow hunting in parts of the sanctuary, and there is a constructed series of dikes that hunters with dogs can stand on and shoot birds - like ducks and geese. The hunters aren't allowed off the dikes, but they send their dogs out into the marsh to retrieve the birds they have shot. You can also hike the dikes -- but it's recommended that you wear extremely bright clothing, so you don't get SHOT. I find it interesting that the snow geese were only located in the parts of the Refuge where there was no hunting. Who says birds can't learn? It was an amazing sight - the fields were bright green and the birds mostly snow white. It was also pretty funny that directly across the road from the Refuge was a farm that was raising free range turkeys and chickens. This is one of those deals where the picture is worth a thousand words.

We've also been biking. I love the rails to trails bike paths. I don't have to ride along a street, believe me, I'm risking my life to do that. These r/t bike paths follow old rail lines and usually cut through fields or woods or follow ridge lines. That means the scenery is great. Plus, since the paths are usually paved, the ride is smooth, and we are going to conceivably be able to ride in the rain. We'll see. We've found one within about a 30 minute drive of the house that is 23 miles long.

Our time here is winding down. I'm surprised how much I'm going to hate leaving here. I still think we haven't scratched the surface here of everything there is to do. One thing I'm definitely doing before we leave is to head into Seattle to see the 150 original artworks by Picasso. We will leave here on November 30th and have a leisurely drive down the northwestern coast sightseeing, biking and hiking as we go. We are starting to plan our itinerary. We will be in Arizona around the 15th of December. I will send out an address that you can use for all those wonderful xmas cards you will be sending me. Getting mine done may be a little problematic, but I'm sure I'll rise to the occasion.

Rangers, Rangers, We are the Rangers

Drake would officially like to welcome all the 'johnny come latelys' to the Texas Ranger Bandwagon. We have been on this particular vehicle for 20 years (literally). Those of you who have known us for MORE than 20 years know his/our love affair with baseball has been a part of our relationship for 40 years. It actually started when we used to attend OU baseball games. Drake even took the Theory of Baseball at Oklahoma University, and you can imagine how much the 20 year old math/physics geek fit into THAT class. He even kept the textbook from the baseball course (yes, the class had a textbook) until last year when he passed it on to Terry McGovern in order to help him coach high school baseball. I guarantee you that it's one textbook that wasn't outdated because the fundamentals, as baseball people like to call them, haven't really changed too noticeably in 100 years. That statement divides the baseball worshippers from the baseball heretics. I'll leave Drake to write the blog that explains why baseball is the one true religion.

Then we followed baseball in Houston for 15 years being devoted Astro fans. We even had season tickets for the last few years we lived there. We continued to follow the Astros when we lived in New Orleans, but this was our biggest baseball desert. There was no local team, and baseball just wasn't on the radar in that town. However, we did attend exhibition games the Astros played in the Superdome. I even got on local TV during one game because the sports interviewer had never seen anyone in the stands keep score during a game. (I always keep score at every baseball game I attend in person - and I have the scorebooks to prove it going back 30 years.)

Let's go back to the Ranger Bandwagon. Drake (and by extension, me) have been loyal fans through many, many seasons where, shall we say, expectations were not met. Some seasons were effectively over when people were lighting firecrackers, while others died in the heat of a Texas August when the field at the ballpark can reach 120 degrees. (One reason baseball players never have to diet is they actually lose weight under those conditions.) Some past Ranger teams managed to hang on until Labor Day. (Personally, I feel that if your team is still in contention in the first week of September that you've gotten your money's worth for the season.) That's why this season has been particularly thrilling - not only winning the division but doing it in a runaway fashion after having been overtaken, and stomped by the hated Angels and by the crappy Athletics in way too many past years. For those of you who watched the fifth game of the American League Division Series with Tampa Bay, the young phenom shortstop, Elvis Andrus, scoring in the first few minutes of the game epitomizes this team. They are mostly young (Elvis is only 22, as is our rookie closer, Neftali), risk taking, and everyone on the team plays full out all the time. I should mention there is a test before you can climb onto the bandwagon: You have to be able to define THE CLAW and ANTLERS.

Finally, I predicted this team would go to the World Series after the first Spring Training game. I actually, turned to Drake and said, "Mark this - you heard it here first, this team is going to the World Series." Of course, he thought I was just being wildly optimistic as any true fan is during the bucolic days of Spring Training. However, here we are, only 4 wins away from that goal. At this point, if you are a true fan, it doesn't matter at this point - every game is gravy. And, oh boy, are we ever riding on the gravy train with biscuit wheels.