Getaway......Northwest Style

Stress............it can get to all of us at one time or another.

The dictionary describes stress as: constraining force or influence; physical, chemical or emotional factor that can cause bodily or mental tension; intense effort or exertion. Does that sound familiar?

I don't think that we can ever completely avoid stress or tension in our lives, but how we deal with it is important.......at least, we have found out in our lives, that if we can release some of the stress, dealing with the problems and trials of life can be much more endurable.

Friday, February 19th was a de-stress day. We just got in the car and started driving.....not really sure where we were going to end up, but it felt good to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather and countryside.

We found ourselves in Skagit Valley again, walking the dike near the Bay. The air was cool but the sun was warm. The tide was out so we walked out as far as we could along the marshy wetlands.......got pretty muddy, but we weren't trying to be "pretty" for anybody. We scared up a few Blue Herons on our little trek, along with several ducks. After we got back to the car, we decided that we wanted to take the ferry from Keystone (on Whidbey Island near Fort Casy) across Admiralty Inlet, to Port Townsend. We stopped at a Seafood restaurant and got some shrimp and chips, then parked near Deception Pass Bridge to eat our lunch. What a view! The Bridge is beautiful anytime, but today the water was a deep emerald green with several boats passing underneath, the Navy Jets were practicing their takeoff and landings and the sun sparkled on the water.

We arrived at the ferry landing, and upon paying for our ticket, we were hurridly ushered on the ferry.....and literally within 30 seconds of boarding, the ferry left the dock. That was cutting it pretty close! (We would have had to wait over an hour for the next ferry.) We arrived at Port Townsend and drove out to Fort Worden at the tip of the spit where Point Wilson Lighthouse sits.

Point Wilson Lighthouse, with Mt. Baker as a backdrop.

We didn't have a schedule to keep, or appointments that we would be late for, so it felt so nice just being able to wander around on the beach or docks with no time constraints. The temperature was around 58 degrees, but it felt warmer than that with the sun beating down on us.

The view of the Lighthouse, Mt. Baker and the docks at the Fort Worden State Park.

It was so beautiful out that day.......that's why we live in the Pacific Northwest......we NEVER get tired of the view.

Ron and I played "chicken" with the seagull behind us..........we wanted to see how close he would tolerate us. We got about 6 feet from him, and he never flew away.

After a very relaxing day (I LOVE "Island Time"!) we got back on the ferry to go home. The sun was almost at the horizon, and everything had a warm pink glow to it. There's nothing quite like the color of the sun going down.

A sailboat along the waterfront of Port Townsend, as we left the dock on the ferry, with the everpresent view of Mt. Baker.

Another shot of some docks as we were leaving Port Townsend on the ferry.

The sunset on the way home was gorgeous. It was a nice relaxing day.......not too far away, but just far enough to get away from all the stress. What more could you ask for? We live in one of the most beauitful places on earth. Just getting outside in the sunshine is the perfect "de-stresser."

The Dike at Skagit Bay Bird Refuge

We had to go out one more time to try to get photos of the swans while we had the 600mm lens. It turned out to be a fairly nice morning.......patchy fog with a few sunbreaks here and there. The wind was not blowing, and hunting season for the Snow Geese is over, so there were NO hunters. We drove out to the Dike just before sunrise and walked out along the dike for a little way. I couldn't believe how many birds are out there...........Trumpeter Swans, Eagles, Blue Herons, Mallard Ducks, Snow Geese, Crows, Hawks, Seagulls and a few that I couldn't identify. We wish that we didn't have to take the lens back.......someday we would love to buy one. The following photos are a combination of both Ron's and my photos. I gave up trying to get the birds in flight, because my ISO on my camera doesn't go as high as Ron's. All in all, there are some interesting photos, but still nothing that is exactly what we were hoping for.

Looking east toward the Cascade Mountains, (Mt. Pilchuck) over the fields near Conway, WA. I used a Singh-Ray blue and gold filter for this warm color.

Close up of a dewey spider's web on some leftover fall berries.

The noise of the Snow Geese is incredibly loud.....you have to hear it to understand how noisy they are. The following photo is looking east toward White Horse Mt. with thousands of Snow Geese flying inland to feed for the day. They always fly in large flocks, and you can hear them coming a long way away.

Everything was wet from the overnight fog and dew. It made for a very interesting photo of the dried fall berries.

This is one of my favorite photos of the day: using a Singh-Ray blue and gold filter, looking east across the farm land near Conway, with both White Horse and Three Fingers Peaks in view. The layered patchy fog was very interesting.

The tide was on it's way out, and that left the tidelands with lots of driftwood. I used the Singh-Ray blue and gold filter again for this shot. This is looking northwest towards LaConner, WA.

There aren't too many birds or animals for that matter, that are as beautiful and elegant as a Trumpeter Swan. Ron got this shot of a pair of them, paddling peacefully along the shore.

As you can see in the photo below, Ron got both a Great Blue Heron (which is the hardest of any of the birds to get a close photo of) some Trumpeter Swans, and some Ducks.

It was interesting watching this Eagle.......he sat on the log close to the swans, paying them no attention. He was looking for breakfast among the smaller birds. We noticed the other day, that the Eagles are quite intimidated by the Swans.......they won't get close to them, and the Swans could care less about the Eagle. The Swans wingspan is 9 feet plus, where the Eagle's wingspan in about 6 feet. The Swans are as big as a turkey, weighing as much as 30 pounds.




Ron, standing along the top of the dike, having fun with the 600mm lens.

This shot, looking west towards Whidbey Island, gives you an idea of what the lay of the land looks like. This is a bird refuge in this area. All the birds (Snow Geese and Swans) go out on the water to nest at night, and every morning come inland to feed in the fields. It is a cacophony of sound!




The Eagle flew overhead, so I was able to get a shot of him........his wings flap slower than the Swans, so he was easier to photograph.

Stephen called from Florida while we were on the dike. Isn't that amazing.....you can talk to someone over 3,000 miles aways even when you are in the middle of nowhere! I was telling Stephen about all the different kinds of birds.



It was a beautiful morning. Anyone who wants to go with us next time, just be at our house by 6:00 AM!

Playing with Preston

Just look at that cute little mug.............and he's ALL BOY! We "kidnapped" Preston for a day, and brought him home with us so Jenni and Will could have an evening alone. It's so much fun to have time with a grandchild, one on one, and we had a great time with Preston.

Ron rented a 600mm telephoto lens, from Glazer's Photography in Seattle, with the intent of photographing the Trumpeter Swans. Preston got to go on an adventure with grandma and grandpa out to Skagit Valley to look for the "big birds." When he saw them, he called them "ducks." He was grandpa's helper, and he had a grin on his face the entire time, because I let him loose and he could walk up and down the country road where we set up......except he did try to head for a few mud puddles a few times. He got excited when a car came by, and would call any truck a "bus."

Mount Baker is always spectacular, and this evening was no exception.

Grandpa had fun with the rented lens, while Preston and I tried to get the swans to fly...........they would squawk when we got too close and start walking the opposite direction.

We finally did get a few to take to the air.........grandpa said it was really hard to keep them in the camera frame when you are using that large of a telephoto lens, but he managed to get a few shots off. They are so beautiful when they are in flight.

Ron will put on his website the best photos he took, that he wouldn't let me have! (www.ronsouthworth.com)

Preston would laugh and giggle when he saw grandpa. After he tried to jump in the mud puddles, I decided to put him on my shoulders for a while because he only brought one pair of shoes.............I think he actually likes to get packed around.

It actually got pretty chilly out, so I was glad that we were all layered with a sweater and a fleece.

Grandpa has to put the camera on a special tripod head that swivals, when he wants to take pictures of birds.......because they move so fast, you need to be able to follow them just as fast. That lens is pretty heavy too.......I don't think you could hold the camera up without the tripod.

Preston liked looking at the swans, but didn't like the Navy Jets that flew overhead. He would look up at the sky and get real quiet, and then come over to me and say "up!" He felt a lot safer with grandma holding him.

After dinner, Preston had a bath...........his favorite thing was to take both hands high above his head and slap them down on the water, splashing everywhere. He thought it was pretty funny that he got me all wet! He's getting pretty good at communicating what he wants.......he would go over the TV and touch it, and say "Cars!" He wanted to watch the Disney movie "Cars." So he sat on my lap and watched the movie until he fell asleep. He woke up in the middle of the night with the hiccups, so we sat in the rocking chair for a while to get him back to sleep......which of course grandma LOVES........he just cuddled right up. I drove him back home today, and he slept most of the way. I'm glad that we live close enough that Preston can come stay with Grandma and Grandpa once in a while. We had as much fun as he did! Come back soon Preston!

Experimenting with Flowers

Ron was gone last night to church meetings.....he didn't get home until 11:30 PM, so I kept myself busy by playing around with the camera, and some flowers we had on hand. There is a function in our cameras that is called "Image Overlay", so I tried my hand at doing it. You take one sharp photo, and one out of focus and over-exposed, then combine the two together. The following five photos are the results of my experimenting. It gives the flowers an ethereal kind of glow.

This was a silk rose (you can see the ends of the fabric) but I thought it looked cool anyway.

Bird Hunting

Bird hunting with a camera, that is. They are pretty skittish creatures......they will tolerate a car driving by without a problem......but as soon as you stop the car and get out, they all take off. Tuesday, February 2nd, Ron and I got up early and drove out to Skagit Valley to try to get photos of the Trumpeter Swans again. We found a nice flock of them, and they actually tolerated us to a point.....but they were still a bit far away for the kind of shot that Ron wants to get. One thing I learned: it's very difficult to get a flying swan lined up in the frame, hold down the auto-focus botton, pan and shoot at the same time, all the while keeping the birds in the frame. Hmmmmmm.....this is going to take practice. Ron has a "faster" camera than I do, so I ended up taking pictures of him instead!

This was one of the few photos that I took that was any good at all. The sky was gray, so it wasn't very interesting.

Ron: "You're supposed to be taking photos of the birds, NOT ME!"

So I found other things to photograph. I loved this old barn.

The old Luthern Church at Conway is always picturesque.

When it comes to photography, it's like everything else in life: practice makes perfect. I'm definitely still practicing. But is was fun anyway.

A Spur of the Moment Adventure

Yesterday morning about 4:30, (Saturday, January 23rd) Ron poked his head out the front door and checked the weather. He was expecting socked in clouds and rain......and to his surprise, he saw stars! He came into the bedroom and announced that he wanted to go out to try to get some photographs of the Trumpeter Swans and Snow Geese and asked me if I'd like to get out of my nice warm bed to go with him. I was already awake, and that means that I'm never able to go back to sleep, so I decided to get up and go with him. (Note: Ron is the early bird.........I am a night owl, so getting up at 4:30 is not something that I look forward to!)

We quickly showered and had a fast bowl of cereal, filled up our water bottles and loaded our trusty Toyota Camry with our camera gear. We were out the door around 5:45, and headed up to Skagit Valley about 25 minutes north, to stake out our place to watch for the birds.

Each winter, thousands of Snow Geese and hundreds of Trumpeter Swans migrate south from Alaska and Northern Canada to feed and live in the Skagit Valley during the winter. (By the end of February they start heading back north.) The swans are not the easiest birds to photograph, because they usually feed in large winter wheat fields and are too far away to get really good photos. It's a little easier to photograph the Snow Geese, because there are literally thousands of them, and if you stay in your car, they will come right up to the side of the road so you can usually get a decent photo of them. There are also dozens of Bald Eagles which feed off the snow geese that the hunters miss.

Ron took the three photos of the Snow Geese below on Thursday, January 21st.

Their wings sound like a jet engine taking off when they all take to the sky at the same time. When one bird gets spooked and takes off, the entire flock follows suit. Right now, until the end of January, there is hunting allowed for the Snow Geese. So we had to manuver around the hunters as well, who bring their dogs to retrieve their kill. The Fish & Game Cops are posted all around, making sure that they only hunt the geese and not the swans, which are a protected species.

The flock below is only one of many this same size. Sometimes I wonder if the farmers will have any seeds left after the birds finish wintering here.....they eat ALL day long.

Below: my happy hubby.

On this particular morning of Saturday January 23rd, we were hoping for a great photographic opportunity like we had on Friday morning, January 22nd ...... (see the three photos below)

It was a fantastic sunrise, and we found a small flock of swans. (for these photos, I experimented with a Singh Ray Blue & Gold filter.) I never get tired of photographing Mt. Baker, which can been seen from almost any place in Skagit Valley. (there are two Trumpeter Swans in the above photo, about the level of the top of Mt. Baker....pretty tiny to see, I know)

The morning of Saturday, January 23rd had some great promise.....there were fabulous puffy cotton-like clouds near the mountains, and patches of misty fog that the swans would fly into and land. Everything had an ethereal quality to it and it was beautiful. The swans were too far away to get a good photograph in the dim light.....we would need a lot bigger telephoto lens to do the job up right.

Below, is a sample of what it looked like when it started to get light.....absolutely beautiful!

Below: before sunrise, with the misty fog and the cotton-like clouds on the mountains. There are actually swans feeding in the fog, but you can't see them in this photo.

As the sun came up, the swans were still flying in to land in the wheat fields. They nest on the water at night, and come inland to feed during the day.

We stayed there for almost three hours, and then the light wasn't as good for photography, but we didn't want to go home. We decided to go elsewhere to find the "right" photo. We were starving by then, so we stopped at McDonald's for a breakfast sandwich, then headed up Highway 20: the North Cascades Highway. It is one of the most beautiful drives up the Skagit River on Highway 20. At this time of year, you can only drive up the river about 67 miles because they close the road during the winter because of heavy snow. (this year we haven't had hardly any snow, but they still have the road closed....darn!)

We drove up to Diablo Dam and drove over the dam and got out to take some photos.

Below: Diablo Dam, built in 1929. It is curved and very deep. I love the old light posts that line each side of the road on the top of the dam.

Ron found a vantage point where he could look right down the river (and straight down the side of the dam) which made me get dizzy because of the height.

Below: Ron waving at me, from halfway across the dam.

This is as close as I could come to taking a photo over the side of the dam. It was a very beautiful old structure, and a breathtaking view looking downriver.

It was also a breathtaking view no matter which way you turned to look. The photo below is of Pyramid Peak, with a gathering of cotton-like puffy clouds. A photo just doesn't do it justice.

A close-up shot of Pyramid Peak.

We drove further around Diablo Lake.....this shot is looking west toward the dam. The water looked emerald green in places.

It was 34 degrees while we were at the dam, and my fingers and toes were frozen, but when you're having fun, it's hard to quit to get warm. (hey....it was a hat day when you get up that early and don't take time to curl your hair!)

As we drove back down the Skagit River to Skagit Valley, we decided that we still didn't want to go home, so we grabbed a quick sandwich and headed out to the fields again, hoping to catch the swans as they returned to the water for the night.

Below: a few Snow Geese flying away from the hunter's guns.

But it was the clouds that fascinated me........they were incredible! They ranged in color from bright white, to deep gray with a backdrop of a beautiful blue sky. They changed shape and position every few minutes.....even producing a rainbow, while we waited for the birds.

We waited for an hour and a half on the dike (at Skagit Bay) but the swans didn't come. We found that they like to wait until it's almost pitch black before they fly out to the water......which makes it too late to take a photo. Below, is a photo of the field where we were hoping to see the birds, from the dike. You can see our trusty Camry parked on a small road in the lower left of the photo. The warm color of the setting sun is perfect for shooting photos....but alas....no swans.

We got home that night at 5:30 pm........almost 12 hours from when we left the house that morning. We had certainly not planned to be gone that long, but we completely enjoyed the entire day, and were glad that we just decided at the last minute to load up and take off that morning. Ron and I both love to see what's over the horizon, so we love to explore. But photograpy has made our adventures even more enjoyable, because we both love to do it. One of these days, we'll get the photo of swans that we want! So stay tuned.............who knows when the next adventure will begin!