Summer Flowers

Autumn Forest Floor

Welcome Fall

My favorite time of year has arrived.

Back at the Ranch

We are back home, settling in & getting ready for winter.

Of course, I had to get back in the saddle.
And picking up a few hitchhikers is always fun.

 And the weather is perfect for trailriding with friends.

 And we finally have hay! 
Yea! this is the latest we've ever gotten hay.
Whew!

Mount Rainier National Park

Our last park was Mount Rainier and we glimpsed the mountain as we drove south.

 We stayed at the Paradise Inn in the shadow of the mountain.

 The views were phenomenal.

 And the hiking was great.

 We were lucky enough to see some wildlife such as this fawn.

And this well camouflaged ptarmigan.

 This is Narada Falls, near Paradise.

We took a hike with a ranger and saw the Nisqually glacier, one of 25 glaciers on the mountain.

The dark hole in the valley is the floor of the glacier where snowmelt is flowing down the mountain.

Mt. Rainier was spectacular!

Rainforests

Olympic National Park is known for its temperate rainforests

which gets about 150 inches of rain annually.

 A temperate rainforest is dominated by conifer trees unlike a tropical rainforest.

 Ferns dominate the forest floor.

And moss covers everything.

 Manmade objects slowly get covered by the vegatation.

 And the trees tower over everything.

In the rainforest, everything is green.

Washington Beaches

We explored Ruby Beach along the pacific shore.

We first saw the beach at high tide.

Then returned later at low tide.

We searched around the exposed rocks & tide pools for sea life and found some!

At first I didn't realize that the green cup-like things were sea anemones.

A mosh pit of star fish!

The beach also has lots of stacked rock art!

A beautiful wild beach.