Road Trip - Montana & Idaho Scenery

Montana gave us some great views along the interstate. As you can see, the countryside views changed enough to keep the drive from being boring. Every few miles the terrain changed.





We drove through the small panhandle of Idaho, so we were not actually in Idaho for very long. We began to see more hillsides filled with trees.

Road Trip- Washington State

Washington State has everything: desert, rain forest, mountains, plains. You travel through every different types of country when you drive across this state.

These are pictures of a gorge on the Columbia River. The view was breath-taking!!






These are shots of Lake Moses. They are taken from our motel patio. Would you believe that this beautiful lake is actually located inthe "desert" part of the state? The water comes from springs under the lake, not from rivers that run into it.







This is one of those pictures that does not do justice to the actual sight. But I had to include it. We came around a curve on the highway and there it was ---Mount Rainier. It was an awesome sight. I wish I had a better photo to share with you!!!

Pacific Rim Bonsai Collection - August 30

This outdoor sculpture garden of living plants was beautiful. It is located on the Weyerhaeuser Paper Company campus. The collection includes more than 100 bonsai and about 60 are displayed at a time. I took so many pictures and then I couldn't decide which ones to post. These are only a few of the pictures I took. Some of these trees are unbelievably old. They are from Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the United States. The placard on each sculpture notes its origin and how long the tree has been "in training". You will be able to see some of the "training" wires on a couple of the pictures. (Sorry--I still have not perfected the picture rotate thing on the blog. Some of them are sideways, but too cool to omit.)

A couple of the trees have "escaped" their containers and grown large. But they still maintain the bonsai sculpted look. The garden itself is a very peaceful place to visit and is open year round. When the weather gets nasty, they are displayed in a miniature greenhouse.

The self guided tour brochure told us that bonsai (pronounced "bone-sigh") is a Japanese word that, translated literally, means "a planting in a shallow container." The trees in the collection are cared for by a full-time curator and bonsai gardener, with assistance from volunteers. There are 6 bonsai styles listed in the tour brochure. I will put the style above some of the pictures.

There is also a rhododenndron garden at this site. But we had missed the season for "rhody" blooming.











STYLE: INFORMAL UPRIGHT





STYLE: SLANTING

















STYLE: CASCADE



STYLE: FORMAL UPRIGHT



STYLE: SEMI-CASCADE






STYLE: GROUP PLANTING

Kubota Gardens - August 29

The Kubota Gardens are located in Seattle. They cover 4.5 acres. It is a very peaceful walk through the gardens and you can see many different types of trees and shrubs, including a 32-foot long Weeping Blue Atlas cedar.

(Information from the tour brochure):
The Japanese garden portion features a spring-fed pond and stones left in the Seattle area 12,000 years ago by the last glacier. A Heart Bridge is like a traditional bridge in Mr. Kubota's home island. The Moon Bridge symbolizes the difficulty of living a good life: "Hard to walk up and hard to walk down." The Mountainside area was built by the Kubota family to celebrate the 1962 World Fair in Seattle. It offers a miniature walk into the mountains. The Lookout offers a wooden umbrella and a grand view of the garden 65 feet below.

This is the text of the memorial stone in garden:
"Fujitaro Kubota was born in 1879, in Kochi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, Japan. He immigrated to America in 1907 and established his home. In 1927 he acquired this land in order to make a large garden. With his own hands he cleared the land, dug several ponds and cut the trees to build the garden. Mr. Kubota studied landscaping, suffered hard work and put great effort into this project. The garden was finally completed in 1962 and in that year this memorial stone was erected. It was the eighty-third year of Fujitaro Kubota."

Seattle - August 30

Melanie and I went to the market in Seattle. It was their 75th (I think) anniversary. They had been celebrating all summer. The theme was pigs. There were various types of pigs all around the market area.






This is the cafe along the shore where Melanie & I had lunch. As we ate we saw sailboats and ferries go by. We also saw a parasailor land in the water. It was a beautiful day and the food was great. I had halibut tacos. They were made with halibut and coleslaw.






Some other sights from the market----

Bellingham - September 2

Bruce was kind enough to be our tour guide in Bellingham. He took us on some easy hikes before our flight to Anchorage. The first stop was a fairly new walkway along the water. We saw lots of boats of all sizes and shapes. There are a lot of condos along the water and the bike/walking path we took is very heavily used.

Our next stop was a hike in the "forest." We saw so many interesting shapes, trees, moss and fungi. The one picture is of Bruce and Melanie taking a break by an old electric streetcar trestle. Bruce said it was a streetcar just like you would see in San Francisco and it went up and down the side of the hill.






















Bruce called this a woodpecker tree. It was an old, rotted tree where they could feast on insects. It looked like a totem pole.