highway bend

Fall colors line a bend in Highway 2 west of Leavenworth.

This blog will be "off the air" for the next couple weeks.  I've posted ahead for the last few days, so any recent comments won't get published until it's back online in December.  See you then.

mountain view

This morning view of peaks in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area is from Icicle Creek near where it joins the Wenatchee River, just south of Leavenworth.

wenatchee river valley

The Peshastin Pinnacles afford a bird's-eye view of the Wenatchee River valley west of Cashmere, Washington.

This Thanksgiving Day is also the first anniversary of this blog.  Happy Thanksgiving!

wide open spaces

Eastern Washington has lots of wide open spaces.  It can feel wide open even down in a canyon, if it's wide enough.  This example is along the Columbia River near Crescent Bar.

crab creek color

Fall colors congregate near Crab Creek, south of Potholes Reservoir in eastern Washington.

palouse river canyon

From Palouse Falls, the Palouse River flows through this steep canyon to join the Snake River at Lyons Ferry.

palouse falls

The bottom of Palouse Falls is deep in shadow, even at noon, on a late-september day.

lower slopes

This late afternoon view of the Palouse in eastern Washington is from the lower slopes of Steptoe Butte.

the palouse

This view of the Palouse in autumn is from a vantage point near the summit of Steptoe Butte in eastern Washington.  The tilled fields make interesting shapes.

beaujolais concorde

Today is the official release date for French Beaujolais nouveau.  On this day in 1984 the British Concorde delivered 219 cases of the wine to Boeing Field in Seattle, in a restaurateur's publicity stunt and fund-raiser for the Museum of Flight (which incidentally now has one of these now-retired speed birds on display).

It was the first time a Concorde had landed in Seattle, so  I went down to see it.  Here are some scanned color slides from my visit.

eastern washington church 2

Here is another roadside church from eastern Washington.

eastern washington church

There are some photogenic old churches in eastern Washington.  This one is in Hunter.

kettle river evening

Here is another view of the Kettle River from the same area as in Saturday's post.

M did a nice plein air painting of this scene, but it was tricky:  The lighting looked the same, looked the same, looked the same... then suddenly shadows swept across the foreground and it was dark.

sea stacks

I photographed these sea stacks along California's Mendocino coast in the summertime but it looks like it could have been around this time of year.

kettle river, wa

This is an evening view of the same river as in yesterday's post, but a little farther south, on the Washington side of the border.

kettle river

This view of the Kettle River in southern B.C., Canada, was photographed on a fine September morning during a camping/painting trip there a few years back.

molson tractor

We found this old tractor in Molson, a ghost town and former mining town just south of the Canadian border in eastern Washington.

hurricane ridge fall

Fall color comes to a classic scenic viewpoint high up in nearby Olympic National Park.

fuzzy outcome?

The prediction in today's title, suggested by M, seems a distinct possibility.

How is it that we have these stuffed animals?  Well, they followed us home from D.C. when we were there.

pond at dusk

This is the same pond that was featured in yesterday's post, photographed after the sun had left the valley.  I thought the colors in this scene were unusual.  I did not modify the colors- they are straight out of the camera.

late afternoon pond

This pond-side tree catches the last of the late afternoon sun in the Sinlahekin Valley in eastern Washington.  Steep valley walls cause an earlier-than-normal sunset, kind of like what we experienced at home today.

sinlahekin valley

Today's image is of the Sinlahekin Valley in fall, from a visit a few years ago.  The Washington state valley lies a little west of the Okanogan River and south of the border with Canada.

connections 2

This tree with the long branches seems to be connected to everything else in the woods, and to almost be defined in negative shape by the surrounding foliage.  Photographed along the lower Dungeness River, near the Olympic Game Farm.

riverbank view

This was the view toward the Columbia River and across to the bluffs on the Washington side, from our campsite last month at Memaloose State Park, near The Dalles, Oregon.  I did the painting "en plein air."

oil on canvas panel, 6"x8"