#cascadia

[pamietniko]

another summer, another fire

Washington

[fernweh-arcane]

9/14/2024

Pacific Banana Slug

[fadednonsequiter]

Winter Sunset

[frommylimitedtravels]

Ready for hiking season to get here again.

Mount Rainier at Reflection Lake - M.R.N.P.

[thisaintourhome]

east vancouver, bc. november 2022.

[patricia-taxxon]

cascadia in washington

[cedarboughs]

Olympic National Park, October 2022

[b-rke]

White-tailed Ptarmigan; Snowfield; Baby grouse [unidentified species]

North Cascades, Summer 2024

[darktripz]

[paper-mario-wiki]

tell me about Amboy, Washington

Amboy is a little town I grew up in (ages 11 to 21) that's northeast of Battle Ground, Washington-- which I'd consider the "downtown" part of where I lived, being only a 25 minute car ride down the mountain and through the forest, with all the modern luxuries a major metropolitan area might have like a wal-mart and a 7-eleven. i believe the population of Amboy is still under 2000, and the population of Battle Ground is something like 20,000.

my favorite spots in/around town were the Amboy Market because that's where food comes from if not from your neighbors livestock, Nick's Bar and Grill because it was the first restaurant i ever became a "regular" at after i started being recognized by the staff, and the Fargher Lake gas station because it sits on the edge of a small, but pretty valley i'd always drive past an any trip to school/work/church/into town. there's also the Cedar Creek grist mill which sells unbelievable apple cider every fall, though you gotta get there early because the lines end up being long.

(pictures in order: "welcome to Amboy" sign, the valley down the hill behind the Fargher Lake store, and the Grist Mill)

[pamietniko]

Cascadia ♥

Washington

[solarbird]

I only got one good shot in Shoreline (Washington State) because my phone battery was dying on me after being overwhelmed with the turnout in Bothell (Washington State) being too large to photograph together and also overloading the cell towers.

The crowd is about the same on both sides of the street and also down (State Highway) 104/205th NE. Count was solidly over 1000 people.

Bothell turnout was similarly sized That's not something I've ever seen in Bothell, before. Somebody who lived there told me that their normal biggest event is 4th of July and this was bigger.

Here are some Bothell panoramas but I couldn't photograph it all, it was too big and went too many places

It won't mean anything to most of you but the crowd went all the way to the old trestle bridge past downtown to the east, and there were people on that bridge, too.

Said bridge (it filled up more later):

If the crowd size estimate is right somewhere between 2 and 2.5% of the entire population of the town turned out, and that's pretty dang good. And also reasonable because the national turnout was well over 5 million and that's a similar number.

[fadednonsequiter]

Upper Horsetail

[frommylimitedtravels]

A bit of sun making it through the canopy

[thisaintourhome]

two dreamy blue shots of my neighborhood from this past winter

victoria, bc. february 2023.

[bettergeology]

(Lava) Bomb on the Mountain (volcano)

South Sister is Oregon's 3rd tallest peak. It's a stratovolcano 10,363 ft (3,158 m) tall, part of the Three Sisters complex which includes dozens of smaller volcanoes and several older eroded mountains.

The upper 2,000 feet or so (~650 m) is a 20,000 year-old cinder cone, the result of a fire-fountain-type eruption of lava. One of the common features of that style of eruption are lava bombs - chunks of liquid lava flung through the air that cool in streamlined and elongated shapes. The upper flank of the mountain is very steep, and makes for slow climbing through cinders. Slope pitches average 30˚ in this area, and get as high as 58˚!

Perched at random on this slope is probably the largest lava bomb I've ever seen! It's probably about a meter across and shows the streamlined, elongated nature of a bomb very well. I'm not sure why it's still sitting at that precarious location, but up close you can see the vesicular texture of erupted lava (basaltic andesite). This might be classified (yes, there are sub-classifications of lava bombs - geologists love classifications!) as a breadcrust bomb because it looks almost like a crusty bread with cracked crust. These are very common on volcanoes like this. It's hard to see in this picture, but amidst the vesicles (bubbles) in the rock are numerous plagioclase feldspar crystals ~0.5-1 mm across.

Anyway, volcanoes are cool.