Mukilteo Shipwreck

I was browsing google maps a few months ago and saw something interesting along the Washington coast. from the satellite photo, it looked just like a shipwreck, but I couldn't believe it was real, so I checked it out.

First I googled "Mukilteo shipwreck" and found two helpful things. The first is that the property was/is an old salvage yard for ships. And looking at the satellite photos again I saw what look like a few more boat carcases underwater near the shore. The second is that Microsoft's live maps' birds eye view of the area is an excellent resource and the best looking picture of it.

I found a public park a mile south of the shipwreck called Picnic Point. From there I could see that there really was something there. So I drove the tiny road out to the property but stopped when I saw thousands of no tresspassing signs at the driveway entrance. From there the trees are too thick to see anything so I went home. After more google mapping I found a road and some houses about a half mile north of the wreck that looked like they may have a good view. I parked at the large office building outside of the development and walked the trail along the perimeter to the edge of the cliff. There may also be a trail that goes through the dense valley of trees to the beach? At the lookout point a hundred or so feet above the beach I could only see trees. But as I inched closer to the cliff I saw a rope tied around a tree and a steep path down the cliff. Eventually the steep path turned into stairs carved into the cliff. It's not as treacherous as it sounds. From the beach the view was very clear and the wreck looked less interesting than the aerial view. There were enough no tresspassing signs stuck to the ship to make it less photogenic than I'd hoped. getting any closer would require walking along or beside the train tracks. No trains came through while I was there but those tracks are used heavily. If a train comes from the north there would be very little warning. From the south there would be just enough time to get out of the way. There's water on one side and a cliff on the other so it would not be a pleasant experience.
If I felt like getting any closer, which I don't because it's not as interesting or photogenic as I'd hoped, I'd take a boat and stay offshore.
It does look interesting in infrared with some stormy clouds. But most things would.

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Cannon Beach, OR

Cannon Beach is on the north west coast of Oregon. And it's really cool. C and I went there for a weekend to relax. The main attraction at Cannon Beach is a massive sea stack called Haystack Rock. The view from Ecola park is by far the best because, at least when we were there, there were way fewer people. I was surprised how many people try to surf there?
I got to use my newest lens (70-200 2.8 L IS) for the first time and absolutely love it. The garden at our B&B ( St. Bernard's Arch Cape House) was where I shot all the flowers (and the snake). The crazy red and white photos are my infrared shots that I thought looked better without converting to black and white.









Click here to see the rest of the pictures

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Seattle Mariners Baseball Game

C and I went to our annual (we only go about once a year) M's game with D and Z this year. It was tons 'o fun. I handed my 30D to D and turned it on high speed mode and she seemed to have a great time. I had a great time shooting the game in infrared.
The best part of the game is when we wander around the stadium. The views of, and from, Safeco field are amazing. They lost, but we had a great time.
And I shot this dude with crazy looking radio headphones.

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Mukilteo Waterfront

On a rare, beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest, I got to hang out on the Mukilteo waterfront to watch the sun set. I only had my infrared camera at the time though.

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Kirkland Waterfront

I had some time to kill in Kirkland one afternoon, so I wandered around and shot up the waterfront.

Snowshoeing at Longmire, Mt. Rainier

The road to paradise was closed when we arrived so we had to snowshoe around Longmire instead. That was just fine because we were all still a little worried about avalanches in paradise. We followed the trail along the river and ate lunch a couple miles up where the view was excellent. It was seriously cold. By the time we got back, they’d opened the road. So we drove to paradise to see the view for 5 minutes before heading back home.

Click here to see the rest of the snowshoeing photos

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Seattle Waterfront

I took a walk around the Seattle waterfront on Black Friday with Rich. It was a good day for infrared. It was also a good day to watch this random guy play his guitar near the Pike's Place Market. He had a guitar in his hands, a harmonica around his neck, and some percussion bells around his ankle. And he managed to work a hula hoop the whole time. It got better (but I didn't get a picture), he turned his guitar upside down and balanced it on his chin (still working the hoop). Then he played it like that!! (while still working the hula hoop). Dang.

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Gas Works Park, Seattle

Only some of these pictures are from Gas Works Park in Seattle. The others are from the Japanese Garden around the corner. I discovered that water absorbs so much infrared light that it is usually completely black to an IR camera. But at the right angle it makes an excellent mirror. When I turn a reflection-on-the-water picture upside down it has a wild effect.





Gas Works is colorful even in the rain. And it's fun to watch the float planes take off from Lake Union.

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Victoria, BC

C and I have lived around Seattle for about 7 years and have been wanting to visit Victoria, BC the whole time. We finally made it there over Labor Day weekend, 2007. We took the Victoria Clipper in the morning, experienced the Butchart Gardens and the fireworks. The Gatsby mansion is a really convenient and confusing place to stay. The Titanic exhibit and movie at the museum were pretty good. Getting home on the clipper that broke down was a disaster that we kept saying could have been worse.

Victoria is a tourist town, we saw and did all we needed to in 2 days and 1 night. It was nice, but we have no urge to go back anytime soon. We think we spent half our time waiting in lines. But we did pick the busiest weekend of the year.

The Gatsby Mansion is across the street from the ferry terminal. And we managed to check in as early as our boat arrived, which was great. It took us awhile to find where to check in though. There are at least 4 buildings that make up the mansion and they all look like the wrong one, because two of them have restaurants in the way. Several times a day we'd walk past the inside tables, then the bar, and then the outside tables to get to the street. I know a king sized bed is equivalent to two doubles side by side, but it's kind of lame when your king bed is literally just that. I also thought it was funny that our room had a full kitchen but no dishes or equipment to make it even slightly useful.

The Gatsby recommends a fish 'n chips place around the corner so we went there because we were in the mood and starving. The propaganda also mentioned a friendly harbor seal, but I didn't think we'd be that lucky. After sitting in a line to order for a half hour, and then another half hour line to pick it up, we did get to see the chubby seal with a blue eye.

Butchart is brilliant and absolutely disappointing at the same time. The flowers are so unusual and lovely I could shoot them for years. The gardens as a whole are awesome too. But there are always so many people around it's impossible to get a decent picture of any larger area without hordes of people in it. And everything but the solid pathways are roped off. So only the close up shots of flowers look good. The fireworks were strange. They had a wide area along the ground to work with so they used it all. Things were lighting up, and launching from, all over the place. That was the cool part. The very not-cool part was the whole thing choreographed to some Disney movie soundtrack, Aladdin I think. Had I not been occupied with shooting the fireworks, I would have left and been annoyed.

The brunch at the Gatsby was ok. The brunch sign that was draped across the main building looked really ghetto and made me laugh.

Next we were off to the museum to see the Titanic exhibit. I love how the IMAX film used a fisheye lens on the Russian scientist most of the time. For a film about a real tragedy, it was quite funny. The movie was good and so was the exhibit, but by the end I was falling apart like I'd been shopping for a whole hour! My back was killing me, my neck was tired, and my feet hurt. I didn't even have a camera bag!

Then we strolled through Beacon Hill park. It started out trashy, then turned into a lovely Butchart-like garden, but with a petting zoo. I didn't go in, but I admit I wanted to. We got some great pictures of each other amongst the flowers there.

We then walked around the city to find the shopping mall areas. We rode the escalator to the top of a nice one and talked ourselves out of buying anything because the exchange rate is about 1:1 right now, which is not very encouraging. So we strolled along the water front and found some greek food and gave up waiting on a mini donut machine that had broken down while the owner chatted away with some friends.

We checked into the clipper an hour and a half early because we got relatively bad seats on the way up because we were only an hour early. We found out later our boarding group for the trip back had already been determined back in Seattle when we checked in the first time. At about the time everyone on the boat realizes we're late leaving the dock, they announced that one of the engines won't start. And it never did. They sent another boat up from Seattle to get us. We eventually got home around 3:30AM the next day. But they did give us free sodas, so I had quite a few dr. peppers to comfort me in my misery. :)






Click here to see a ton of pictures from our trip!

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