American Elephants

There’s Mt. Rainier, and a lovely wildflower display, The Cascade Range extends all the way down to Mexico . Ocean and beaches all along the coast, rising up to the Cascades. On the Eastern side of the Cascades is a very wide expanse of rich farmland, and mostly small towns, to the West are cities, and then the Coast. I really miss the wildflowers. As you can see from the photograph, Mt. Rainier is not really very approachable, but very pretty. And the mountain itself doesn’t even invite hikers. Big mountain, very forbidding.

The sky is a bland white with a few places where there is some blue sky behind all the clouds. If you find that fairly uninspiring, me too. Been looking for some plain old sunshine for days and days, and it is just not happening. But that is fairly typical for Seattle. Not a city that is given to sunny days.

The song goes “the skies are always blue in Seattle” which is sheer bunk. We do have occasional blue skies, but they are not the rule.by any means. Seattle is a moist city. Lots of rain and clouds. Aside from the Pacific Ocean a few miles away, Puget Sound is a very large salt-water extension of the Pacific Ocean, and a major port for oceangoing shipping from all over the world supplying the northwestern part of the United States and whatever comes from the far east. Lots of shipping from South America and the Pacific Islands as well. Very busy port.

On its Eastern side,, Seattle has a large freshwater lake, Lake Washington,which is open to some small oceangoing shipping, but mostly just local traffic, and water coming down from the Cascade Range, and Mount Rainier which is a major mountain indeed.

The Cascade Range essentially extends all the way down to Mexico, A coastal range of mountains. East of the coastal range of mountains, you mostly have productive farmlands for a vast wide valley, rising up to more mountains in Idaho.