Fall is in the air!

Hello all! It's lovely out this time of year so I was pretty much gone sun-up to sun-down Saturday and Sunday. I'm combining both days into one post because, honestly I'm too exhausted to put much effort into this. My apologies. Here are a few of the places I stopped this weekend:

Saturday - the west
Tacoma
Gig Harbor
Kopachuck State Park
Port Orchard
Manchester
Bremerton

Sunday - the east
Cumberland
Federation Forest State Park
Kanaskat-Palmer State Park
Nolte State Park
Mt. Rainier (Sunrise)

And now for the photos. I took just under 500 photos, many of which turned out good because the weather was beautiful and, did I mention I'm in love with my new camera? *insert heart bubbles here* So basically it was too hard, or rather I was too lazy, to whittle them down to a reasonable number. Now without further ado, please enjoy the unusually unreasonable amount of photos :)

~ Saturday ~








Below: Kopachuck State Park











The seagulls were catching a lot of crab



Zooming in on a gull...















Below: Port Orchard





















~ Sunday ~


Above: Kanaskat-Palmer State Park
These two parks are in the Green River Gorge area, a few miles from each other
Below: Nolte State Park

Below: trees planted in 2000 - the logging biz is still booming

The photos from this point on were taken inside Mt. Rainier National Park



Almost as soon as I got on the trail I spotted a big buck up ahead. He crossed the trail from right to left. Of course, being the expert photographer that I am, I managed to capture him in a gorgeous, Field & Stream cover-worthy photograph:

Got deer butt?



Mountain Cleavage



Patches of snow

It was a little chilly so Mt. Rainier wore a blanket of clouds









This little fella was hamming it up posing for me but all the pics turned out a little blurry because I had the camera in the wrong mode - Doh! Operator error.






That's a wrap! Phew! I may stay home one day next weekend. We'll see...