Personal Ventures Across Washington

Over the past several years I have been spending considerable time in Kennewick relaying with siblings in an effort to keep our mother in her house. For a fair bit of time I had the flexibility that helped, but over the past year other obligations and constraints made those ventures a bit more challenging. I appreciate the hard work my siblings and spouses of siblings have undertaken. We managed to keep Mom in her home till the end of May. She died on August 14. 

In early June Lisa and I came up with a bit of scheme to combine work and an aniversary trip to the Columbia River Gorge (also semi work related) with a visit to Kennewick. The scheme received a few bumps and need for change ups, but we managed to drive from Bow to Kennewick. It was nice to have Lisa along for the visit even though her work schemes did not come together as hoped. We enjoyed driving through the Yakima River Canyon between Ellensburg and Selah. 

After our visit to Kennewick (where we had a nice visit with my Mom) we drove to The Dalles (a city on the Columbia River in Oregon) via a drive through the Horse Heaven Hills via Bickleton. I had driven this route a couple of times when combining work with trips to Kennewick. Bickleton would be the highest elevation town in Washington State if it incorporated. I think the school qualifies as the highest elevation school at a bit over 3,000 feet. The town also claims to have the oldest operating tavern in Washington. The tavern was not open, but we had an excellent lunch at the grocery store.

(picture from Google Earth street view)

I bought this book by local writer Peter Lewis at the grocery: 

A good read for Henry who wouldb be visiting us in July. 

From Bickleton we dropped down towards Goldendale with views of Mount Adams and Mount Hood as well as the multiple cinder cones and smaller lesser know volcanoes of the Goldendale area. There are also areas of mound topography.

We stopped at Sam Hills's Stonehenge replica (wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryhill_Stonehenge) where we made pledges at the alter stone while enjoying the views of the river and the ice age floods shaped landscape.

We spent two nights at The Dalles with a venture to Syncline winery. I have been assured that despite my bias for the geology reference in the name the wine is excellent. The winery setting is like stepping into the northern California coast range with oak and pine forests and open meadows between the patches of forest. 

View above Syncline with Mount Hood in the distance.

This is fire country, the open area burned two years ago.

The bedrock is basalt, but ancient 'golden egg' river rocks are scattered on the landscape - a future geology post.

End an Era in Kennewick

Over the past several years I frequently used this spot as my workstation at my mom's house.

That era is now ended as my mom died late this summer after a long life. Between my siblings, our spouses and a couple of her grandkids we managed to keep mom in her home to very nearly the end. Initially the visits to help mom were episodic to help recovering from hip replacement and a cancer surgery. Gradually the need for someone to be with her increased and during the last 5 years there was usually someone staying with her. 

I will miss being kept up to date on my extended family as mom was the conduit of all family news. We will have to come up with other methods. 

We had a nice gathering for her funeral. I knew her kitchen well enough to cook a serries of Italian dinners so we could all hang out as a large family again.

A favorite picture - My mom is on the right

 

 

I 5 Rock Slide South of Bellingham Covered by Cascadia Weekly

Annie Todd at Cascadiadaily did a write up on the landslide that blocked the north bound lanes of Interstate 5 south of Bellingham. The article includes a very good picture of the slide via a drone shot image by Finn Wendt. Annie alerted me to the slide via email and wanted to know if I had any info; hence, some quotes in the article. 

I have not done any work on this slide, but I am familiar with the site having driven past it many times. I did a quick look at the DOT site and was fairly sure of the site.  

My very first vist to Bellingham before living there I had to drive around a car sized boulder that had come off the road cut very near where this recent failure took place. The road cut for the interstate is into Chuckanut Formation. The bedrock layers are dipping into the slope, but joints within the sandstone are very susceptible to failures and this cut slope has a long history of rocks breaking off of the slope along the large joint sets. The Department of Transportation cut this slope back substatially in the past and created a slide/rockfall collection zone at the base of the slope and installed bolts on portions of the slope to reduce the scale of the failures. In the image of the article, it appears that most, if not all the rock was contained within the area outside the travel lanes, but the trees on top of the failures extened out into the travel lanes. Given the size of the bedrock blocks, removal and clearing will be a bit tricky from a safety perspective.

On a final note, I greatly appreciate Cascadia Weekly. Local news coverage is critical and they do a good job for the northwest corner of Washington. 

Northwest Washington Spring

Winter in northwest Washington is a bit hard to define. It is a transition between fall and spring with periodic short spells of very cold weather. Some years such as this year there are no cold spells of note. The chances of a cold spell this late are pretty remote. Late Monday the weather shifted from chilly wet to mild and wet. No more 32 to 40 degree days with a mix of rain and snow in the lowlands. 

I headed east of the mountains on Tuesday. Rain on the mountain pass and saw 72 degrees on the dashboard while heading down the Yakima Valley. 

Two indicators of Spring on the west side of the mountains are the native skunk cabbage and non native daffodils. Give then a short warm spell in March and they bloom. 

Skunk cabbage in swampy ground near Lamb Creek on the Olympic Penisula

Daffodils on the Skagit delta  

Journey Home, the Trench, Fraser River, West of the Straight Creek-Fraser River Fault

 I previously noted the Rocky Mountain Trench while returning home from a previous trip this past year (rocky-mountain-trench-rivers). With fog in the Trench and the valleys and snow on covering the high ground above tree line the view was enhanced as I flew over the Trench.

Upper Fraser River in front of engine flowing towards the Trench. 

The Fraser flows north along the Trench towards the top of the picture

The Trench with the fog shrouded Canoe River in front of engine.

The Canoe River flows within the Trench south towards the lower left in the image. 

The lower Canoe River is now a lake as a result of the Mica Dam on the Columbia.

The foggy valley past the trench include the Canoe River, but further to the west (left) is the Thompson River. I am crossing Thompson's path again on this trip (crossing-david-thompsons-early-days).

Getting a sense of the scale of the Trench

The Fraser River flows north along the Trench, but then leaves the Trench and turns to the south.

The Freaser River canyon cutting through the BC Coast Range.

The canyon through the Coast Range follows the strike of the Straight Creek-Fraser River Fault. 

The fault is a north-south fault strike slip fault with the area west of the fault offset to the north. The fault cuts through the North Cascades of Washington and the BC Coast Range. The fault was active during the Eocene. 

BC Coast Range west of the fault. Harrison Lake is on the upper left. During a diffrent geologic work era I had numerous ventures into the area and was fun picking out the various valleys and ridges from that time.

After landing, I took the sky train into downtown Vancouver and did a walk about the urban core through the downtown area, Gas Town, the abrupt change to the east with people having a hard life to China Town. 

On the train through Burnaby I observed thousands of crows over several miles flocking towards their night roosts. They are Commuter Crows.

Crows just west of Burnaby

Crossing the Fraser at New Westminster with a view of the sky train bridge

The train stops at the border at Blaine for inspection.

Crossing David Thompson's early days

 

Traveling to see family, we had a stop over for a few days in London. During a walk about I spotted this plaque noting that David Thompson had attended this school. Thompson followed the upper drainages of the Coulmbia River down to the Paficic Ocean. By every account I have read of him he was a very fine fellow. I am sure the school and the neighborhood has changed a bit since the late 1700s, but it was a pleasant surprise to walk another part of his life path.

I am enjoying the snow while away from home

Hike to Cape Alava

Last week I had a couple of work adventures on the Olympic Peninsula. I was very prepared to get wet, but rain shadowing resulted in the first day being just light rain. The second day was outside the path of most of the rain. When I finished up I had just enough time to get over to Lake Ozette and take a hike to the ocean at Cape Alava.  

Ozette Island from the end of the trail at the beach

Tskawahyah Island

Cape Alava is named for Jose Manuel de Alava. He was supportive of early Spanish exploration of the Northwest coast; hence, the many Spanish names along the Northwest coast. He was also a commisioner for Spain on negotiations to resolve the Nootka Sound Controversy involving trading conflicts between the Spanish and other non Indian traders on the Pacific Northwest Coast in particular with Great Britain due to Spansh capturing ships from Great Britain and America. War between Spain and Great Britain was avoided when Spain agreed to leave the Nootka area including the coast of what is now Washington.

A Makah village was located just north of Cape Alava. A landslide at the village preserved pre European structures and artifacts. Archeology studies of the village have been important in establishing treaty rights of the Makah. The site demonstrated that the Makah possessed metal prior to the arrival of European, Russian and American traders. Periodically boats from Japan drifted across the ocean and washed ashore at this area and thus the acquisition of metal prior to European arrival. In 1834 a boat with three surviving Japanese sailors landed on the Makah coast hhistorylink.org/File/9065.

With the wet weather and rather dire rain predictions that in fact did take place, I was the only biped on the trail and beach. I did see some signs of other visitors but they did not show themselves.