Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

I returned just over a week ago from 8 days on the Pacific Crest Trail through Washington's Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Naturally I haven't even edited 5% of the pictures, so I just picked a few to share and did a quick clean-up on them as a teaser. It may be a few weeks before I get back to editing these and get a full report out, since I'm heading out again, this time for a road trip with camping, hiking, and backpacking! This is one of the times of year when I don't care to sit at home. My brother-in-law snapped this one for me at the start point. Yes, I really do have everything I need for 8 days in that pack, including food. Carrying water for a few hours. Glacier Peak looking bare of ice, and the first hints of trouble to come, lurking in the valleys off that way. The pika may be my favorite animal in the world. A tidy and respectable camp scene. Alternatively, we have my entire kit spread out on the rocks as I prepare to pack up. Yes, Stinklet was along for the ride

The Ninja Librarian has hit the trail. We'll be back on the job next Wednesday. Meanwhile, a couple of old photos from other days on the trail. My husband shot these on a trip near Glacier Peak in 2017. ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2023  As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated. Don't miss a post-- Follow us !

A couple of weeks ago I did a little road trip with my 94-year-old mom and my adult daughter, over the North Cascades Highway and down to visit the history museum in Okanogan, near where my grandmother grew up. Along the way we enjoyed some great scenery, and Barry George at the Okanogan County Historical Society museum went way out of his way to find information for us about the family and their property. We picked up Mom Monday morning and headed north on I5. I was too busy talking and missed our exit, so we took an extra "scenic route" before finding our way onto Highway 20 (the North Cascades Highway). The highway opened in 1972, so it was brand-new when I was a kid, and I remember the excitement of it when we drove it on a family trip. The entrance sign for the North Cascades National Park. I love the "glacier" atop the rocks. We made a couple of stops along the way for scenery, including one where my daughter and I blasted through a half-mile scenic trail, hur

In the last few weeks, in addition to walks in my local park to see the beavers (and to get my exercise), I've done a couple of trips into the actual mountains. Since I haven't been spending the night I don't have any stunning sunrise/sunset photos, but here are a few nice bits, anyway. My local park is a lovely second-growth PNW lowland forest, with a stream. Apparently there are a lot of beavers in the Seattle area who are happy to move into such streams, even with less than pristine water (this stuff includes runoff from the local streets and neighborhoods and signs suggest keeping kids out of even the clean-looking parts).  I'm bemused that the beavers seem to have abandoned the dam in the main stream and have moved into the algae-covered backwater, which they have somehow managed to fill with more water than usual, as well as more algae. Train tracks separate the park from the beach, but with a pedestrian bridge over the tracks it's been converted from a bug to

Since I don't have any new trips to draw on, I thought I'd pull out some of the fun photos of rocks and abstracts from nature that I've taken over the years. The challenge here is to find ones I haven't used before. Or maybe it doesn't matter--if I can't remember, you won't! So here we have it: rocks, wood, water, leaves...   Trees   Leaves Water   Rocks   Machines   ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2023  As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated. Don't miss a post-- Follow us !