Kennewick

I promised pics in my last post, so here they are. Sort of an expanded version of my Lunch Break Adventures :) Kennewick is what I consider to be my home town, and it's totally different from BC. And not just the cherry blossoms!



This is an unused railway grain tower right in the middle of town, fairly iconic. I've meant to take a picture of this for literally years, but of course it took me until now to actually do it.

We went down through Badger Canyon where I used to live. It made me so nostalgic! The whole area is agricultural-- vineyards, orchards, asparagus and hay fields. It's so beautiful. These are vineyards with poplar trees planted as windbreaks (have I mentioned that the Columbia Basin gets HUGE winds? The day these were taken we were actually in the midst of a dust storm!)








This is a great overview of what the area is like. No mountains, just rolling hills that are so sandblasted they look soft like pillows.



And there is an area called LaPierre Canyon at one end of Badger Canyon. My ex-stepmother lives up there, right near the corner of LaPierre Canyon Road and Rachel Road.





As a new LaPierre, I find it kind of neat :)

At any rate I hope you enjoyed this brief look at the Tri-Cities. Maybe someday I'll get around to taking more pics... I always plan to, but never seem to get around to it. To much shopping to do while I'm down there!

My latest project

I am super bored at work right now (don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to be bored, I'm running the office by myself and it's really really hard when it's busy) so I've decided to post some of my work from my graphic art store. I'm very proud of what I've done, especially teaching myself to use Photoshop which has turned out to be a lot more complicated than I expected!

Anyway here's a sampling of what I've done:













If you want to see more, visit my Etsy store. But be aware-- the products that say "mature" contain nude art.

I'll be working on more graphic stuff on my laptop today while waiting for the phone here at work to ring... or something :)

Lunch Break Adventure: White Rock Beach

Oh, the days of beautiful summer weather and 2-hour lunches... none of which I am experiencing right now. Sigh. Oh well, at least I have these gorgeous pictures to share with you!

I work only minutes from the beach at White Rock which is a lovely place (if you don't mind driving around and around looking for parking, and then paying $3.75/hour when you find it!) Not only does it have wonderful views and adorable shops, you can see America from the boardwalk :)



A lot of other people were taking advantage of the gorgeous weather this day too.



This is White Rock's famous pier and boardwalk. Derek and I had originally thought about getting married in the summer at the end of this pier... wouldn't that be great? But time constraints made this unfeasible.



At the end of the pier is a breaker and a small marina, very picturesque!







At the end of the pier there are quite often crab traps. Here, a crabber measures his catch-- crabs have to be above a certain size and only male, or must be thrown back.



Of course, the crab had his own opinions about the situation... (here's his fighting face!)



At the entrance to the pier are railroad tracks, which made for lovely pictures with the ocean in the background...



And finally, I'll leave you with a picture of White Rock's famous white rock, and beautiful Baker in the background. BC is gorgeous, I'll give it that.



Hope you enjoy, especially on the dark, rainy, gloomy days that are fast approaching! :)

Lunch Break Adventure!

During the summers, my job is super slow. So slow that I often take 2 hour lunches. The town I work in is famous for its' parks, so I sometimes take advantage of my time by checking them out.

Elgin Heritage Park was one of the first I visited, and was so cool I had to go back, and bring my camera. It was one of the things that led to the idea for this blog.

I stumbled across the park by accident-- I drove past the parking lot a few times, and one day decided it looked like as good a place as any to eat my peanut butter sandwich :) After lunch, I decided to take a bit of a walk... I was about eight months pregnant at the time and took any opportunity for exercise, to help minimize the incredibly frustrating swelling of my ankles I experienced. I found a trail...



wandered around a corner, admiring this neat little marsh...



and came across this view:



Gorgeous! An adorable, tiny marina on the river.



But it didn't end there... the park follows the river for a little ways...





And then splits off. One way continues along the river, the other way...



WOW.



A whole field of cattails... beautiful.



After passing across the bridge through the cattails, the trail turns another corner, and this is what you see:



What the heck is THAT you ask??



It's an owl house :) Apparently, barn owls are big in the area, but places for them to roost are growing thin. So the parks build these owl houses to give them homes. Really neat.

The trail winds back around on itself, and ends at the parking lot again-- the perfect walk for 8 months pregnant :D

I loved it, I've gone back several times, and I hope to go back later in the year-- it'll be interesting to watch how the changing of the seasons affects the trees and the river. Hopefully you enjoyed it too-- and I hope to share more of my lunch break adventures in the future!