Trail Tales

If you can email (not text) the photo, I can post it here.

They grow tall in Washington, don't they?  And that's even without redwoods and sequoias.  Do you know what kind(s) of trees they are?  I know the Douglas fir is common there.

Thanks, Mr. Kung.

That day was supposed to be sunny in the morning and then clouds the rest of the day. These photos were shot in the late afternoon/early evening so the weather was a bonus.

The top one is right at the start of the trail where I park my car. I looked up at this grand site and pooh-poohed the idea of taking a photo of it because I assumed it was not the type of landscape that translate to the camera lens. But it worked. Often that is not the case.

This isn’t going to put Ansel Adams out of business. Nor is it as sharp as it should be (the bane of phone cameras). But this is a good representation of a spot where you get a quite spectacular view. That’s the northern part of Hood Canal in the background, the Olympic Mountains on the left. Bangor navel base would be just a bit further north and out of site. Hood Canal Floating Bridge a little further north yet.



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Here’s a map of the area. The photo was taken about 2 miles southwest of Wildcat Lake….sort of in the middle of that blank area bordered by lakes. The Bangor navel base is up north about 7 miles.

The view in the photo is looking north-northwest. It’s a labyrinth of channels and peninsulas and even I am not sure what is what in that photo. But it’s a beautiful piece of country.

By the way, click on the "Original" link and you'll get a larger version. (Click on the larger version that comes up and a the larger "original" version will appear. It's much easier to see the waterways that way.)

Yes, there are definitely cougars. I saw a couple yesterday. About 40 to 45. There were four legs and two asses. A couple nice looking women.

But as for the feline kind, yes. They are there somewhere. My brother lives in Grapeview (not close by, but the woods is the woods) and a cougar was killing dogs and chickens. The wildlife department set out some traps, including one on my brother’s property. They haven’t caught it.

I was bicycling a couple years ago in a place where I shouldn’t have been. I saw a cougar. For whatever reason, I had no fear of it. It was fifty yards in front of me and I was catching up to it on my bike. It jumped off the logging road into the bushes. I increased my speed and thought it prudent to put some distance between me and where the cougar got off the trail.

But in that general area I'm in where the picture was taken, I don't think I've even seen a deer. There are a lot of people around. But I have seen plenty of deer, and a couple black bears, further out in the sticks. There is (thankfully) ongoing hunting where I see the bears, so they definitely don't want anything to do with you. I think the coyotes (seen plenty of them) are a little more fearless but I've never been pestered by one.

Nice scenery, though most of it is a bit monotonous as to color.  You don't exactly look like your avatar now.  How long ago was that photo taken?  When you started ST?

Yes, but we can only dream of having the big-skies of Texas.

I suppose that intermittent white line in the Google photo is a river?  I noticed the distant blue in your photo, and assumed that was water.  Let's see, the Olympics are between Puget Sound and the Pacific, right?