Fledgling Hawk

This fledgling hawk has been roaming around the neighborhood for the past couple of weeks. It doesn't stray too far from the Douglas Fir where it lives, and we can hear it call frequently as it moves from tree to tree.

Cupcake Royale

Cupcake Royale produces delightful premium cupcakes, including the Royale With Cheese, pictured at left.

They're quite expensive, but very, very good. I found the icing to be truly excellent, and the cake nice and moist.

Secret Nuclear Blueprints

I was supposed to get a tour of the Hanford B Reactor this past weekend, but wildfires had closed the area and the tour was rescheduled for October.

We still got a peek at blueprints of the plant, and volunteers were on hand to answer questions. Note the date of these plans: November 1943. They specify the reactor core vaguely as the "process area" with suspiciously thick concrete walls.

Alcoholic Snow Cones

Off in Ballard, we had a slice of pizza at Snoose Junction. Also on offer were snow cones.

"Would you like a shot with that?" In my experience, the answer to that is rarely No, so we had an orange coconut snow cone with dark rum, and a (virgin) blue raspberry snow cone.

Our waitress had to saw a new block of ice, and mount it into a frightening machine that shaved the ice. They were delicious, and complemented the pizza nicely.

Beverly Railroad Bridge

The Beverly Railroad Bridge, built in 1915, spans the Columbia in eastern Washington. It carried the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad westward towards Tacoma. This segment was electrified.

It was abandoned in 1980, but is being preserved by the state. The river is perhaps 0.6mi (1km) wide at this point, and the bridge is a substantial structure. It is still in decent shape.

Delicious Blackberries

Although a troublesome weed to many backyards, blackberries are best appreciated when planted on someone else's property.

The berry season is coming to an end this year, but there are plenty of berries stashed in the freezer for the months to come.

I90 Eastbound Sunrise

I90 at sunrise, at Elk Heights Road in Cle Elum, Washington. Some unavoidable camera shake is visible towards the end of the exposure, caused by the draft of the truck.

Pavement Is Forever

Oh wait - no it isn't.

There are endless bumper stickers, T-shirts, and websites promoting the idea that "concrete is forever". This is very easy to refute, from a trade magazine for parking lot engineering to, well, the picture to the left.

The RV park at Priest Rapids was abandoned at some point since the dam was completed in 1959. It didn't take long to become overrun with sumac, and will soon be unrecognizable from other idle land in the area.

New Season Washington Apples

The 2009 apple season is on! The orchards of Grant County are alive with immigrant workers, filling crates with delicious apples. Here, a half-loaded flatbed heads north of SR243.

The apples themselves are just beginning to find their way to the markets. It is a great improvement over year-old (or New Zealand) apples that are the only ones available during the summer.

Pike Street Market

It's late, but the lighting is beautiful. Parking is easy to find. No fish are being thrown, and there are few tourists about.

The doorperson for the Can Can Cabaret sits out on Pike Street having a smoke, and the market waits for tomorrow.

Chinook Salmon

Chinook salmon are starting to come up the Chittenden Locks fish ladder. The locks are the boundary between salt and freshwater, and the fish take their time in the ladder adjusting to the change.

The chinook are faring better than the sockeye that for some reason have all gone missing - only 10% of the expected run has shown up this year.

Delicious Salad

I'm able to get ridiculously narrow depth of field with the new lens. This is at f/1.8, and there's only a pencil-wide strip of the table that's fully focused.

Chilly Hilly, Bainbridge Island

Chilly Hilly is an annual ride around Bainbridge Island in February, intended to kick off the new cycling season.

I rode it today, and although it wasn't chilly (23°C/74°F) it was certainly quite hilly. In all, there was 750m of up and down, some of it truly gratuitous.

Peach Season

These beautiful and delicious peaches were collected from a friend's backyard, here in Seattle. The poor tree was groaning under the weight of a bumper crop.

Also collected were a fair number of overripe yellow plums. T preserved them yesterday into a plum-ginger-lemon conserve, which she says were amazing on this morning's waffles.

Old Cascade Tunnel

Today I explored an abandoned rail tunnel under Stevens Pass. The Old Cascade Tunnel was completed in 1900 to replace switchbacks that originally scaled the full 4000-ft elevation of the pass.

The western portal of the tunnel was the site of a horrific avalanche that killed 96 people in 1910. Over the winter of 2007/08, another avalanche in the same location caused a cave-in not far from the western portal. I approached from the east (walking 3km each way!) and was stopped by water dammed by the cave-in.

It has become a lesson for future rail engineers, as it was built on a steep grade that caused locomotives to pollute the tunnel. It's since been replaced by a much longer tunnel that's still in use by the BNSF railway.

There's also a geocache there.