I went on a photo walk Thursday, down to the Landing Park and along the Sammamish River. The sun had came out, and cold Winter days with blue skies and sunshine used to be one of my favorite times to take pictures. My body likes warmer weather now (7 months in tropical Cebu spoiled me), but I liked the frosted over foliage and the tree shadows...

ps - Gamechanger! Opening our door this morning to get the Seattle Times, there was a little Amazon package - my hand warmers! For the first time this Winter, I did Not come back home from my walk with icicle fingertips :)

 The first thing I did after getting home from my walk this morning was to go onto Amazon.com and order some hand warmers! 31 degrees, around 6:45am. It was 28 degrees yesterday. My fingers, even with my gloves, felt like icicles. I'm a weinie. I remember standing at a bus stop in Boulder Colorado once, around midnight. Snow on the ground, and a balmy 1 (One!) degree. It was Much more comfortable in Boulder for me than here. It was a "dry" cold? Here in the NW, it's not Alaska I know, but the damp and wet cold here is Cold!

 I took these self portrait shadow shots when I was walking along the Green River 5 years ago, on 13Dec2017...

 5 Years Ago, December 12, 2017

 Several posts I made to FB that I forgot to share here:

This is what I've been doing lately, when my eyes became a problem while photo editing. These are monkeypod/acacia wood trays I brought home from Cebu (12" 8" and 6"). The small un-oiled one is what I'm playing with now. I'm carrying the lines from the front edges over to the backside...

Andrea, Nathan and Santa

Joy... reading bedtime stories to our twin granddaughters. Mommy and Daddy had a Date Night yesterday. I read to Claire and Addie from their own books. They had dictated the story lines to Mommy or Daddy, who wrote down the words, and then they drew the pictures. Claire's book was her version of the "Little Mermaid", and Addison's book was called "Polly Puppy". This photo is from when they were toddlers, trying to figure out how to snap and unsnap their booster chair straps. 5 years old now, they are writing books.

Why do I like walking in the early morning dark? There are many reasons, but two that I like are the shadows, and the quiet. I hope to resume my photo walks again soon. These shots were taken on Dec 7 2019, in our little downtown area (Bothell WA).

There's a wooden walkway across the street that gives pedestrians a safer way to bypass a narrow stretch of the roadway. Theses shots were taken after our short lived snow the other day. I've always liked how the white layers of snow highlight the dark branches of trees and shrubs.

I like walking in the early morning dark. Much of the snow has melted since yesterday when I took the daylight photos, but it was still very nice. This morning, with the limited lighting, there were these sparkling points of light winking at me as I walked along...frozen bits of snowflakes and ice I guess. I also liked the crunching sound of iced over snow. 

 late May 2022, Tambuli Resort, Cebu...

from a post on 4Aug2012 - I took these photos the day before 

I remember gasping and pulling over to the side of the rode when we drove into the Mt St Helen's area sometime around 1986 or 87. Andrea was a toddler then. We had been driving on winding roads through beautiful evergreen forests when we rounded this one bend that opened into a valley...total devastation, a river of huge gray logs, laid out like hundreds of giant toothpicks. Mount St. Helen's explosion in 1980 was the "deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States".

Another memory - Mike and I were on the Big Island of Hawaii the day the original "black sands" town of Kalapana was cut off forever by Kilauea's lava flows in 1990. We were watching the local news, and the last business there was selling hamburgers up until 6pm, and then closing up shop for good.

The power of nature...

From 6 years ago today, when we hiked the Squak Mtn trail to the "Bullitt Fireplace"/"Central Peak" site. According to our mapmywalk app, we hiked around 10 miles RT, with an elevation gain of 1573.

Lots of interesting trees, moss and lichen...

going through my photos, looking for B&W shots, and others with muted colors...

Looking up and through the trees at St Edwards Park, on the way down to the water. Watching the water and waves during our break by the water's edge...