Trains, Trains!

Onward home to Vancouver Washington this morning aboard the Talgo made 80 mile per hour Amtrak trains. Its wonderful to be able to see all the lush greenery and islands from the San Juans to Northern Thurston and Pierce County Islands in the south.

This trip takes about 6 to 8 hours, depending on train traffic and stops. Its such a wonderful train ride that I have been doing for more than a decade!

Then on to Cowlitz county and the Chehalis and Cowlitz Rivers along with the wonderful molehills of Southwest Washington until we finally pull into the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad right across from the Port of Vancouver. (Too bad they built trees to cover up the Car Crushing - Metal crushing operation. I LOVE watching them crush up all of that metal! What a great reminder of our great recycling programs for bigger metal items!)

SuperBowl

I just wanted to wish the Pittsburgh Steelers a wonderful Superbowl win. Also to the Pheonix Cardinals for an awesome and very close games and coming back from a huge deficit to almost get near a come back win. 

One of the things though that I had noticed is a former Seahawks coach Norv Turner, Jereheme Urban on Offense, former Seahawk-Kansas City now Okeafor on Defense.  

It just seems so many past Seahawks players on their team. (I suspect a couple of other team members but I just could not place them.)

Good luck next year to the Seahawks, Steelers and Cardinal teams during the off season.

Vancouver Food Co-op

Here is a great way for some one who may be interested in supporting a Clark County food store that contains as much as possible, locally sourced, sustainable or other great things from Food stuffs to the household basics. 

Right now, they are working on many different fronts and probably would love to have any one who might want to volunteer and help them connect with other like minded companies, local csa and metropolitan portland area - southwest washington community events. 

If you would like to know more about this wonderful idea that is trying to be brought to the City of Vancouver, please do not hesitate to drop a line at their web site: 

http://vancouverfood.coop

Old Santa Claus Train in Downtown Vancouver

I just found out in the local news media that Burlington Northern Santa Fe brought in a Christmas Steam Train to Vancouver Washington. What a wonderful thing to do for the local kids.

Wish I had gone down to investigate the horn I was hearing yesterday in Downtown Vancouver. (It was not the sternwheeler as I had thought but this old steam train.)

Thanks Burlington Northern for bringing some thing wonderful to life for Clark County kids.

Wondering about the Sternwheeler

Ok, I live about three or so miles north of Downtown Vancouver. For the past twenty four hours, I have continued to here these noise blasts.

They do not sound like the Burlington Northern and Union Pacific train sets that run past this area. It sounds either like a fog horn or sternwheeler horn?

Any one else hear this noise?

Wonderful Discovery Walk Festival

Here is a location of pictures for the "Mayors Walk" and 2008's Discovery Walk . http://uofgts.com/docs/DW/index/index.html

For those who may not be a part of the Portland Vancouver region, this walk is one of the biggest exercise and volksmarch in our area.

It is a wonderful community event once a year in Clark County and brings people from around the world to our little piece of heaven here to walk the many trails and parks.

If you were not able to attend this years or many of years past, please be watching, listening for Discovery Walk 2009 at:
http://www.discoverywalk.org/

Or watch their Blog at:

http://discoverywalk.org/blog/

Some of my newest neighbors and older faith or even other fatefuls might not know of the treasure trove of very close, scenic areas of wonderful clark, skamania, and cowlitz counties have to offer.

Many of the regulars might know of Merwin, Swift and Yale dams on the upper reaches of the Lewis River. But do you know about the upper falls and middle falls of this mighty little river?

The river starts near Mount Adams, flows around Skamania until it sets through the three power generations plants of Pacific Power and Light, then makes the run for the Clark and Cowlitz county lines until she finally empties into a tributary with the Columbia River on its final turn westward push towards the Pacific Ocean.

If you would like to see more of the wonderful pictures and may be take a spring or summer visit to this wonderful paradise, please look here for some wonderful pictures.

http://lewisriver.com/falls.html