It’s fire season and once again we are getting no breaks. There is a large fire (Crescent Mountain) burning in the upper Twisp River that is causing great concern locally. So far, it has stayed away from homes but there is no containment on it. There are fires in southern British Columbia that are also burning out of control and when the wind is right, the smoke descends on us and fills the valley. These images are from last week when the visibility was better than it is now.
Last week the girls and I hiked to Rock Mountain. The trail starts at Tiffany Springs campground which was full of campers. Unusual to say the least. It’s a long bumpety bump road to Tiffany Springs and few people make the trek up there. The Washington Native Plant Society was having a weekend of plant hunting and quite a group of amateur and professional botanists were out on the trails in search of rare plants. They are pretty good folks to be around – quite willing to answer questions about plants and other natural history topics. One of them did try to tell me I was going to Middle Tiffany Mountain and not Rock Mountain but after looking at my map and asking a friend who is familiar with the area, I’m quite sure I went to Rock Mountain.
The trails goes first to Tiffany Lake, an idyllic mountain lake, home to non-native, but tasty, brook trout. No one was fishing when we went by so the girls enjoyed chasing sticks in the cold water til the mosquitoes and black flies forced me back on the trail. The bugs followed us all the way to Honeymoon Pass and then finally let up when we got into a pleasant breeze. From there a person just follows the view across the rocky slopes to the mountain top. Lots of wildflowers and a few birds were interesting distractions and good excuses to go slow.
Our evening skies have been especially lovely recently due to wildfire smoke coming down from Canada. It’s pretty ironic that we’d get so much beauty from such destructive forces. We are lucky to live in a place that doesn’t have too much light pollution.
Wildflowers, vistas, butterflies, dogs, clean cool creeks. What more could I want?
This female Western Bluebird stopped by here recently. She probably raised a batch or two of youngsters in one of our nest boxes this summer.
My Everyday Photos 