New Camera

Anya and I recently bought a new camera - the nice digital SLR kind. Since we take quite a few pictures we figured we might as well try to make them look as nice as possible...

It was raining on Saturday, and the best place in Seattle to go when it's raining is the Japanese Garden. Everything looked and smelled very fresh and spring-like, and the dampness made for some nice photo opportunities.

Here are the pictures...

Good things come...

After suffering through an almost snowless February, March has turned out be just what we needed. Our home mountain (Crystal) has seen 108 inches so far in March - that's 9 feet of new snow. Thirty of those inches came in the last 3 days, prompting Anya and I to take Wednesday off to go skiing.

The ski areas within a couple hours' drive of Seattle aren't the kind of places that draw large numbers of destination visitors, mostly because there's no town or village connected to them (and consequently not much lodging). While weekends can be really crowded, weekdays are great - the only people around are retirees hanging out on the groomers and pros who go straight to the backcountry. Anya and I mostly ski in-bounds, no-hiking-required black or double black terrain; we had just about every run to ourselves. Plus the snow was fantastic. It wouldn't be hard to used to that...

We took a few quick pictures in the morning while the sun was still out.

Parents' visit

Last weekend my parents were here visiting. They took some random pictures around the city and of the hike we went on, a short, fun jaunt along a rocky river and thru some cool old-growth forest. The objective was a pair of waterfalls called Twin Falls, which is somewhat of a misnomer because they look nothing like each other. It was fun to get outside (and the rain even held off for us).

So far March is shaping up to be a great month for snow; we'll be partaking this weekend and trying to salvage our ski season - which has been middling ever since our trip to Idaho over New Year's.