This entire weekend was spectacular here in Seattle. The weather can only be described as perfect. Yesterday we took the opportunity to head back to Discovery Park on Puget Sound.

The mountains were out as well.

The Olympic Mountains across the Sound

Even Mount Rainier made an appearance.

Yes, I know it’s hazy. It’s quite a distance away though!

Did I mention it was spectacular out?

Y’all must be tired of the damn beach pictures by now. I’m not tired of them.

We hiked up a ways to what’s left of the military base that used to take up the entire place. Some of the buildings are still up, if a bit beat up inside.

We walked by this old bus stop on the base. There were millions of men that went through this base over the years. I wonder how many arrived or departed from this stop?

It was a fun way to spend the afternoon.

Almost every day I take a walk over my lunch break. I’ve found a nice walk starting from my office (duh) up the hill on Belmont Avenue to Broadway — right in the heart of Capitol Hill — and down Denny back to my office.

The forecast, yesterday, was for some good weather so I brought along my camera and lenses.

The first thing is highly unimpressive looking.

Cranes.

The kind that lift stuff.

Why is it impressive?

These two, honestly, are not interesting. It’s the shear number of them around the city. On my walk I pass by at least five of them. On my bus ride home I pass another three. Looking around at any given time I can easily pick out a dozen.

The city is alive and growing. It has a vitality that I don’t see often.

It’s exciting.

Then I walk up the bridge over I-5 on Lakeview Boulevard. The view over Lake Union is amazing.

Please click on that up there and explore. It’s pretty. The houseboats on the water on the East side, the Aurora Bridge I go over twice a day every day. You can even see my office if you really know where to look. Too bad I don’t have a seaplane in the mix!

Across the bridge over I-5 there are some apartments. There’s some beautiful trees living out front that are in full bloom right now. It smells as good as it looks!

Near the summit of Belmont there’s a tree with what looks like roses all over it. Maybe En knows what they are.

A cute pooch was looking at me from above Twice Sold Tales on Denny on my way back.

As I walked down the hill I spied this iconic shot of the Space Needle in front of the Olympic mountains.

The city just doesn’t get old.

Making my way back to the office walking under these sweet smelling trees makes me smile.

Even my office is green! Here in the Rufus building we have our own Rufuses! Rufus was the first dog at Amazon. That little corgi pushed the button on many of the first production deployments! Now he has a building named after him complete with some growing sculptures!

The building has been overrun by the corgis!

All in a day’s walk.

Yesterday was another awesome day to go for a walk. I took some pictures. I think they look nice.

View of Mercer Island

The I-90 bridge is more interesting for someone that lived near it in Cleveland. The same road…

Not from the park. This is in my front yard, but we were on the way and I liked it.

Please click through these — there is a lot more detail behind these pictures than you can see on the blog. The view of Mercer Island, for instance, is 82 mega-pixels.

Yesterday afternoon was low tide. Very low tide.

We decided to go to the beach on St. Patrick’s Day. No parades for us.

The tide was so low that we were able to comfortably walk from Golden Gardens park all the way to Carkeek park with no real problem at all. The tide started low and just kept on going out.

Looking back on the way out I caught one of the prettiest views of Seattle I’ve seen thus far. This is looking south over Puget Sound somewhere between the two parks.

This has been edited in Lightroom a bit, but only to show what I saw when I took the picture.

Feel free to click through for a bigger picture.  

Yesterday, January 1st, we went for a walk by Puget Sound. Wearing light jackets we were quite comfy in the nice sunlight.

I’m hoping this sets a nice tenor for the entire year.

Please click through that one for a better look!

Oh, go fly a kite! There was a gathering of the Washington Kitefliers Association! Beautiful day to fly a kite!

Found at Carkeek Park

The train that used to go by our apartment. This was just a long, long train of coal going north.

Over the weekend we did a counter-clockwise circumnavigation of Mt. Rainier.

It wasn’t an awesome day to go up, but we needed to get out of the apartment.

Up at Paradise we saw kids sledding down the hill. In June. In June. Yeah. June.

Walking around the visitor center we found a flitty little friend. We didn’t know who or what he was. But that didn’t stop me from taking pictures.

I uploaded all the pictures.

But here’s the one that takes the cake:

200mm (cropped after exposure), 1/400 @ f4.0

He flitted to and fro. Thankfully I brought along an long enough lens (oh… what I could’ve done with a 400mm/f4… sigh. A boy can dream)

When you look at a picture in National Geographic (no, I’m not saying this belongs in that category) I want you to think of the pictures that didn’t make it.

All I did with the picture above was crop the raw exposure. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just a crop.

Now if only he alighted on a branch…

Here’s the rest of the flotilla:

Just pictures and more pictures today.    As was pointed out on Facebook, this doesn’t look like Cleveland.