The US Open tennis tournament is a wrap*— and I believe this coat with a green sheen, on a Tesla Model Y, is a wrap as well.
*Novak Djokovic (Serbia, 36) beat Danill Medvedev (27) in straight sets in today’s Men’s Singles final. I pay my respects to Djokovic begrudgingly. I am not a fan of his.
Coco Gauff (19) is the first American teenager to win the US Open since Serena Williams won the tournament in 1999 at 17.
Coco Gauff (above, USA, 19) ran down just about all the shots that Aryna Sabalenka (Belarus, 25) blasted at her, neutralizing Sabalenka’s aggressive play. Final score: Gauff 2-6 6-3 6-2. [Photo: Karsten Moran for The New York Times]
Located in the northeast corner of the park at an elevation of 6,400 ft (1 950 m), Sunrise is Mount Rainier National Park’s highest visitor center.
It is only open from early July to early September.
The butterfly is a mariposa copper (Lycaena mariposa), and on the log is a Clark’s nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) and a Townsend’s chipmunk (Tamias townsendii).
This morning, I dropped off the hiking party of two (my friends visiting from South Africa) at the Mowich Lake campground on the slopes of Mount Rainier.
Mowich Lake is where they will start out on Thursday morning, on the Wonderland Trail/ Northern Loop Trail for an eight-day hike.
Blue diamonds, strike ’em anywhere First we caffeinate then incinerate We’ll get you And sparks will fly in the summer air Did you pull out of your stall Maybe I’ll see you after all
[Chorus: Stephan Jenkins] Hold me down, I want to find out We say no ’cause I live my life like a burning man Like a burning man, a burning man Like a burning man And I won’t get enough until my legs are broken
– Lyrics from ‘Burning Man’ by Third Eye Blind, 1997
It’s nice to see the stranded— stranded in mud, in the desert!— festivalgoers to this year’s Burning Man are able to finally make an exodus from the muddy grounds there.
‘Burning Man attendees say learning to live with the unexpected is part of the program’ – headline from an NPR report. Torrential rains disrupted this year’s event. It appears to me from this picture as if the wood pyre (a ‘burning man’ effigy) was not set alight this year. [Picture from official Burning Man website]
My friends and I made a round trip across Puget Sound today:
crossing with the Seattle-Bainbridge Island ferry, driving to Silverdale REI* to pick up a tent, and returning on the Bremerton-Seattle ferry.
*Outdoor recreation gear and equipment store
There’s the Space Needle and the Seattle skyline in the distance, seen from MV Walla Walla ferry that departed out of Bremerton. We made the 1.30 pm ferry— early enough and not too crowded with holiday weekend traffic returning to Seattle.
My friends are gearing up for hiking on Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail— and so a visit the the flagship REI store in Seattle’s South Lake Union was in order for today.
Some of the purchases: water bag and microfilter system, powdered eggs, shredded beef with beef broth in a pouch, energy bars, Mount Rainier Wonderland Trail map, waterproof compression bag (keeps clothes dry), pressure-regulated pocket-sized gas stove, isobutane fuel cartridges.
Happy Friday.
This weekend is the last hurrah of summer travel for many families.
Kids in California are back in school already, and kids in Washington State go back next Wednesday.
Here’s my vantage point from a filled-to-capacity Cell Phone Parking Lot at Seattle-Tacoma International airport this afternoon. (There goes the Light Rail train, departing from the airport station). I am wedged in between a big old Dodge Ram Off Road truck and another truck to my right, waiting for my two friends from South Africa to call from the airport. It took longer than an hour for their luggage to appear on the baggage claim carousel, and it was TWO hours after they had landed, when I finally picked them up at the curb outside the arrivals hall.