Microsoft OneDrive Remembering Nephew Jeremy Driving & Mount Rainier

The memory photos from today's Microsoft OneDrive Memories from this Day could have been from August of 2017.

I'd flown to Washington early in August of that year, which would make the next photo one I took of Mount Rainier whilst flying over that currently dormant volcano.

In that first photo memory that is my Favorite Nephew Jeremy, driving. That August of 2017, I spent a week in Washington, and then flew to Arizona for a week with my mom.

On Mondays, like clockwork, Jeremy would show up at my mom's to take mom on their weekly dinner date to one of the many fast-food joints in Chandler, Arizona.

I suspect that that is what is happening in the Jeremy driving photo, driving mom and me to the weekly fast-food dinner.

Jeremy, like his mother, is a good driver. There are some people whose driving always makes me nervous. Jeremy and his mom are among those who do not make me nervous when they are behind a vehicular wheel.

Another example of this some people's driving making me nervous thing is the Goober Twins. One of the Goober Twins, Wally, has never made me nervous when he is behind the wheel, whilst his twin, Big Ed, tends to make anyone riding, with him driving, to be nervous.

I remember a roadtrip, back in the early 1990s. We'd rented a Cadillac to drive to Reno and Yosemite, and points in between. In the Cadillac were the Goober Twins, me and a guy named Dale.

Wally did all the driving til we got to Yosemite.

I had no problem with Wally's driving, none at all. However, when it came time to leave Yosemite, Dale took me aside and sort of begged me to take over the driving due to, apparently, Wally's driving making Dale nervous. Wally is a bit of a speeder.

The Cadillac had an onboard computer calculating gas mileage. Soon after me taking over the driving, due to usually driving below the speed limit, the gas mileage quickly improved, soon getting over 20 miles to the gallon in that big gas guzzling Cadillac...

August 6 At Hot Sikes Lake Takes Me To Mom & Dad's Wedding Anniversary & Hiroshima

It was to nearby bucolic Sikes Lake I ventured on this first Tuesday of August to do some nature communing in the natural sauna steam bath.

The temperature was only 95 degrees, with the humidity making those 95 degrees really feel like 103 degrees.

I was what is known as a sweaty mess by the time I made it back to the air-conditioned comfort of my motorized motion device.

Looking at that peaceful looking Sikes Lake photo documentation, you see above, it does not look like it is blisteringly HOT.

It looks refreshingly cool. 

As is so often the case, looks can be deceiving.

Due to the day after day after day after day of high temperatures and no rain, the humidity has gotten less humid, and the biting bug population seems to have diminished, at least so it seems since I am no longer suffering multiple bug bites every time I enter the outer world.

If my math is correct, and it sometimes is, today we would be celebrating my mom and dad's 73rd Wedding Anniversary, if mom and dad were still able to celebrate such.

The last time I went to one of my mom and dad's Wedding Anniversary parties, it was on Saturday, August 11, 2001. Mom and dad's actual anniversary date is August 6, the same date in 1945 that a big, bad bomb was exploded over Hiroshima, Japan.

Some Like It HOT In Lucy Park On First August Monday

On this first Monday of August, for the first time in a week, give or take a day or two, I communed with nature in a non-air conditioned venue, walking the backwoods jungle of Lucy Park.

Which would make that the Lucy Park suspension bridge over the Wichita River you see in the photo documentation.

The foliage is managing to remain green, despite the day after day after day of getting baked over 100 degrees.

Today's Lucy Park nature communing was not too HOT, at a degree under 100, with a nice breeze blowing, with occasional gusts.

The only wildlife I saw today, other than humans, was a few cute lizards scurrying on the trail ahead of me, seeming playful, like they thought it to be fun thinking I was chasing them.

The lizard type reptile does not bother me in the way I am repulsed by their snake relatives. 

I have not seen a single snake this year. One would think one would, if there are any to be seen, what with the cold-blooded monsters liking when it is HOT.

Maybe that sub-zero deep freeze of a couple Februarys ago killed off the snake population, with the lizards somehow surviving.

The biggest snake I have seen since being in Texas was seen in Lucy Park the first summer I was in Wichita Falls. It was HUGE. Moving slow. But HUGE. No clue what type slithering monster it was. Fairly certain it was not a boa constrictor or python. But, size-wise, that's what it looked like.

Being HOT is on the weather menu for the next many days. How did people live in this climate before the invention of air-conditioning?

July 22, 2002 In Lynden Washington With The Slotemaker-Jones

Microsoft's OneDrive Memory from this Day is off by about a week. It was on July 27, 2002 the photo you see here was taken.

I know this because I remember the actual date, that, and I have a coffee cup which immortalizes this event at the Northwest Washington Fairgrounds, in Lynden Washington. 

I shall take a photo of that coffee cup for documentation purposes...

The photo could not quite capture the Jones part of the Slotemaker-Jones coffee cup.

This was a family reunion, the first one of the Slotemaker-Jones family in many years. And the largest ever.

The reunion sort of came about due to that feeling us Americans were having post the shocking 9/11 attacks.

At least that was how my part of it came to be. I was in Washington the month before 9/11, having driven myself solo from Texas to be a surprise arrival at my mom and dad's 50th Anniversary party.

At that party I came into possession of a big box of family photos, and other memorabilia. Much of which I had not seen before, some of which had text explaining what I was seeing in the photo.

Back in Texas I began scanning the photos, rendering them into being digital photos. I then began building a Slotemaker-Jones website. That quickly became the most complex website I'd made up to that point in time. 

I don't quite remember all the details, but at some point in time, after the publishing of the Slotemaker-Jones website the idea of a family reunion was suggested. Within less than a year that suggestion came to fruition.

I was in Washington for only a week for that reunion in 2002. All my times back in Washington I had never been so happy to get back to Texas as I was that time. We need not go into details why...

The Slotemaker-Jones website

Much of the Slotemaker-Jones website no longer works due to Shockwave animations no longer being supported in the format used way back then. I see auto-scrolling text also no longer works. But, the gist of it is still there, for the most part.

In Seattle Looking Too Close To Mount Rainier

If I remember correctly, and sometimes I do, I have previously made mention of the fact that I find the frequent instances of misleading photos of Mount Rainier to be a bit worrisome.

What with tourists arriving in Washington expecting to see Mount Rainier being a gigantic presence looming nearby.

This morning's Seattle Times online had the best example yet of this. The Seattle Space Needle peeking above Queen Anne Hill, with Mount Rainier looking like a nearby monster.

Now, when the Mountain is out, it is an impressive sight, naturally, as seen via one's eyes. When one is in Tacoma the Mountain looms way larger, and closer, than it does in Seattle. But not nearly like that which you see in the above photo.

On a clear day, from the vantage point of the Skagit Flats, a little over 100 miles north of Mount Rainier, one can see the Mountain, looking like a big white pimple on the horizon.

I know a lifelong Texan, here in Wichita Falls, who had never been to the west coast til a couple years ago when she flew to Seattle to visit some friends. She'd never seen mountains before. She told me it was mesmerizing, no matter which way she looked, west, east, north or south, she saw mountains. 

I do not know if she had a pre-conceived notion about how large Mount Rainier loomed on the skyline. But, I do know that her friends had a cabin near Enumclaw, the town thought of as the Gateway to Mount Rainier, and that she was overwhelmed looking at that Mountain, so big and white, so close.

She did not know, til I told her, that there are four more volcanoes in Washington. She knew of Mount St. Helens, but not the other three.

Mount Baker, the volcano I lived near when I lived in the Skagit Valley, also gets the distorted zoomed photo treatment. Mount Baker, like Rainier, is also totally impressive in its natural state, without any photo enhancement.

It has been years since I have seen a real mountain, other than the artificial mountain, Mount Wichita, that is located in the town in which I currently reside...

Back In Tacoma Pedaling With David, Theo & Ruby

That which you see here showed up this morning in my email, from Microsoft. a OneDrive Memory from this Day.

The day was in August, but not the first day of August. The year was 2017. I was in Texas the first day of August in 2017. 

A few days later, well, over a week later, I left Texas and flew to Washington where I met my nephews David and Theo, and my one and only niece, Ruby for the first time.

A few days after arriving in Tacoma, David, Theo and Ruby directed me and their parental units to Tacoma's Point Ruston, where we soon found ourselves driving along the Tacoma waterfront, a pedal powered motion device.

In the above photo Theo is in the driver's seat, with Ruby next to him, with David next to Ruby, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror.

The pedal powered motion device was a lot of fun. Someone should bring these to the town I am currently in. Methinks people would enjoy renting one to pedal themselves along the Circle Trail.

Way back in August of 2017 I blog posted about the day we pedaled a surrey with a fringe on top, in a blogging titled Point Ruston Ruby, Theo & David Surrey Survey Of Tacoma's New Waterfront Development.

Point Ruston is an impressive development on the Tacoma waterfront, transforming an industrial wasteland into a huge complex of residential towers, restaurants, and other attractions, like the aforementioned pedal powered surreys.

Point Ruston came to be a bustling success during the same time frame the Texas town named Fort Worth has struggled to reclaim an industrial wasteland on the north side of the town's downtown. Point Ruston is a bigger project than Fort Worth's proposed, stalled, project, which has limped along since this century began.

Point Ruston is the site America's biggest Superfund cleanup, mitigating the pollution left behind by the long-gone Asarco copper smelting operation. After the cleanup billions of bucks of private funding showed up to transform the cleaned-up land.

Fort Worth has not yet reached the point where the EPA determines the former industrial wasteland is safe for development.

It is so strange how two towns in the same country can be so different. One dynamic, the other not.

Perplexing...

Back To Death Valley Badwater With Jason & Joey

A few days ago photos showed up in the daily Microsoft OneDrive Memories of this Day email of the time, way back in August, in one of the final years of the previous decade, when my nephews, Jason and Joey, flew me to Las Vegas for a few days of Super Sunshine.

I made a blog post of the photos I saw that day, including one I thought was Jason and Joey at Badwater in Death Valley, that being the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere, a couple hundred feet below sea level.

Well, today more OneDrive Death Valley photos showed up, with one I can clearly tell is at Badwater. 

That is nephew Joey walking on the Badwater salt flat, whilst his big brother, Jason, closely inspects the salt flat.

That white dot you see high on the cliff, that marks sea level.

It seems as if it should be a bit unsettling to be so far below sea level.

But, it actually is not.

It never crossed my mind to worry what if the Pacific Ocean suddenly sprung a leak and started flooding Death Valley. I wonder how big a lake would be the result?

Finding World Record Breaking Snow On Washington's Mount Baker

Saw that which you see here, yesterday, on Facebook. Hard to believe that a couple decades ago I could look out my living room window, and, through the forest of fir trees, see the Mount Baker volcano a few miles to the northeast.

I can look out any of my Texas windows and see nary a single mountain in any direction, let alone a snow-covered volcano.

Reading the text indicating the winter of 1998-1999 Mount Baker's snow accumulation had it being the snowiest mountain on record had me a bit perplexed.

I seem to remember such a claim being made many times prior to that last winter of the previous century. 

I Googled "Mount Baker" and clicked on the Wikipedia article about Mount Baker to see if mention was made regarding record breaking Mount Baker snow, and saw only the following regarding record breaking snow...

"After Mount Rainier, Mount Baker has the heaviest glacier cover of the Cascade Range volcanoes; the volume of snow and ice on Mount Baker is greater than that of all the other Cascades volcanoes (except Rainier) combined. It is also one of the snowiest places in the world; in 1999, Mount Baker Ski Area, located 9 mi to the northeast, set the world record for recorded snowfall in a single season—1,140 inches (95 ft)."

Maybe what I was remembering was Mount Baker setting records for snow accumulated, as in piled up deep, and not the amount of snow falling in a single snow falling season.

I do remember that upon reaching the Mount Baker ski area, with the road plowed clear, that it was like driving in a snow canyon, with the snow deep on either side of the road.

Of late I find myself wondering if I am ever going to see Mount Baker, or any of the Washington volcanoes, ever again...

Final July Saturday Lucy Park Jungle Hike

With the temperature in the relatively chilly mid 80s, with a wind doing some blowing, but with humidity high, it was to Lucy Park I ventured on this final Saturday of the 2024 version of July for some high speed nature communing in the natural sauna steam bath.

I hiked the Lucy Park Backwoods Jungle today for the first time in several weeks. As you can see via the above photo documentation it appears some of the Lucy Park Jungle has been stripped of its ground cover.

Continuing on, eventually we arrive at the yet not stripped of ground cover area of the Jungle.

 I like the Lucy Park Jungle better in full jungle mode, with the grass grown tall.

I do understand, though, why the grass gets cut. Left alone it presents a bit of a wildfire danger.

That earthquake, which had me all shook up yesterday, is now upgraded to a 5.1 on the Richter Scale quake. Apparently, there were two follow-up earthquakes in the hour after the first one, but those two did not shake as far as Wichita Falls.

A Little Shook Up In Wichita Falls

 A little over a half hour ago, 9:38 AM, on Friday, July 26, I felt something I have not felt in Texas, which I fairly frequently felt whilst living in Western Washington.

An earthquake.

The shaking did not last long. And there was no loud explosive noise like I experienced in my old home zone. 

I soon learned the quake was epicentered near Hermleigh, Texas, about 156 miles from my Wichita Falls location, as a bird flies.

During the 1990s there was a period when multiple earthquakes were epicentered a couple miles east of my abode.

Those were shallow quakes, less than 3.0 on the Richter Scale. But, due to being so close, the shaking was strong, and loud. My windows popped, the tall fir trees shook and swayed, the tile on my kitchen floor cracked.

Today's quake, centered near Hermleigh, Texas measured 5.0 on the Richter Scale. This must have been quite a surprising shock to those living near Hermleigh.