Happy New Year 2013!

I am so excited about the start of a new year!  We traveled to Seattle just after the first of the year to visit our good friends and experienced the most beautiful January weather I'd ever seen for Seattle!

 

 

 

Sunrise

I have to admit that there is one thing that I like about this season of short days:  even those of us who don't normally get up early see a lot of sunrises.

This was the view from the home of friends in Seattle.  Best if seen while drinking tea.


I had the best Christmas vacation ever.  I really loved my twelve days!




 

Roadtrip Snapshots

Heading across Washington to a cyclocross race.  Since I am not driving, I play with my camera functions.

I really love the area just to the east of Ellensburg.  The landscape quickly transitions from irrigated farmland,
to rangeland, to the rainshawdow side of the mountains.

Unlike in June, the snow was all gone from the tops of the mountains.  I wonder when it will return?

Taking a walk in the woods.

An old growth forest in the middle of Seattle!

There are times when I get nostalgic for moss covered trees.

Driving back home past the windmills near the Columbia River.  These have all been built in the last decade, and it really changes the landscape.  I, for one, don't mind them though.

But of course, there's no place like..

Home!

Ringing in the New Year

The year is young and I am feeling optimistic!  We said goodbye to the old year with a ski trip, and rang in the new year with a trip to Seattle to visit some dear friends.  We are not city folk.  I hate traffic and if I enter a mall it is to make a targeted strike (trousers for work, dress shoes, etc.).  However, I do have a soft spot for Seattle, done right.  Some Seattle neighborhoods feel more like a small town.   I'm most familiar with West Seattle, but the pattern repeats itself throughout the city.  I truly enjoyed the lazy days after the holidays when most people are hunkering down at work or trying to clear their head after a long New Year's night.  Parking was easy to find, crowds were minimal, and the weather was amazingly good for January.  New Year's Day dawned clear, and even Mt. Baker and Mt. Ranier decided to grace us with their presence!  I will never take this for granted, especially during the winter.  The first time I was ever in Seattle, interviewing for graduate school, one of the host students told me that the year before, the region set a new record:  that January they had recorded only 19 hours of sunlight without cloud cover.  I was duly impressed by this statistic--and a bit terrified!  (Although, to counter that example, New York City receives an average of 50 inches of rain per year to Seattle's mere 37.  It's just that Seattle's rain gets spread across so many days!)


Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures of Ranier, though I had some excellent views of the Olympics from Lincoln Park in West Seattle.

By Tuesday, the weather had reverted to something a bit more seasonable, but we were able to find a break in the rain to spend some time at Kubota Gardens.

All in all, we had a wonderful and relaxing time.  I feel refreshed and ready to be back to routine!