Apparently a small plane had crashed here shortly before I took this photo. As we were coming across the bridge, we noted that traffic was stopped, but it started moving quickly and we did not see the plane, which would have been in one of the fields to the side. (I apologise for the color quality – the photo was taken through the windshield and the tint bar at the top of that.)

It’s been a strange summer here in Western Washington – we typically have about 6 weeks of hot weather (hot for us, and please realize that we are at latitude 47.7345°, which means much over 80 is hot, plus we have no air conditioning in most buildings), but we really have not had that happen this year. In fact, this is the mildest summer I can remember in the 25 years we’ve lived in Washington, which makes me worry for the winter. Last winter was very mild, I don’t think we had more than a day or two of snow, and I’m fearing a repeat of the blizzards of 2006 when we were without power for over a week. We did, however, have a lot of rain last winter. I don’t really want a repeat of that, either.

But we live in a beautiful area, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. If you would like to see more of the area, I recently came across a blog called The Northwest Riders which has several pieces devoted to the area – Cherry Valley, Stossel Creek,and the Snoqualmie Valley would be keywords to search on.

Here’s hoping that your summer has been all you hoped it would be!