A while back I visited the Yellow Jacket Gold Mine, which was part of the Comstock Lode gold rush in the 1860’s and -70’s. I found it a little interesting and a whole lot sad. There was a large underground fire that spread through the mining district in April 1869, that started in the Yellow Jacket and killed 37 miners. Mining has always been a very dangerous occupation. All in the search for riches.
I have been writing up my hiking memiors. Hours and hours and hours of working at the computer. Haven’t had much time for working on (new) photography or blogging. Lots of going through old photos that I took while out hiking.
This was one of my favorite destinations for a backpack (or just a dayhike, back when I could do a long hike in a day). Camp Pleasant probably burnt up in the North Fork Skokomish fire (AKA Bear Gulch). I will be interested to see, when they finally let folks into the area (probably a year or two). This is in the southeast corner of the Olympic National Park. Just over 6 miles in from the trailhead at Staircase Ranger Station.
Yeah, this doesn’t look like the Pacific Northwest, does it? Again, I was going through my past trip images and this one just made the day here in Port Townsend feel cold and damp. Hmmm. Maybe that’s because it IS cold and damp.
I found these two birds far apart, but close together in my image library. The eagle photo was taken in southeast Alaska … home to thousands of bald eagles (and my home for a year or so back in the 1970’s). The mountain blue bird photo was taken in Yellowstone. I was more thrilled to see it than I was the eagle, since we don’t have them often where I live … and we have eagles flying over the house on a pretty regular basis.
Speaking of going back and revisiting my trip to Yellowstone (May 2007) here are a couple of foxes we saw. They were a little bit shy, but not too much. It was fun seeing them … and they look like they have just been through a long winter, don’t they?
