Foto Finish Saturday - January 7th 2011

Today's a special day at our house.  Kiddo turns 12!  Hard to believe we are one year away from having a teenager in the house.  I was looking at vacations shots searching for this weeks Foto Finish and even going back just 2 years, you see a little girl in those photographs.  In last month's Christmas shots, you don't see too much little girl, but more of the young adult she's growing towards.  I like the person she's becoming, but sometimes I miss the little girl who'd snuggle with mom in the recliner on Sunday mornings.   OK, I'm done being a mushy mom.  On to this week's Foto Finish. 

I'm not a great lover of scenic shots, I prefer taking close ups.  I think in part because it's so hard for me to fully capture the awe inspiring and beautiful natural settings that inspire us so much when we are traveling (probably means, I need to work on my skills in that area). My shots always seem to be lacking, so I don't take many scenic shots.   For this week, I went back two years to a vacation trip we made to Washington State.  

I've lived my entire life in the Midwest, so the mountains in Washington just astound me.  The whole state is beautiful.  This photo was taken on Lake Chelan from the boat that runs from town of Lake Chelan to Stehekin which is in the North Cascades National Park.  The only way to get to Stehekin is to hike in or via plane or boat.  We enjoyed this area so much we ended up staying the whole week in the Lake Chelan and skipping the two days we'd planned to be in Seattle.  Not only were we really enjoying the area, this was the summer of 2009 when Seattle was experiencing temperatures in the 100's.  We decided to stay cool up in the mountains.  It was a bit ironic, Oklahoma is really hot in the summer, especially late July and early August, with temperatures typically in the 100's.   The week we went to Washington State to escape the heat at home, Oklahoma had an unusual cool front come through and it was in the upper 80's low 90's that week here.  

I'm going to grab a second cup of coffee and go check out all the other scenic eye candy posted over at Cat Patches.