About thirty minutes north of here is the city of Bellevue, which is just across Lake Washington from Seattle. Bellevue is an "art-full" town that once a year hosts a huge art festival. We met a friend from Microsoft who lives near there by a park that is nearby, and took a tour of the downtown. There was every kind of art you can imagine, from traditional painting to sidewalk chalk-art to furniture made from branches, and everything in between. The artists are as colorful as the art, and we enjoyed speaking with them and watching some of them perform. One of the best parts of the event is that you can participate in much of the art, and all of it is for sale.

Ballard is a town just north of Seattle, and in fact is considered by some to be part of Seattle. Unless you're from there, of course, in which case it is definitely NOT part of Seattle.

 

It's a beautiful town with a Nordic museum and lots of things to do, but the biggest draws are the Locks and the Salmon Ladders. Although Washington has a lot of coastline, before the early 1900's it wasn't easy to get goods east to west. With all of the mountains and rought terrain, the best method to move large goods loike logs and so on was waterways. So in 1917 a series of canals and waterways were dug between Lake Washington to Lake Union and then on to Salmon Bay. To equal the water levels between the salt water in the ocean and the fresh water in the lakes, the Army Corps of Engineers built a set of Locks in Ballard. They are an amazing sight to see, and there's a full visitor center with a movie that explains the whole process.

 

Just next to the Locks they built a series of "Salmon Ladders", which are really a series of flooded steps. The Salmon (Coho, King, and several others) jump from one ledge to another to climb the Locks to the side. There are a series of valves and electronics that propell them on their way, and you can see the fish run by walking in an underground viewing chamber where they have thick glass between the public and the rish. It's pretty impressive!

 

There's a park around all this, and it has some of the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen. There are rose gardens, exotic plants - even Palm Trees! After a long tour and a quick lunch, we sat down to a woodwinds concert from the Bay Symphony performers. Another great day!

 

Summer has arrived in the Pacific Northwest. There are defined seasons here, so winter is cold and snowy, spring is brisk and rainy and summer is bright and warm. It's been a busy week for all of us, so we needed to get out into the countryside.

 

Just before you reach the Snowqualmie mountain pass on highway 90 West is a forestry road that leads to two beatuiful hikes. It's a three-mile drive on a dirt road off of the highway to the trailheads and then another 2 miles to the lake. One path goes to Lake Olallie, and the other goes to Lake Talapus. The hikes didn't look very long but were very picturesque, so we loaded our lunch of olives, ham, turkey, cheeses and gator-aid into the backpacks and headed out.

 

What we didn't know was that the dirt road was washed out just a quarter of a mile in. Back in November we had torrential rains that closed several state parks, and although this park wasn't closed it would add another three miles each way to the walk. We decided that the weather was nice enough that we would walk the road and the trail. It's about 1600 feet at the start of the road, and about 3600 feet at the lakes.

 

Washington mountains are so different than many of the other mountains I've hiked. Most mountains are very green and dark - and the ones here are as well - but the mountains here are studded with absolutely stunning flowers. One of the most ubiquitous is the "Foxglove", which is the state flower. It is a tall plant with delicate bell-shaped flowers dropping from their stems. The two main colors you'll see are a brilliant purple, and a bright white with purple markings.

 

We didn't see any animals on this trip other than the un-official state animal - the banana slug. These things are bright gree, and huge. They are as big as your hand!

 

Once we got to the first bridge, we saw why the road was closed. The stream had become a river, digging out the soil from underneath huge trees, which then tumbled into the water and crashed down the mountain. The trees were piled up on either side of the washed-out bridge over ten feet high. We scrambled over those and continued on our hike, finally stopping for our lunch before making the long trek back to the car.