2For66

If you live in the western U.S. or follow my blog you know we’ve had a hot, dry, smoky summer. Wildfires are burning in California, Oregon, and British Columbia. For about a week we had unhealthy air here in Portland. We’ve had burning eyes, irritated noses and the like. We are lucky enough to get invited to our friends’ place on Hood Canal up in Washington. We thought we would double our pleasure, get out of smoky Portland and enjoy the sights and company with our friends.

No such luck. It’s about a three hour drive up I5 to Olympia, then west on US 101. As we got to Olympia the smoke was worse and it got worse yet as we headed north from Shelton. The northerly winds had blown a lot of smoke down into Puget Sound where it stacked up against the mountains to the south.

It was worse than Portland; we couldn’t go outside on the deck without smelling like we had been smoking.

The only good thing is beautiful sunsets. As we were eating dinner I glimpsed outside to see a great orange sunset forming up. I mounted my Sony A7R3 on my tripod and snapped some pictures

I wanted to zoom in on that big red ball so I put the Sony RX10M4 on the tripod and zoomed to the equivalent of 145mm.

In front of the setting sun, you can just make out the Olympic Mountain Range where the least little bit of the sun is dipping out of view.

We decided if it wasn’t better by the next morning we’d head back home where the smoke was clearing. Luckily it was much better on Saturday – more about that in the next post.