I seem to have missed by usual Wednesday update, but that's in keeping with how everything is going. After traveling to Colorado to deliver Eldest Son to start graduate school, I returned home with Second Son. Less than a week later, we left for Seattle, where he is spending his fall quarter (while attending UC San Diego... this is, indeed, a strange world we now inhabit!). Now I'm off again, for some exciting travel, including my first trip to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I'll share photos along the way, and maybe can come up with a story or two.

Amid all that, what of the writing? Well, I've been picking away at the edits on Death By Donut, and have some hopes that I will be able to make it a book. And I'm working away at planning my next novel, which will kick off an all-new mystery series. More on that as it actually happens (NANOWRIMO? Maybe).

And I still owe you all photos from the Weminuche Wilderness... 

For now, a few bits of travel to and from Seattle. I was up there when the West caught on fire, and the drive back to California was surreal, with smoke so thick that visibility was down to 1/2 mile, and I only got out of the car to race to the restroom, then back to the filtered air inside the car.

Amazing what you can fit in a Prius... bike, duffels, lunch... pet snake.

 The air in California was pretty smoky when we left, and we did a lot of exclaiming over it. If only we'd known..

Passing Lake Shasta, we were also struck by the devastation of the fires from 2018.

A hazy pink sun at the Weed rest area (yes, there really is a town called Weed in California).

When we arrived, the air in Seattle was clear and beautiful--and so cool and pleasant after triple-digit temps in CA!

The kind of summer evening that makes people move to Seattle.

The perfect conditions in Seattle blew up in a hurry when more fires broke out in Oregon and Washington. When I headed south, it was hard to tell where I was, because I couldn't see anything but the road!

A field in Oregon.

When I got home, I found everything covered in ash from our local fire.

A hard time to be a spider.

All images and text ©Rebecca M. Douglass, unless otherwise indicated.
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