August 1st. Theme "Night"

I took this picture last month and since I seem to have a hard time taking night shots I was overjoyed with this one.

to see what the night looks like all around the world click here:

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

True colors for Sky Watch

I cannot see the true sunset from my house because I live up too high and there are trees all around. So the night before last night the clouds and sky above my house were turning pink tinged so I knew it would be a great sunset. So Bingo and I jumped into the car and drove down the hill to a spot I like to watch the sunset and the sight was beautiful. Glorious and breathtaking. Awesome colors. So here ya go!

If you would like to see sky shots from all around the world or you would like to participate go to www.skyley.blogspot.com. thank you

BTW: Don't forget theme day on August 1st. NIGHT!

Too Hot

It has ween triple digit hot here in Western Washington. Something we have never had before. Record setting time. We do have AC but our power was out most of the day yesterday---never did find out why. So the inside temp was near the outside temp. So I guess I can say we DON'T have AC. I am doing a rain dance. MB

Sanderlings on Camano

More Sanderlings taken at Driftwood Shores on Camano Island. I like 'em.

Photo update............................

I chose Silvana Sunset and Sanderlings. I will find out Friday how they were voted. I will let you know if you are interested.
Last year I won 2 blues. So...............................MB

Choices, choices

I am entering some photos I have taken the past year, in the Stanwood Fair. I can only enter two Photos. So out of the close to jillion photos I have taken this year I had a heck of a time. So here are 3 I framed. What do you think. HELP!!!!!
I framed them myself with frames I found here or even there. Nothing professional.

1. The Skagit Valley with Mt. Baker and Snow Geese
2. Sunset in Silvana I took this past Saturday
3. A flock of Sanderling taking off from a beach on Camano Island

Cucumber Harvest

Cucumber harvesting is fun to watch. I do wish i had better pictures. So bear with me. the huge red machines suck up the cucumber vines and separate the cukes from the vines. The vines shoot out the sides and the cucumber goes up into the hopper. When the hopper is full the white truck pulls along side the red machine and it tips the hopper and all the cucumbers transfer from hopper to truck on a conveyer belt and when the wite truck is full off it goes to the plant and the cycle continues until the field is bare. See the cucumbers shooting into the hopper in the second picture.
The tiny pickling cukes are still hand picked.


Who could of thought of how to separate the cucumber from the vine without mangling it. Amazing. MB

Scenes from Silvana Country Fair

Silvana, Population 97, is a small farming town just south of Stanwood. They have their one day country fair every year and it is jam packed. It is mainly a 4-H and FFA event. There are cow, pigs, goats, chickens etc--just what you would find on a farm. Everything else is there too--the dunk tank, the food and even helicopter rides.
The first pictures shows the Wall that was painted when Jason Hebert, the first from this area died in Iraq. 2003 It is a memorial. A picture of town before fair and during fair. Lotsa cars and people.
I took bunches of pictures but of course can't show all of them.

Football

Bradley aged 9 is going out for football this school year. It starts in the summer. He went yesterday to get his pads and helmet. So I went down to his house to take some pictures. He looked up at me slyly and said," and look Gramma, they even gave me a cup". what a little guy. I sure hope he doesn't get tackled too much. His slightly older brother said he would help him by tackling him. Probably continuously. BOYS!!!

Ritzville Ranch Afterglow*******Sky Watch

To see skies from all over the world or to participate please go to
http://www.skyley.blogspot.com/ thank you.

Over the river and through the wood.....................

........to Great-GrandMother's house we go.
I took all my grandkids over to whidbey Island to visit their Great-GrandMother. We went to Honeymoon Lake Community Club. Mother owns a small lot there. Besides having a small lake for fishing and all of Holmes Harbor to hunt for shells, play in the sand or to freeze your toes in salt water there is a swimming pool. So we had a picnic and a splashing party.
Firts picture is Great Grand Mother (93 yrs young)
Bradley age 9--spaceman
Mike (18)
Birthday boy Brett aged 11 (July 16) Everytime I took his picture all I saw was a splash or he was already underwater. I didn't get a pic of him.
Big splash Brett







The running jumping silly water babies. these pics are Kylee (15) and Mike (18)
Mike will be off to Eastern Washington U. this September

Sail boat on sparkling blue Holmes Harbor

Today was a just perfect day

And this little spotted guy was glad to be enjoying the day. MB

On to Fort Ebey

After visiting Fort Casey and playing on the beach we went on up ther island to Fort EbeyAgain all is underground and very dark. The guns have been removed and the emplacements remain.

1. Info
2. Entrance to the fort with the trees and shrubs as Camouflage.
3. This is what it looks like inside with no flash on the camers.
4. Same time, same place but with a flash. Look at all the rooms. There are 12
rooms used for stores, shell room, powder room (the kind you put inside shells) Plotting room, spotting room, latrine etc.
5. Gun emplacements. The guns have been removed. There were two, six inch guns. They could fire a projectile weighing 108 lbs. at moving targets up to 15 miles away every 12 seconds.
6. This is what the guns looked like This is a park photo because the guns are gone, they were cut up and melted for scrap. The gunners were inside those pods.
7. boys in the spooky dark.

It is interesting that two pics posted twice. How does that happen?

Fort Casey on Whidbey Island

Well the boys and I went to visit Fort Casey on Whidbey Island, It is a fun and interesting place to go and the beach is fun too.
1. A little info
2. Fort Casey is mostly underground--this is just a part of it.
3. the underground part is made up of many, many rooms. This was a shell room.
4. The guns were at rest underground so as not to be seen by the enemy.
5. They could be raised above ground when needed.
6. Here is the sweeping view they would see. Over admirality Strait up to the San Juans and the enemy would come from the Pacific Ocean.
7. Looking down the barrel
8. The boys are building their own fort on the beach
9. Container ship heading towards Seattle

Working animals and Scablands

All the animals on the ranch are working animals.
There around 25 bulls--Angus and Hereford.
There are quite a few horses used in all the cattle work--here are Jack and Paint.
Here is a good-looking cow and her calf
A bottle baby--they have a few every year. They are pretty much hand raised until they can go out with the big ones.
Here is Bandit just of of the 3 working cattle dogs










The scablands are call that some say for two reasons--one is that they are still healing and two because the rock outcroppings some times look reddish and like scabs. So here are what the rock formations look like. also there are some caves up high and Geologist from the University have studied them and their contents and 'they' say the caves have been used for at least 3000 years. Pretty neat.
The little building is one of the original schoolhouses on the property.

From wheat fields to Scablands--on to Ritzville

Continueing on. we flash by Moses Lake and head to Ritzville. The land is getting flatter and wheat fields are showing up. It is either wheat fields or cattle. The ranch has been in my SIL's family for 5 generations. It is cowboy country and they do all cattle work on horseback and using cattle dogs. It is in what is called The Channelled Scablands.
Fifteen thousand years ago, chunks of glacial ice had formed a dam above Clark Fork, Idaho, backing up a 180-mile-long lake that contained as much water as today’s lakes Erie and Ontario combined.

When the dam collapsed, the water rushed westward at 45 miles per hour, scouring the landscape down to basalt, a flood so powerful it chewed into the volcanic basalt, following existing drainages as it could, then creating its own drainages when it overwhelmed them. One flow swept westward from Spokane, then down through the Quincy Basin, another down the Crab Creek drainage near Odessa. A third swept down through present-day Cheney, through Washtucna and Pasco. Near Pasco, the flows recombined at Wallula Gap, along the present-day course of the Columbia. Formed by bluffs only a mile apart, the Wallula Gap constricted the flow, forcing the water to back up behind it.

From there, it surged down the Columbia, still powerful enough when it reached the coast that it deposited huge granite boulders in the Willamette Valley it had carried, probably in chunks of ice, all the way from Idaho.

But this happened not just once, it may have happened as many as 105 times.

1. Heading down the highway I-90 going east
2. turn off the paved road
3. Wheat fields
4. Wheat
5. Keep going
6. and going
7. See the ranch--dead center
8. No more wheat--Scablands
p. Ranch cows
10. An oasis--the ranch
11. Did I say it was hot out here?

Sky watch--Mt. Rainier--tonight's almost sunset

I thought I'd give you all a vacation from my roadtrip and show Mt. Rainier I took tonight at 9:00---just before sunset and the setting sun is shining on it.
Kinda hazy but I am seeing it from maybe a couple hundred miles away. This is from the front of my house.

If you would like to see more beautiful skies from around the world and in your own backyard or would like to participate go to www.skyley.blogspot.com.

Thank you.

On down the road--part three

Next stop Vantage and the Ginkgo Petrified Forest and the Town of George.
1. State Park sign. The park was set aside as a historic preserve when remains of a fossil forest were unearthed during highway construction in the 1930s. Petrified wood from many different trees are common in the area, but specimens of petrified Ginkgo are rare. Many buildings on the premises owe their origin to the work of the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps.
2, Wind turbines at vantage.
3. Native petroglyphs
4. Petrified wood
5 Oops--ditto
6. Dinosaurs still roam the earth
7. Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies. My favorite stop. I always have to go and pet the ponies.
A sculpture of 15 wild horses has crowned a barren Central Washington hillside for more nearly two decades, but the rusted sheets of steel still are an inspiring sight to travelers along busy I- 90.

The 200-foot line of life-size charging horses, the creation of David Govedare of Chewelah, Wash., captures a mystical spirit from a time when real wild horses roamed the steppes.
8. Columbia River
9. The sculpture in the town of George, Washington
10. Martha's Inn--now closed and left to rust
11. Waterfall in Frenchman Coulee
12. Frenchman Coulee--looks like a small Grand Canyon.

Roadtrippin'--1st day--Cle Elum

Once over the mountains notice how the terrain changes. I like cle Elum. There are still lots of trees but not so dense. Lots of meadows.
Cle Elum is located in Upper Kittitas County. Kittitas County It is bordered on the north side by the Cle Elum Ridge and the south side by the South Cle Elum Ridge including Peoh Point. The Yakima River Runs through it and also Crystal Creek.
At the site of the future city, a Northern Pacific Railway station was named Clealum after the Kittitas name Tie-el-Lum, meaning "swift water", refering to the Cle Elum River. In 1908, Clealum was altered to Cle Elum. The name was given to the river, the city, and Cle Elum Lake.

Cle Elum was officially incorporated on February 12, 1902
The first picture shows modern day Cle Elum main street.
Next is a beautiful farm. Note the barn very full of hay.
See the goats up high on the hill.
This old irrigation flume is no longer in use.
Country fun on the river. Innertubing is always a blast.
On one part of Hyway 10 (The backroad to Ellensburg) are these sandstone cliffs. I found them interesting because they are nowhere else.

Roadtrippin'--1st day

So--off I go on my road trip--hoping to end up in Ritzville Wa. to visit my daughter and family at her husband's family ranch and to enjoy a 4th of July party.
As you may or may not know the state of Washington is split north to south by the Cascade range of mountains. Western Wa. is know for been green and WET while Eastern Wa. is a bit on the dry side. Both sides very beautiful. I left home all by myself July 2nd. Adventure awaits.
Of course I had to stop at Snoqualmie Falls and wander around there. Photos 1-2 and 3
Next I stopped at Twin Falls and while it is called a park it is a trailhead into the park. I hiked around there for awhile but decided to save the hike to the falls when I had someone with me. Pics #4 and 5.
6. I am now over the pass and next stop is the town of Cle Elum. See ya then.

Little Wren

I am singing out to let you all know (if you want to know) that I will be home on Monday. I've been here and there and have a desa-bazillion (that's a bunch) pictures
that I have and will take. Loaded down!! Whew! I hope to be home--all brown as a berry from riding the prairie. MaryBeth
PS. Isn't this little Wren cute. I took his picture in Ritzville,Wa. MB

Going to be gone for a few....

......days.