Green Mountain

"Hi!" from the Droeges. We hiked up to the peak of Green Mountain. It is the second tallest peak on the Kitsap Peninsula. Sounds impressive, but it is only 1639 feet above see level. The climb was about 1000 feet from the start of the 2.5 mile trail. The peak is about 9 miles straight line from our condo.

We were not alone on our hike. Karen, our neighbor, went along for the trek. During the 4 hour hike, we counted 40 people, 5 dogs, one horse, a lot of dragonflies (Washington State Insect!) and a few Douglas squirrels. Almost the entire hike was shaded by Douglas Fir forest.

This is a view from the peak. The bright dot is a window reflection in Seattle. The main part of the city is just to the right of it. Our condo is invisible at this distance, but is almost directly below the bright dot.

This is the city zoomed in. Behind Seattle are the Cascade Mountains.

This is looking further south. This is Mount Rainier. We are about 60 miles straight line to the peak. The top is about 14 000 feet above sea level.

Barely visible north of Seattle is Mount Baker. We live on what is known as the "Ring of Fire". Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier and Mount Baker are part of the series of volcanoes that are on the eastern edge of the Pacific Ocean.

These are the Olympic Mountains on the North and West of Green Mountain. They should be covered with snow at this time of year, but this has been the hottest and driest July on record. 

We saw this woodpecker, too!

The entire area was showing the effects of the lack of rain. We still found two small waterfalls.

This is the view of the peak of Green Mountain from the balcony of our condo in Bremerton. The summit is just to the right of the tower you see on the peak.

We highly recommend this trail. It was clean and well-maintained!

Seabeck, June 2015

We went over to Seabeck. It is only 16 miles from our house. We are doing shorter trips now. It was National Get Outdoors Day. This is a new National event to promote healthy living. The Seabeck Conference Center was having an Open House for their 100th Anniversary. The food was actually good and (probably) donated by COSTCO. They were there with their sign-up booth.  The weather was absolutely perfect.

After we lunched and visited at the Conference Center, we drove over to Scenic Beach State Park. It was also free because of National Get Outdoors Day. We already have a State Parks Discover Pass, but didn't get to use it. The day was also free for all the National Forests. Scenic Beach is an example of the Douglas Fir forests which used to cover so much of the Pacific Northwest. It overlooks Hood Canal and offers camping. Alonda says "No" to tent camping. Too hard to get in and out of the tent.

This is the marina at the minuscule town of Seabeck. There are about 1,000 people in the area.

This is a cafe on the back of the General Store. It is also the site of the gourd condo for the Purple Martins. The things you see hanging along the dock are nesting sites for the birds.

This is an up-close shot of a gourd with a fledgling Purple Martin waiting for lunch. Mom and Dad go out hunting insects and bring them back.

This is what Dad looks like.

This is what Mom looks like.

This is what the photographers look like. They were all lined up with some incredibly expensive camera equipment to take pictures of the birds. This is where all of those gorgeous pictures you see in magazines come from.

Enjoy the summer!

Christmas Vacation 2014

Jim and Alonda went to visit Alonda's family in Ft Worth, Texas. Here is Alonda and her two sisters in a giant snow globe. The snow is fake.

A fun Christmas side trip is to visit the model train exhibit at the local mall. There were a LOT of trains and kids there.

Wanting a warmer climate (Ft Worth weather was exactly the same as Seattle), we went down to Cancun, Mexico.  When you visit this part of Mexico, you have to go see the Mayan ruins. The bus stopped a few times en route. This was a very nice Catholic church in Valladalid.

This is Chichén Itzá. This is possibly the best know of the Mayan remains. When it was originally discovered, it was half tumbled down and covered with vines, brush and trees. What this means is that it has been rebuilt. This is NOT what it actually used to look like. They are still arguing over whether it was painted or otherwise decorated. The guides will also tell you that they don't know how much of the area still has undiscovered ruins on it and then will tell you they have uncovered 6% of the total ruins left by the Mayans.

This is a sinkhole. The entire Yucatan peninsula is undermined with underground rivers. The rock is limestone and the water has worn rivers through it. The Mayans would pull up water from underground. Without this water, the entire area would simply be a desert. We did not go swimming in the sinkhole. It looked like fun, but it had been a long day on the bus ...

This is a ray at the Cancun Aquarium.

 This is Alonda touching the ray.

This was the "pirate ship" sailing by an Italian Restaurant where we ate. It has a "Mystery Dinner Theater" on board as they sail along the beach hotels.

We took this selfie out on the Isla Mujeres near Cancun. We took a tourist cruise out for the day. The boat was crammed with Mexicans on holiday and a few token Koreans and us.

 Here is the sunset on the last evening we spent in Mexico. We had a very nice time!

Christmas 2014

Merry Christmas to all of you!

We will be spending Christmas visiting family in Texas. We will also do a short trip to Cancun, Mexico.

Summer & Fall in Seattle

Deep fried Oreos? "Crispy Creme Bacon Cheeseburger"??! When Jim saw this sign, he knew he was "back in the USA".

Multiple colors of cauliflower? We were used to plain, white cauliflower at about 1/20th the cost. Of course, we were buying it from a cart in the middle of a dusty street.

Alonda got ambitious and made pretzels! Surprisingly easy when she has a bread machine to make the dough.

We watched our neighbor's Fourth of July fireworks display from our dining room window. It was cold and rainy outside, but we were nice and cozy and comfortable.

We entered two events in the West Sound Senior Games. This was a much bigger deal than we thought. There were actually people who came from Canada and Louisiana to compete. Apparently, you have to win local to compete at state and then at national levels! We won Bronze in Badminton Mixed Doubles. Jim got a Bronze in the 25Km Bicycle Time Trial.

We went to the Kitsap County Fair. We have never been since it happens at a time when we would have had to be in Pakistan. This is a real, straight-ahead, small-town feel county fair. Kitsap County has a population of about 280,000 people. We have been living in a city of 22,000,000 people. Alonda got to meet an alpaca. They are really cute and soft.

Alonda was gardening on the patio. She grew basil, sage, parsley, chives, tomatoes, spinach, tarragon and rosemary. She had to bring the tomatoes into the house to ripen. During the day, the west facing patio is too hot during the day and too cold at night for them to ripen.

We live in a Navy town. The Bremerton shipyard does light and medium level maintenance on all kinds of ships. The USS Stenitz is being upgraded and the USS Nimitz will come in soon for maintenance and upgrade. They also have a few ships and subs in mothballs and some are sent here to be stripped of weapons and equipment before scrapping. The picture shows the former aircraft carrier, USS Constellation. We and several hundred other Bremertonians watched it being towed out of the harbor on its way to be scrapped in Texas. They will tow it all the way around the southern tip of South America and then all the way up into the Gulf of Mexico. It will take about 8 or 9 months. The ship is simply huge. The photo doesn't even show how big it really was. 

This is part of the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle this summer. It is a new, outdoor sculpture park we had not seen. This was an audio sculpture.

We went to a language teachers' conference in southern Washington in October. This is the bridge crossing the Columbia River from Vancouver, WA to Portland, OR. Alonda caught the lighting just right!

Jim hosted 18 exchange students and their two teachers from Tuttlingen, Germany in October. They were here for 2 1/2 weeks and we will go to visit them this summer. One of the field trips we took them on was in Seattle and they had to get up and catch the foot ferry over from Port Orchard (where Jim teaches German at South Kitsap High School) to Bremerton. This is the foot ferry arriving from Port Orchard. We were waiting on the Bremerton-Seattle ferry for the students when we took this picture of their arrival. This is the foot ferry Jim rides to work. 

In Seattle, we took the students from Germany on the Ducks. The Ducks are WW II vintage DUKW 5-ton front-wheel drive tandem axle amphibious vehicles. There were a lot of them made and some of them are still around. Most of them are in Alaska where they use them to resupply fishing trawlers. The Germans were fascinated! They have nothing like this in Europe.

We took them on a weekend field trip to visit the grave site of Chief Sealth. He is the Native American chief who helped the early settlers in this area.

The last field trip was to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. Here are some of the students relaxing on the BIG chairs. They loved the Ripley's Believe It or Not! exhibit and the other hands-on stuff.

This is one of the trees outside our dining room window. We have not seen fall colors in a decade!

Marseilles March 2014

We enjoyed our trip to France in October of 2013 and decided to go back to the south of France in March. We stayed in Marseilles. Most people don't think of staying there, but that is where the plane connections worked. We originally planned to go to Nice, but it was almost impossible to get there!

We stayed at an iBIS Hotel next to the train station. This is the view from our window towards the west. The train station is the large building on the right. A couple of times while we were there, they were shooting a French soap opera in the square.

This is one of the two forts that protected the entrance to Marseilles harbor. The forts were built of brick and would have collapsed very quickly. When you go to Europe, you have to see the forts, chateaux and castles.

This is the famous Chateau d'If. The Man in the Iron Mask was set here. There is, of course, no truth to the story, but tourists love it.

This is the cathedral which hangs over the entire city. This is what the Notre Dame de la Garde looks like from the square by the train station.

This is what Notre Dame de la Garde looks like from the port.

This is what Notre Dame de la Garde looks like from the bus on its way up the hill. 

You finally get to look back down on the city. From this perspective, you can see how visible the cathedral is from every point of the city.

This video pans around a bit from the cathedral. The view is really spectacular.

 We got out of Marseilles by riding the train down to Toulon. This is the cable car which went up the hill behind the city. The weather was far from the best and we had to sit around for an hour during the lunch hour before we could ride up.
 Looking back down into Toulon, you suddenly realize that 60 % of the French Navy is here.
 The cable car was not quite as beautiful and romantic as the advertising posters!

Another city we visited was Avignon. Very nice, friendly city with a beautiful castle across the river. The city was crawling with high school kids speaking very bad French. They were on exchange tours!

This is the Pope's Palace. During the time when there were two (or more) Popes at the same time, France and Italy were fighting over who had the "real" Pope.

This is the bridge to nowhere. Apparently, it was never meant to actually cross the river. We didn't get it at all.

Here are two more of the many cathedrals we didn't visit. There are a LOT of these things all over Europe.

The coffee was really good. Alonda did not expect that!

This was a little museum/store with "santons". Originally, these were always little Nativity Scene figurines. Today, they make just about anything.

The level of detail in these things is amazing. The most common size was less than about 6 inches high.

This stainless steel roof is exactly what it looks like. It is basically a mirror you can look up at next to the harbor. Tourists had a lot of fun taking their pictures of themselvesl

We are now back in the USA!!!

Alonda has retired from teaching. Jim is looking for a new position teaching English as a Second Language or German or Traffic Safety or something.