Misc. Northwest

Dollhouse-sized Post Office in rural WA. So glad I got to mail a letter from that box (although, it may never arrive).

World's largest Western Redcedar. It was all by its lonesome in a forest that had been logged not 30 years prior, towering above everything else. It's mostly dead except for that little tuft of branches way up there, fed by one living strip of bark. It's hard to get perspective from this photo (or when standing at the base of it, for that matter), but it's 19 ft. diameter and ~200 ft. tall.

Funky port town, with interesting fish mascot. I saw half a dozen bald eagles, both full-grown and with immature plumage, in the pine trees in the background of this picture. I also stopped nearby to try some local flavors - cherries are in season up here, and there are these tiny little Expresso stands all over the place, so I gave that a try, too.

Mike Brown, on East Sand Island in the mouth of the Columbia river. So maybe this is a good spot to backtrack a bit... I left Squeah a week ago today (saturday 7/3), saw Vancouver for a day, then drove back into the US, spent a few days in Washington state, visited my mother's friend Janice in Olympia, WA, then drove down to Astoria, OR, which is where the field house is for the island-based ecology research that Mike does. It was such a fantastically random morning in Astoria - Mike was working on the island (some employees like him camp there most of the week, while others live in the field house in the town of Astoria and commute by boat out to the island each day), so I was meeting his co-workers aka total strangers at the house and catching a ride on a small boat out to the island. They drove the boat in close to the shoreline, then I had to throw on my pack and wade on to the beach. I then spent a day and a half camping/hanging out on the island. The research done there is on some seabirds - Cormorants and Caspian Terns. The island basically belongs to the birds - a patch of wetland at the mouth of the river with lots of nesting sites, and not much else.

Harbor seal pup.