A Fall walk (and a salmon run!) in the Pacific Northwest

It was a glorious Fall day on Wednesday!

So Shasta and I took a long Fall walk.  When I left for Southern California last week, it still felt like late summer, but when I returned five days later, it was most definitely FALL around here! The leaves have definitely begun to change colors and fall…

  

(I would like this house, thankyouverymuch.)

Spiders are everywhere!  Is this a seasonal thing?)

     Blackberries are pretty much everywhere in the Pacific Northwest, taking over everything.  If we’re not careful, the entire city of Seattle will be blanketed with them… which would be a good thing for about 3 weeks each August and an awful thing the whole rest of the time.

(But he can feed himself!)

 

He lives right around the corner.  What a sweet guy!

Bear Creek, where the salmon are running now, is in our neighborhood, so Shasta and I headed to the creek to check things out.   

Shasta’s life in a flow chart

A rainy day in Palm Desert with my favorite mother- and brother-in-law

I decided to stay an extra day in Southern California so I could visit my mother-in-law in Palm Desert, something I’ve wanted to do for years.  Thanks to my brother-in-law, Craig’s willingness to pick me up and put up with me for four hours in the car, we were able to make a wonderful day trip!

The California Desert is about as different from the Pacific Northwest forests as you can get!  I was mesmerized by the both the geography and the beautiful sky as we headed to Palm Desert from Anaheim.

I was also mesmerized by these gorgeous windmills!

 

I’d heard so much about Palm Desert, where Nana lives, but I’d never been there.  What an oasis in the desert!

Nana was happy to see us!

She won me over by showing me her daily reading material…

(OK, that’s not quite true – YET!  One of these days, Nana will keep up with her grandchildren by logging on!)

Craig and Nana showed me all around Palm Desert.  We paid a little visit to an oasis directly ON the San Andreas fault line! 

Uh-oh!  What’s gathering in those skies?

Could those be storm clouds?!  It hasn’t rained in Palm Desert in well over six months!  Hmmmmm.  Maybe the combination of an earthquake fault and storm clouds mean we should high tail it outta here!

So we drove through the beautiful desert, under an incredible sky…

 

… to the Marriot Hotel, where there are trees and a lake indoors!

It was kinda like Disneyland all over again!

Which meant we needed a touristy picture, of course.

I flirted with some birds who whistled at me.  (I’m such a sucker for attention!)

And then the skies opened up and dumped! 

Apparently, this is an unusual sight in Palm Desert:

We had a delicious steak dinner, thoroughly enjoying and appreciating each other’s company, knowing that our visit would be a short one.

I can’t get over the beauty of the sky over Palm Desert today, and couldn’t stop snapping photo after photo, hoping that just one might display the beauty of that sky.  I don’t think I got any that truly captured the magnificence.

(I think that last one looks like a poached egg!)

Within just a few hours of arriving in Palm Desert, Craig and I were on our way back to Anaheim.  I loved having a chance to spend some driving time today with just Craig, getting to know him better even after all these years. Usually we’re surrounded by family and activity, but very occasionally we have the opportunity to develop our own friendship – one that is really special to me.  Thanks, Craig!

Today was one of those short, sweet days spent with favorite people – a day passed that far too quickly.