Cottage Grove has a downtown that is a mix of old and new. Old buildings, some with old advertising designs on them sit beside old buildings that have recent artwork on them.
Spread out on a pleasant hillside just west of town is the Cottage Grove Cemetery. We found that there were plenty of older gravestones to see here.
We stopped to see some large birds in the bare trees beside the road and discovered that at least some of them were great blue herons taking care of nests.
Since you saw these sorts of trees in B&W yesterday, I thought I show a few scenes in color so you could see what they really look like. It is hard to imagine how much rain it must take to produce this much fluff on trees.
The day we out to see covered bridges was a dreary one. There was fog and rain for much of the day. Since we were in our nice CR-V, all dry and warm, it was still a good day. Along the way, I was able to grab a few shots of the countryside to share.
Unity bridge is another one that is in current use. Lane County has done a good job of maintaining these landmarks and keeping them relevant to the residents.
The Stewart covered bridge is one of the bridges that has not (yet) been renovated. As you can see it sits disconnected from either river bank and has become a destination for graffiti. I like this angle of view especially because you can see that a rope is tied to the bottom for folks to swing out to the river for a swim. I'll bet that Mosby Creek that flows under the bridge is cold in any season.
If you find this bridge on the web, you'll see that my photo shows it in a worse state than that web site reports. It seems likely that it is in some intermediate stage of repair.
The area around Cottage Grove is littered with covered bridges, so after those in town, we headed out to survey the countryside for more. First up is the Currin Bridge that spans the Row river.
Although you cannot see it in the photo above, it is painted white on either end and red on the sides. It is the only two-color bridge in Oregon.
After a few weeks at home recovering from our trip to Sequim to recover from being at home recovering from our trip to Europe and Covid..., we took a long weekend to Cottage Grove, Oregon. Why, you might ask. Well, Lane county where Cottage Grove is located is famous for being in covered bridge country, so we thought we'd go have a look about.
Above is the Centennial Bridge just next to main street in Cottage Grove.
This evergreen tree seed cone attracted my attention. Each seed location appears to have a very tiny manta ray with his nose stuck inside. Not like the cones found on the east coast.
On this day, I tried to venture out in a new-ish direction. I walked down to First street and headed east. Eventually, I walked through a neighborhood that is either a new one for me or at least one I have not trod in many months.
In the afternoon of a sunny but cold day, I found this bush on the north side of a house where it had had no sun all day. Even in the early afternoon, it is still coated with dew.
As you've seen here before this winter, many plants are already preparing for the short, cool summer in this part of the world.
If you walk the streets often enough you begin to notice that there are sources of color to be seen. For reasons that I do not know, this plant shows her scarlet underclothes once the bright greens of summer fade.
This well pruned rose bush is already putting out a few tiny buds in preparation for spring.
While there are still red berries to be had, much what there is to see on a walk about town is brown and green...dead leaves, dormant bushes and evergreens.
An the ubiquitous water.
The sun is always low in the sky here but in the winter especially so. As a result, even in late morning or early afternoon, the shadows can be long. This makes for a lazy photographer because now I don't need to get up early to get the good light.
Indeed it does rain frequently here, but it seldom rains hard. This leads to the dearth of umbrellas. Folks mostly just spend their time out in the usually gentle rain the same way folks in the south spend time in the cold - short and with purpose.
This means that it is not uncommon (although you can't count on it happening) to have some period of the day with a little actual sunshine. Today we explore the remains of the rain.
As you see, my daily quest for the perfect mass/lichen image continues (and will continue). Today's offering is better than the one yesterday but is still not one for the portfolio.
The range of options for photography during the winter is rather limited. But, as in the previous 10 months or so, I takes what I find. I am always trying to get an interesting photo of the moss and lichens that grow profusely on the trees here and seldom do I get a shot that I really like. the one above is OK, but nothing to write home about.
To take Seamus and Charlotte to daycare in the mornings, we drive down the hill that the town of Snohomish if built upon, across the farmland of the Snohomish river flood plain, and then up Seattle Hill Road to the densely inhabited and paved areas where the school is located.
We do this about 7:30 or so each morning and, at this latitude, this means we get to see the sun rise when it is possible to actually see it. With the recent rains, much to farmland is underwater and this makes a nice reflecting pool for seeing the distant mountains to the east as the sun rises.
Much of what there is to see in the neighborhood are the many fallen leaves that produced our bare trees. While there certainly are many evergreen trees left to green up the place, there are also plenty of bare deciduous trees to make to feel like winter.
As a result, finding a leaf on the ground is nothing special. However, I did think this was a nice one with the leaf mold beginning to do its job.
After our extended adventure in Sequim, we are back (and have been for a while, posting gets well ahead of reality when we travel) and I'm out finding curious things to photograph around the neighborhood. Even in January, we have moss continuing to grow on this stone.
Normally, I would not think that a robin was any more special than a gull which is not special at all. However, robins are strong sign of spring. Or else it stays warm enough here to fool them most of the year. I'm going to go with the theory that spring is 'just around the corner', as is often said. This fellow's presence along with the signs of breeding plumage on the great blue heron we saw earlier is all the evidence I need to declare January to be the beginning of spring in the Pacific Northwest. Don't tell me I'm wrong. I need to fantasy to get through the remaining months of winter.
At the northern end of Marrowstone Island is Fort Flagler. This former army fort was a coast artillery fort that along with Fort Worden (at Fort Townsend) and Fort Casey (on Whidbey Island) formed a triangle of fire to protect the entrance to Seattle by sea. Nowadays, it is a 1,451 acre state park. Not far from the entrance to the park is a marina (where we saw yesterday's heron) with several boats sitting at rest.
As you can see above it was a foggy day here and it made for a nicely moody image of a sailboat at it mooring.
On our way back to beautiful downtown Snohomish, after our house sit ws over, we took a scenic ride to Marrowstone Island. This island sits just east of the Olympic Peninsula between it and Whidbey Island. It is not large and scantily populated. At one of the docks we found a heron sitting on the dock and fishing for lunch.
We celebrated Inauguration Day with a visit to the Harbor View Medical Center in Seattle (kind of like the real world version of the hospital in Grey's Anatomy) to get our initial injection of covid vaccine.
After leaving Tongue Point, we drove next door to Crescent Beach to have a look. Not much happening along the beach (except more people than you could shake a stick at...no thanks) but on the way back up the hill, we spied a bald eagle posing in a tree just off the road only 10-12 feet off the ground.
All it takes is a wee bit of sun to push us out the door to look for some shore birds. We took a drive back to the Salt Creek Recreation Area and Tongue Point to see who was at home. While it was no one new, I did get a few new looks at a few old friends. One of the stars of today post is the Black Oystercatcher above.
My apologies for the out of focus photo above. It was the best I could do as this immature bald eagle was on the wing. The attraction was something in the water. It also attracted lots of other hungry birds.
Another visit to 3 Crabs Road while the sun is shining led us to something besides the ubiquitous widgeons. Leading off this day is the Double Crested Cormorant. After a swim, they stand in the sun (a tough proposition this time of year) and dry their wings.
We stopped by the Cline Spit County Park again and found several song sparrows to entertain us. This fellow above is stretching his neck up to hava look about. This is apparently part of the mating behaviour. The end of December is the time to begin this mating dance 'cause spring is a'coming.
Just north of Port Townsend is Fort Worden. Back in June '19, just after Charlotte was born, we spend the night here at the fort in one of the officer's houses. It now functions, among other things, as a hotel. We thought we'd visit again to have a look at the lighthouse. On the way out to the point, we passed this wharf which now serves as sea life museum.
We were looking for the beach where one finds sea glass. It turns out that along the coast near North Beach County Park near Port Townsend was at one time a rubbish dump. When that was cleared away, what was left was lots of glass that as broken up and polish by the sand and sea. People come here to find and collect this "sea" glass. Just out luch, we came at high tide and could not walk far enough along the shore to reach the place to start looking. So we enjoyed the beach we had.
With the promise of a spot of sun, we headed out for a drive along the Hood Canal (which isn't really a canal). On the way out the driveway, we spied some black tailed deer in the neighbor's front yard, so we stopped for a brief look.
On our flat, nearly sunless day we found some Harlequin ducks out looking for lunch.
Another visit to Ediz Hook in Port Angeles on a day with almost sunshine. I made a point to catch the sun's reflection in the puddle so you'd be convinced that it really was out.
We visited Port Townsend on a chilly day. The virus is being respected here with most stores/restaurants closed, limiting customer numbers, or serving takeaway only.
After the pre-Christmas snow, we had a morning clear enough to see Mt. Baker. Just to give you a sense of scale here, it is about 130 miles from the front deck where I took this image and the mountain. While it is not as tall as Rainier, it is still a really big mountain.
We've now made several visits to the shores of Hood Canal. On this trip, we stopped by Leland Lake boat ramp to have a look about. What we found was this delightful little lake on a sunny, calm day. What's not to like about a huge mirror reflecting this sky and trees?
Out to the east of Dungeness, on the shore near the entrance to Sequim Bay, is Port Williams County Park. Just before the road descends to the shore, there is a large open field. On this day, we were pleased to that at least part of the famous Sequim elk herd was having a rest here. The total herd is estimated to be about 100 Roosevelt elk.
In the image above, we are looking west along the coast toward Port Angeles. You can see some of the buildings at the port on the right hand side.
We picked a great day to visit the Dungeness Wildlife Reserve. This is where the sandy arm of land that extends out to the lighthouse you've seen previously joins to the mainland. It is a low spit of land and is covered with logs that have washed up as the waves beat the land. We arrived here after a 20 minute walk through forest filled with...silence. Almost no birds of any sort. More than a little eerie and pretty odd for a wildlife reserve.
A visit back to 3 Crabs Rd in Dungeness and we find an enclave of American Widgeons having fun in the sun by the water.
After a fun day of seeing and photographing along the coast, we headed inland to the small village of Joyce. Here, there is a post office and general store (in one building), a school and few more buildings, but not many.
As you can see, there are various sea stacks and rocks to be seen near Tongue Point. As usual, the inland hills are covered with wisps of fog and capped with a heavy layer of clouds.
A bit farther westward along the coast of the Juan de Fuca Strait is the Salt Creek Recreation Area. This is a nice campground on a bluff at the ocean. At one end, is Tongue Point where one can walk out to the rocks next to the sea. From there, we could look down to the small rocky, shell littered beach to see a few birds. The one above is a Black Turnstone.
