Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens, Washington

Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens - August 22-23

Mt Rainier

We basically only did a drive-by of Mt Rainier on the way south, so the only pictures we got were from a distance.  As you can see in the picture below there was an amazing circular cloud formation just to the north of Mt Rainier. It looks like it was likely caused by wind turbulence blowing around the mountain, forming the cloud into the circular configuration. 

Pretty cool…

Mt St Helens

Mt St Helens erupted on May 18, 1980. Here are before and after shots of the mountain taken from a location down the Toutle River Valley about 12-15 miles away. These were on display in a visitor center from the same location as the original pictures were taken.

Here is a current picture taken from a hilltop just next to the Visitor Center.

You can see that although the valley is still covered with ash from the eruption on May 18, 1980, most of the vegetation has come back, but not without the help of man.  Almost all the covered areas were replanted by Weyerhauser Corporation with 18 million seedlings of various species that originally grew there.

There were lots of beautiful flowers on the hike up to the Toutle Valley site hilltop, so naturally, here they are for you to enjoy too.

It is a beautiful drive up a scenic road to get to the Natl Volcanic Monument Park Visitors Center.

After a brief visit to the Visitors Center to see at all the displays of the eruption, we started an unplanned trek on one of the long hikes to get a little further around the mountain. YIKES !!  The distances of the trails are in miles.

We were awarded with this view of the mountain.

Notice how deep the ash is where the water run-off has eroded through.

The mountain next to Mount St Helens is still littered with fallen trees blown over by the eruption.

Here is a blow-up of a section of the above image showing more detail of the trees killed by the explosion.

In the below image you can see that the wildflowers are thriving while the tree trunks continue their decomposition.

This is where we ran out of  camera battery, physical energy and because it was an unplanned strenuous hike we also ran out of water all at about the same time, so we shortened the long hike, and made the trek back to the car...

There she goes again, climbing onto another bear’s lap. Gotta keep my eyes on her all the time.

I think she was attracted by his suspenders and lunchbox.

More ‘tree art’. Here is a ‘Multi-Tongued Fire Plug Eater’

And an Elephant Dragon

That's it for the mountains for now.

Boeing Factory Tour – Everett, Washington

Boeing Factory Tour – Everett, Washington

The Boeing Factory Tour was a much anticipated event, and it certainly fulfilled our expectations. 

However, no purses, backpacks, bags, still or video cameras are allowed on the tour, for security and safety reasons, so we cannot show you any pictures of the actual tour. 

The facility is gigantic, located right beside the Paine Field airport. Convenient for maiden flights of recently assembled planes that will be flown off to their new owners.

It is a very large impressive assembly line facility. Imagine having three large cavernous buildings to house several assembly lines for building 3 or 4 different models of aircraft. I believe they are assembling the 767, 777, 747, and the new 787 at the facility. I say assembling because portions of the planes are built at other facilities, and the sub assemblies are brought to this facility to be assembled into the final product.  There are about 30,000 employees working at this facility. Each of the buildings has it’s own cafeteria, exercise and lounge facilities, etc.. Employees ride bicycles within and between the buildings to keep travel time to a minimum.

After purchasing your tickets and waiting for your assigned tour start time, you are directed to a theater where you watch a short film about Boeing and the history of aviation. You r group is then taken outside to board busses that will take you between the 3 large buildings where the different models are built.  On arrival at each building you enter a long basement corridor beneath the assembly areas, then into a large freight elevator that takes you up to a catwalk level above the assembly lines so you have a view down over each assembly line and can see how the planes start with parts that are assembled into a fuselage, then they add the wings and wheel assemblies, then the plane is rolled to the next position for additional assembly of the engines, tail, etc. to completion of the plane.

When we were there they were in process of building the first production of the 787 Dreamliner, scheduled for delivery in September to Japan Air Lines, I think.

The 90 or so minute tour concludes back at the aviation center where you are guided through a store where you can purchase model planes, t-shirts, etc. beyond the store there are various interesting exhibits. I went to the car and got my camera so I do have some pictures I can share with you.

Here is Sylvia in front of a section of a 787 Dreamliner fuselage, and me beside it.

There was also a mockup of a cockpit, and guess who jumped in and hammed it up for the camera….

I got to pose beside a landing gear from an older model plane.

The Dreamlifter is a large plane that they use to pick up and fly in assemblies with which they will assemble the 787s at the facility.

Beside the facility there were completed planes, awaiting delivery to the proud new owners.

The tour was well worth the time and money.  If you are ever in the Seattle/ area, make some time to go take the tour. Allow 2-3 hours so you can enjoy the tour and the exhibits.

Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada

Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada - August 16

If you ever tell anyone that you plan to travel to Victoria, BC, Canada, it seems that everyone remarks ‘Be sure to go to Butchart Gardens”.

I can assure you that in the future I will tell anyone going to Victoria  ‘Be sure to go to Butchart gardens’. It is spectacular. They have more flowers than you can imagine, laid out in beautiful settings, and the flowers they grow are on steroids. 

I took over 250 pictures on our Victoria trip day, and about 200 of them are of beautiful flowers.

To get to Victoria from Vancouver you need to take about a 1-1/2 hour ferry ride. We couldn’t decide whether to take the Motorcoach  and Toad over and stay for a few days, then take a different ferry back into the US to Seattle which would save a good bit of driving, or just make a day trip of it in the Toad and take the longer Motorcoach drive back into the US. The day trip won out after looking at all the problems and expense of taking the Motorcoach over.

It is a beautiful ferry ride over.

After landing on Vancouver Island we headed directly for Butchart Gardens with the camera in hand.

First things first….

Then on to the walk thru the gardens.

Did I mention how large the blooms are? That is Sylvia’s hand in the picture above for comparison with the size of the flower. I had her insert hand for those blooms that were unbelievably large.

As mentioned, there are a couple hundred more flower images, but they will have to go unpublished due to space limitations and risk of complete boredom on the viewers’ part.

Victoria City is really flower oriented as evidenced by this watercraft in the downtown Victoria harbor.

But they do know how to have fun also.

Their government buildings are quite impressive.

As are their hotels

This Convention center is part of the hotel.

A Bell Tower is located in the middle of the hustle-bustle of the Victoria seaport and government buildings that plays beautiful music, I assume every hour

There are also the familiar double-decker busses you see in most British oriented countries.

We walked the walkway around the harbor.

Transportation around the harbor includes these cute little water taxis that are busily running back and forth across the harbor..

We found this fine example of a condo building along the waterfront walk.

We had dinner at the Restaurant in the converted Gatsby Mansion.

On the ferry trip back we had a beautiful sunset that lit up this still snow-covered mountain.  

And was beautiful looking directly at the sunset just before docking back in Vancouver.