SkyWatch StormWatch?

All that cloud!

And the moon, too.



SkyWatch

Skywatch Reflecting Retrospective --Japan Earthquake

Reflecting on the earthquake this morning in Japan I thought to remember what images I might have stored that relate to Japan. The Japanese Garden at the Yakima Arboretum came to mind and I found these reminders from a visit there a couple of years ago.

Our hearts go out to those affected directly by the quake and with prayers also for those awaiting the tsumani's approach across the Pacific not knowing how extensively it might affect each area.

This is the Rotary International Centennial Pagoda at the Japanese Garden.

We visited in the fall.

SkyWatch is reflected also for Weekend Reflections. 

It is soooooooo COLD and gray right now....

I want to go back to the mountains.

SkyWatch

If it were a SkyWatch picture from today it would just look gray and COLD!

Snowshoe SkyWatch

January 2 at Mt. Rainier National Park--the Tatoosh Range in the distance.

SkyWatch is here.

This does not show Mt. Rainier. It was taken at Mt. Rainier National Park, but the peaks that you see are part of the Tatoosh Range south of Mt. Rainier. For some views of Mt. Rainier itself, look here, or here, or here.

A Reflection or a SkyWatch?

Shall it be a SkyWatch for Friday?

Or a Reflection for the weekend?


The reflection is obvious--there is yours trully the  blogger reflected among the palm trees. The sky is there among them, too. Not just as obvious.


Let's go for multiple reflections!

 And there atop the tree a star in the sky!

You will find all the SkyWatches here.

And Weekend Reflection hosted by James here.

Day one skies over 3-Day Walk

Last Friday in San Diego

 helicopters going about their routine

 What's this, though? a message!

Special for a team from Texas! Their husbands hired it for them.

And yes, those gray clouds let loose with downpours throughout the day.

Other skies around the world can be found here at SkyWatch. Thanks Skywatch team for keeping us going.

One Day Closer Skywatch

I'm walking all day Friday-Saturday-Sunday (see 3-Day link in the sidebar), so I will share here a sky shot from last year's 3-Day walk in Arizona. Othere skies can be found at the Skywatch site.

3-Day Bubbles

Can you see them? This lady in pink watched from her balcony and saluted us with bubbles as Breast Cancer 3-Day walkers passed by during the walk in Seattle two years ago. A Week from today I will be walking again. If you would like to donate to this cause, I would be delighted to have you as a sponsor. There is a link in my sidebar. We had beautiful skies in Seattle that year. The forecasts are for the same in San Diego next week. Note to self: pack the sunscreen.

SkyWatching is here.

morning skywatch

Can you just barely see the light outlined shadow of the dark side of the moon? Check my yesterday post on 365 for a better view. Find SkyWatch here.

Sky Reflected

I didn't want to miss both SkyWatch and Weekend Reflections, so I remembered one evening when my hubby said, "Come here and bring your camera." It was a glorious sunset, and a fun foto as reflected in the windows of our cars parked in front of the house.

Find SkyWatch here  and Weekend Reflections here.

Look! Up in the SkyWatch

It's a bird!


It's a plane!

    It's an ultralite against a clear blue sky!

Looking like a kite. Sounding like a lawnmower. Ready to land on the river with those pontoons.

Why is it you LAND on the WATER?

This adventurer flew past me while I was on a training walk last week from Howard Amon Park in Richland to Columbia Park in Kennewick. The pathway travels alongside the Columbia River between the two cities. My walk was about eight miles.

Check out what can be found in the skies around the world today at SkyWatch

An American Icon

viewed from the west

Half Dome may be one of the most photographed sights in America. What happened to the other half? Geologists say that there never was another half--that this is the whole thing, though other dome shaped peaks in Yosemite are "whole". My mother climbed Half Dome--not something that I could ever have imagined of her. Maybe that hike was the cause of her later fear of heights.

You can see that the skies over Yosemite when we visited last month were clear and blue. You can also see hundreds of skies from around the world at SkyWatch.

viewed from the east

A Bodie SkyWatch

Bodie State Park is a mining ghost town in the high desert east of the Sierra Mountains in California. The gold and silver mine and stamping mills there were active from the mid-1800s till 1942, when the federal government required all non-essential mining operations cease and men with mining expertise to work in war related materials.

The sky was incredibly blue the day we visited Bodie, making for a colorful, though cloudless Friday SkyWatch



Tomorrow some reflections from Bodie for Weekend Reflections.

Tower Bridge SkyWatch

London

It's been nearly two months and I'm still showing you London. I wonder what I would do with a longer trip. 

SkyWatch posts from around the world will be found linked at the SkyWatch site. It is amazing to see the variety, and yet the unity, among skies around the world and how we react to them.

The blue bits of sky among the clouds here look promising, but the second image gives a truer picture of what we could expect that day, and indeed, before the day was over we would duck into a Thai restaurant along Fleet Street for a long  dinner to avoid the cloudburst.

Eye Eye III

Skywatch from the London Eye. Visit other Skywatch posts from around the world here.

That is Charing Cross Station. The design is supposed to look like a train emerging from a subway tunnel. What do you think?

Turning now a bit to the west, that street leads up to Picadilly Circus. Yes. You probably recognize Westminster Abbey at the left.

Ah, more familiar sights--the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

My sense of direction is a bit confused now--I think we have swung back toward the north a bit, and yes, that is Buckingham Palace beyond St. James Park.

Swinging further east, some more of metropolitan London along the Thames. I don't see St. Paul's Cathedral which should be the next bit to the right (east)--that must have been when I had to sit down because the altitude was getting to me.

George took us on another hike while we were in Swansea

Well, actually Liz and Mike did, but George likes to take the credit.

They took us to this lovely beach.

With this awesome sky for SkyWatch Friday.

SkyWatch Friday has the SkyWatch Showcase at the site this week, along with this week's sky posts from around the world. Be sure to stop by to see.

Oops, George got distracted.

This view shows the reason that this is called Three Cliffs Beach.

Thanks for your patience. Still lots to do getting the house back to normal. We're sure we'll reach for things for the next few months and find them not there and say "oh..." But it's stuff--just stuff.

SkyWatch on the Gower Peninsula

Okay, what's she doing now. Is this one of those find the changes in this picture games? Can you find the difference? Okay, yes, the angle is slightly different. A little more sea in the right and a little less rock in the left. But wait!! What is this?

The whole time we were at Worm's Head, this hang glider was taking advantage of the uplift off the sea. When we first saw him, we thought he was taking off from the top of the cliff.

But we eventually realized that he was starting on the beach and riding the thermals to the top.

But wait! Didn't I say this was a SkyWatch? I haven't even shown the sky...

If you have stopped over from SkyWatch Friday and haven't been here before, do scroll back to see some more of our amazing adventures through Scotland and England. And watch for more of Wales and finally our days in London coming soon.

Ullapool

That second half of our Scottish Highlands week, while we were hiking Cul Mor and Stac Pollaidh, we stayed in the little port town of Ullapool. Lynda, back in Edinburgh had told us that Ullapool was the port that the first settlers of Nova Scotia had sailed from. It has  changed quite a bit since that time, though many buildings are quite old. Unlike many Highland villages which just kind of grew helter skelter and then roads were put in to connect, Ullapool was built on a grid, and is quite an orderly layout. Our B&B was in this street across from the harbor with this view of Loch Broom. As you can see, we

continued to have gray wet weather, some days wetter than others, some days grayer. This was to our delight, as we had escaped the summer heat of Central Washington, but, then, some of the wettest we could have done without.

From our window we could observe quite a bit of local activity, as the harbor was really a center of it all.






These boys were passing the time one morning splashing rocks.

And here, for the SkyWatchers is one of our brilliant Highland rainbows. The photographs do not do justice to the brilliance of the colors. One that we had had on our way back to Kinlochewe from a hike was so bright, we just pulled over and stared for several minutes. It was complete in the field beside us, and double, and I have never seen colors so extraordinary. (No pictures of that one--the cameras were in the back of the van drying out.)

SkyWatch links can be found here.

The boating activity in the loch was quite varied--small pleasure craft gave us their reflections (A bit early for Weekend Reflections hosted by James at Newtown Daily Photo but I have another for tomorrow.) and we were, of course, properly checked out by the local inspector:













Fishing boats tied up at the docks.

And the arrival and departure of the ferry to the Isle of Harris and Lewis was an important part of the day.