Trying to catch up – part 1

Again, I am behind in blogging.  I am currently back in Georgia.  I will be here for the last couple of weeks in October, the month of November and part of December. Once I catch up with the blog, I probably will only blog one or two times the rest of the year as I will not have many pictures to post.  I don’t think you guys really want to hear about my dentist appointment, doctor appointment, hair cut, car maintenance…  Actually I finally am taking the time to work on my blog while waiting for my Car at the Honda shop.

Back to Washington.  I went to the Cascades National Park in Northern Washington for a couple of days.  One of the places I enjoyed was Heather Meadows.  In case you are wondering how this area got it’s name --

In case you don’t know, the first picture is a close up of some Heather.  The second is a shot of the heather and the surrounding mountains. 

A few more pictures of the area -

While on one of the trails, I ran across a sign -

A close-up of the sign for those interested -

 

I thought it was a bit obvious that the trails were snow covered, but I guess some people need to be told!

On the other side of the park were some nice trails, more ferns, moss, waterfalls…

Before leaving Washington, I went to Long Beach.  I timed it so that I could attend part of the Washington State International Kite festival.  It was very interesting.

I missed most of the Synchronized Kite show, but did see this.  As I walked to get closer to it they finished the show.

Each circle has 14 or 15 kites, so that’s 14 or 15 people for each circle. 

The most interesting part to me was watching Ray Bethell and a group of men ( I can’t remember the name of their group).

This man has won all kinds of awards for his kit flying.  He flies stunt kites.  I have flown stunt kites before so I found this extremely interesting.  A stunt kite has 2 strings instead of one.  The strings are attached to each side of the kite so you can actually control where the kite goes.  When I learned to fly stunt kites I actually had 2 handles.   But these days they put the 2 strings on one handle (see above).  But Ray was flying 3 stunt kites.  I saw another man flying 2 – one in each hand, but if you look close at the picture above, you will see a string attached to either his belt or belt loops.  He had the same on the other side.  So he controlled the third kite partially by his hips – it was amazing to see what he could do.

In the picture above, the third kite is out of the picture – I believe it was above these 2 kites.

The group that I enjoyed is pictured below.  They flew stacked stunt kites.  I have flown stacked kites before, but I only had 2 kites; they have 8. It was interesting to watch how they flew kites but also how they had to dance/maneuver around each other to do their kite show.

While in Long Beach I saw some beautiful sunsets.  As in many places at sunset several people stop and watch.  I thought it was funny that these pelicans seemed to stop and watch the sunset also.

 

After Long Beach, I went back to the Oregon coast to revisit some of the areas that I was in during the spring.  I’ll post about that in part 2.