A couple of days ago my daughter came to find me because she found “a cool spider eating a bee!”. It’s a crab spider, in particular a Misumena vatia, and has been hanging out on an orange poppy in our front yard ever since.

We enjoyed a beautiful day in the sun shopping the Rotary Auction and paddling in Eagle Harbor. The views of the mountains in all directions were stunningly clear which reminded me (as did our recent camping trip) of some unusual photos of Mt Rainier and the neighboring ranges I took way back in November while traveling.

We have been camping in my backpacking tents but as a family we had outgrown them. When REI had their summer sale and the Marmot Limestone 4 family tent went on deep discount we bought it. So with sunny skies and nothing on the agenda we decided to put it to the test at no-longer-a-State-Park Fay Bainbridge.

In need of some time in the mountains, I made a quick trip into the Olympics a couple of weekends ago to hike to the summit of Mt Zion. I left the trail head around 10 am and summited in about an hour. The views from the top were almost entirely clouded out (not quite so on the way up) but I found some calypso orchids along the trail and glacier lily at the summit. The orchid more than made up for the missed panoramic. The snow was almost completely gone, only a couple of spotty patches…

A good friend of mine and I went backpacking in the North Cascades a couple of weeks ago (been busy, this post is a bit late), setting up camp on the slopes of Mt Baker – unfortunately the weather prevented us from seeing it clearly except from a distance on the hike up to camp.

We went on a nature walk through IslandWood today with an amazing naturalist. Probably the coolest thing we saw was a Drosera species, commonly known as sundews – the green swirls with the red tentacles in the photo. What makes them cool is two-fold, they grow only in bogs and they are carnivorous!

We enjoyed a marvelously sunny weekend which commenced with a trip with some friends to Sequim’s Lavender Festival. Unfortunately, from a photographic perspective, it was a bit too sunny with too many people and I had a hard time finding pictures I wanted. The photo above reminds me a bit of some scotch broom and a shed I photographed last summer.

My daughter and I enjoyed a great hike in the woods this morning and happened upon a new wildflower for us: Monotropa uniflora, also known as Ghost Plant or Indian Pipe. Through the otherwise dark and green forest these flowers really popped out against the ground. At first I thought they were some sort of candystick or pinesap like I saw on my hike to Heather Park but closer inspection showed otherwise. The photo above used no flash – it took your eyes some adjusting to see them clearly…

I spent Saturday and Sunday with a couple of friends escaping the rain and cold in Puget Sound by traveling over the Cascades to the Eastern slopes for an overnight backpack to Ingalls Creek. We had originally planned a trip to Spider Meadows but some concern about snow caused a change in plans.