Nooksack River

I too a couple days to drive north to see Mt. Baker. I stayed in a condo in the small settlement of Glacier. The condo is located right alongside the North Fork of the Nooksack River.

Taking photos in the forest is always a challenge since the dynamic range required to get both the shadows and the highlights included is very wide. I handle this with HDR. But, of course, it is fun and visually pleasing to have a long exposure to smooth the water a bit. So, to get the best of both worlds, I made a series of images with exposure time ranging from 15 to 60 seconds. This gave more than enough (too much?) smoothing to the water and a wide range of exposures to work with. The result is above.

A Few Scenes from Shopping in Snohomish

On another trip to wander 1st avenue in Snohomish, I found a few interesting things in the many antique stores.

Mission Beach, Tulalip Bay

Another day with sunshine! I am at a loss for words.

While E was doing a bit of shopping for clothes, I drove to Tulalip Bay to have a look about. This is just near the Tulalip Reservation and, as a result, the cemetery is an interesting place to visit.

The engraving of the image on the marker above, makes a very compelling memorial to this young man.

Stevens Pass

We've been have an extended period of serious rain. Usually, rain in Seattle is a mist or light rain that a jacket and hat will repel. Off and on for the last two weeks or more, we had intermittent "toad stringers" as we say back home. It just won't stop.

We'll we finally had a break in the weather and we took advantage and hustled off to Stevens Pass for a quick look before all the snow was gone.

Forever Family Day

Every year we celebrate Forever Family Day to commemorate our growing family. This year we went to the local fish and chip shop here in Snohomish. At the end of the meal, while mom and dad had a plate of cream, Seamus enjoyed sharing. It is clear that he knows what is  coming...his rapt attention is a definite signal.

Checking out the New Camera

Now that we are in one location for a while, I've been doing some photography housekeeping and getting things in order for our next round of travels. Part of this has been to put the Nikon 1 V3 and the Fujifilm x100s on eBay to sell. Now that this has happened, I have purchased the replacement: the Fujifilm X-H1. It arrived yesterday and today I took it downtown for a stroll about to try it out.

At the Nursery Between Showers

Nothing terribly new or exciting to report today, but at least we got out of the house between showers and saw a few things. We're in the changeable times of springs now. It rains had for a while, then the sun comes out. Next, it blows before settling down to a clear, cool sunset.

Finally all in the right time zone

We have reached the end of the blog post queue and are now living in real-time. Since early October last year, I have been two to six weeks ahead with the posts because were we so busy running around snapping photos of things. I figured out early on from watching the stats that Blogger kindly provides that multiple posts in a day doesn't help and may actually hurt since people appear to looking no deeper than one post a day. That's fine. And, I've now trained everyone to expect exactly that by queuing the posts one at a time.

But now we've caught up with reality. This means that there will now be days where they are no new posts to read. Don't be discouraged and leave me. Posting will continue. For example, it if ever slows down on the rain, we'll head to the Cascade mountains for a look about before all the snow is gone (we get rain, the higher elevations get snow). We are beginning to slow our frenzied conversion of our living space (mostly because we can spend money faster than we bring it in) which means there is more time to explore and sightsee. Frankly, I glad to slow the pace of settling in for a bit. I've made more trips to the recycle center with collapsed box than I can count.

We're still living a life that couldn't be better for us so stay tuned to No Better Life and we'll bring you some of our fun.

Along the River

I finally got a chance to take a walk along the riverwalk in Snohomish to see what I could see. We've had rain for several days (!) and there was finally a break in the weather so I jumped on it.

March for Our Lives

Seth, Anna (behind the camera) and Seth's sister Hanna joined the March for Our Lives on March 24. We prepared our signs with the greatest of care (well, some of us did), we hopped on the number 11 bus from Madison Park (where we were house sitting), and headed out to join the crowds.

Adventures in Moving

We've had quite an interesting adventure obtaining our driver's licenses. On our third trip to the Driver's Licensing Office, we finally struck paydirt.

A few Impressions

Since we've been back on the same side of the Pacific as most of our readers for a while, It seems appropriate to share a few thoughts and impressions of what it's like to come back to the US after an extended time away.