A short getaway to Kingston Washington

greenpea

For us here in the US, this weekend was a national holiday. For those of us in the Pacific Northwest we got lucky this weekend with sunny and relatively warm weather (a bit of a teaser for Spring).

My wife and I decided to use this day off with the added nice weather to take our two girls on a little adventure for the day. So we drove 20 minutes North to the town of Edmonds and took the ferry to Kingston on the Washington Penisula if for no better reason than just to get out of town.

It was a short wait for the Edmonds/Kingston ferry...



The ferry ride was amazing with clear blue cloudless skys. To the North we could see all the way to Mount Baker (some 80+ miles off).




Once in Kingston we walked to a small park and let my daughters run wild. My youngest daughter was a big fan of the slide...



A long day of playing in the park left the two girls tired and wanted nothing more than just the opportunity to sit on a sunny bench in the park.


The return ride home on the ferry was equally amazing. This time looking to the south, you can see Seattle (note the silhouette of the space needle) and Mount Rainier (some 100+ miles off).



Hope everyone else had a great weekend!

Elaine

It was a beautiful weekend, wasn't it? Looks like you took good advantage of the taste of spring and enjoyed some lovely scenery with your family. Love that last shot! Rainier looks huge!

greenpea

Elaine wrote:

It was a beautiful weekend, wasn't it? Looks like you took good advantage of the taste of spring and enjoyed some lovely scenery with your family. Love that last shot! Rainier looks huge!

Thanks Elanie. I wish I had had a bigger lens for that last shot and a polarizer, that pic of Rainier required quite a bit of cropping and a lot of pushing the contrast. After 3 days of sun, the skys do get a bit hazy.

ian408

With all the times I've been to SEA, that shot of Rainier still gives me goosebumps!

greenpea

ian408 wrote:

With all the times I've been to SEA, that shot of Rainier still gives me goosebumps!

My shot? Wow! Thanks! I think I'm going to have to take that ferry ride again around sunset w/ a polarizer and a 600mm VR lens. See if I can't improve upon the example I showed here.

ian408

greenpea wrote:

My shot? Wow! Thanks! I think I'm going to have to take that ferry ride again around sunset w/ a polarizer and a 600mm VR lens. See if I can't improve upon the example I showed here.

Heck yeah! It's such an imposing volcano.

If you fly down this way, sit on the left side of the plane. You generally fly
over all of them on the way down. I used to love that flight. Take the 0700
North. See Shasta, Lassen, Hood at least.

greenpea

ian408 wrote:

Heck yeah! It's such an imposing volcano.

If you fly down this way, sit on the left side of the plane. You generally fly
over all of them on the way down. I used to love that flight. Take the 0700
North. See Shasta, Lassen, Hood at least.

That's funny. That was a picture I almost deleted. It required really pushing the contrast and clarity to even see the mountain in the picture (it was rather hazy that day), and on top of that there is A LOT of cropping (I only had 200mm on my camera, and you'll note I only used small pictures ). The reason I didn't toss it was because it falls along the lines of a type of picture I love trying to get: city with the imposing mountain or mountain range in the background taken from a long ways off with a big tele. I've seen a lot of variations of that type of shot with Rainier or the Olympics or the Cascades in the background and Seattle or Bellevue in midground... I can never get enough of it.

I've done that flight over all the volcanos many times; pictures from airplane windows never do justice to what your seeing though. I always love it when my flight from Seattle to somewhere in California happens to fall on a clear day.

Thanks again!

grimace

Nice series of shots Andrew.

I like that last shot with Mt. Rainier in the background. Everytime I've been in Seattle I've wanted to get a shot of it in the background but I run into bad weather.

greenpea

grimace wrote:

Nice series of shots Andrew.

I like that last shot with Mt. Rainier in the background. Everytime I've been in Seattle I've wanted to get a shot of it in the background but I run into bad weather.

Thanks Adam! Midway on the Edmonds/Kingston is one of the few spots I've found where you can get that perspective of the city lined up with the mountain and you're far enough away from the city that the size of the mountain will dwarf the city.