Motorcycling around Washington State

My friend Mel and I used Labor Day weekend to take a three-day motorcycle trip from Seattle to see a few parts of our beautiful state. Using the fabulous "Destination Highways - Washington" (a must-have book for anyone planning scenic rides or drives in WA), we managed half a dozen of the state's best riding roads, including two of the top four!

Mount St. Helen (volcano crater)

We started by riding around the East side of Mt. St. Helens (seen here in the distance) from Randle down to Carson, some of the twistiest, most scenic miles anywhere!  I actually got motion sick on the ride up the mountain toward Spirit Lake!

Anyway, from Carson, we rode along the Columbia River awhile, spent the night in Goldendale, and then angled NE through Bickelton (a charming little farm town with a nice historical museum and GREAT $1.50 ice cream cones!) and over into Idaho at Lewiston. From there we went N to Moscow, and then over to Pullman (two college towns) and NW towards home (we planned to take the route through Leavenworth and over the mountains, but unfortunately changed our plan and took I-90 to get home faster)!


I think we too often think we need to go far afield to find great scenic roads, but WA has a ton of them! We only scratched the surface on this little trip!

First Dives in Puget Sound with DSLR!

Well, I finally took my DSLR (for the first time!) into the cold (50-55 degrees), dark waters of Puget Sound a few days ago.  It was a truly humbling experience. Whereas I feel pretty confident with a camera in warm water, I felt like I was all thumbs inside of my dry gloves - almost no control of camera knobs, etc.  The two dives we did were my first real dives in my drysuit in over a year, so I was struggling with getting "reaquainted" with drysuit buoyancy control as well as handling the camera, and I felt awkward to say the least!  On top of that, visibility was terrible - less than 2 feet on the first dive and about 8 feet on the second.  Not surprisingly, the results were less than thrilling, but I did get a few worth keeping, like the Coonstriped Shrimp above.  If you want to see the others, they're HERE (the half dozen photos after the wolf eel shots are the ones from these dives).

Maldives Traveller article

I've only been to the Maldives (Indian Ocean) once, back in 2001, but I was recently contacted by the editor of Maldives Traveller, who did an online "interview" with me, asking about my experience in the Maldives and for some tips for beginning underwater photographers.  They just published it today, and you can find it HERE (note: this article is no longer available).  Note that my photos, including this one of Pakistani Butterflyfishes, were only 1 megapixel (!) originals, taken with the still feature of my Sony video camera, in ambient light (no strobe).