This is one of my top faves, from the archives, from when I used to live in Sonoma County, CA, which is about an hour or so north of San Francisco. I came across it and thought I might have taken it at about this time of year, or maybe March. Those huge live oaks are so dramatic when they are bare. Sure gives you that changing weather feeling of early spring.

Visit Scenic Sunday for some lovely views of the world. And this sure is a great shadow shot for Shadow Shot Sunday.

Since this is one of my all-time favorites, I’m tagging it Best Post of the Week.

Also, I’ve fixed the little problem with comments not being available when you click on a category to the left. Now comments are available whenever you click on a page (or should be). Thank you, Marsha Perry of Perry Internet Consulting! She made this blog on a WordPress template for me, and I am so grateful. What a great addition to my life.

It was sunny for a little bit yesterday so I went out for a walk while it lasted. Here is our active volcano (could blow any time), Mt. Rainier, showing its winter snows. The theme for  Thursday Challenge is “Winter,” so take a look there at some other wintery ideas.

This is a good one for Scenic Sunday as well. And hello, Skywatch Friday folks!

It’s been pretty darn cloudy and wet, and dark, but there is still scenic delight if you hunt for it. OK, it’s subtle, but still lovely. Here’s a recent view of Puget Sound from the Normandy Park cove beach.

For more watery wonders, visit Watery Wednesday. I like the reflections in this one, and if you’d like more of those, visit Weekend Reflections. And find more scenic interest over at Scenic Sunday.

Here’s a view of Puget Sound from Seahurst Park the other day showing a fairly typical sky of our region. The many cloud layers with the dark rainclouds on the way are more appealing to me than straight gray, which is what we have today.

This is another SOOC shot, or straight out of the camera.

Visit Skywatch Friday for more skies seen round the world.

I guess I wasn’t the only one entranced by the scenery a week or two ago near Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle. The sunset over Puget Sound was pretty darn nice, don’t you think?

For more skies and sunsets, visit Skywatch Friday. And you might like to visit the folks at Scenic Sunday, too, even though we are early for that one.

We were at Normandy Park Cove this weekend. This gull repeatedly swam around, launched itself a foot or two into the air, and dove for dinner. After watching six or eight tries, we had to leave and I do not know if it ever was successful. It was beautiful and inspiring to watch. The crow seemed to be quite interested also.

For more cyberwetness, visit Watery Wednesday.

This huge nest of a bald eagle is in Kent, Washington, near the Green River. The occupants were elsewhere at the moment, but it’s still an amazing sight, to me.

For more skies around the world, visit Skywatch Friday. For more blissful Pinkness, try Pink Saturday.

And have a happy, healthy and lucky New Year!

Yes, this is with the new camera, but unfortunately I did not have the right settings in place, and the quality of this image, which is straight out of the camera, is pretty poor. But isn’t it a lovely scene? There I was down near the water, with such a sunset and the ferry right there, as scenic as it gets, and fumbling around in the almost dark I just failed to get it right. Darn. Well, try to imagine it with sharp, brilliant edges, and all the water ripples showing.

Visit Thursday Challenge for other special images. This week is free choice as to theme.

We went to a new (to us) park nearby in Burien, WA. Hubby has discovered geocaching and of course I wanted to try scenic shots with my new Canon s90 Powershot camera. What do you think? This it totally straight out of the camera (SOOC). I am trying to master the manual controls, a very difficult endeavor. This had the ISO set to 80. I thought I understood cameras and settings from my old SLR film camera days, but these have so very many settings that there seems to be no logic to it.

In any case, check out Watery Wednesday for more cyberwetness. And you can always stop by Scenic Sunday (I’m early, I know) for more scenigasms.

Santa came a bit early and I got a Canon Powershot S90! Here’s a very appropriate photo of the dawn, taken yesterday morning in my backyard, as my first post with the new camera. The only benefit of the days starting so late is I get to see the actual dawn sometimes. Have you guessed I am not naturally an early riser?

It’s going to take me awhile to get comfortable with the manual control features (which were part of the reason I got it) of the new toy. And it’s very small, no bigger than the 3-yr. old Canon point-and-shoot it replaced. Another plus is it does REALLY great in low light indoor situations without a flash, which I prefer in most cases. But so much to learn! I prefer things simple but I am pledged to master this.

Can’t wait to see what it does in the garden with flowers. For that I must wait.

For more skies of happiness and inspiration around the world, visit Skywatch Friday. And have a great holiday.