Kla Ha Ya Days 7-19-14

Today's adventure was a local embracing of my new home.  Snohomish's Kla Ha Ya Days (Kla Ha Ya meaning 'welcome') was this week and I just scratched the surface of this fun celebration.
I got downtown a couple hours before the parade and enjoyed wandering around the eerily empty streets playing with my camera.  I had a delicious raspberry white mocha from Rock City Café.  I was told they have the best coffee in the state and I certainly believed it after having mine! 

By the time the parade started, the streets had been thickly lined with a multitude of people.  Little kids eager for candy, local shop owners washing their windows, people with dogs, tall people, short people, old people, people with pink hair... but mostly happy people (the little boy in the monkey backpack near me alternated between candy ecstasy and screaming overload).  I LOVED the beautiful horses, but if I was handing out awards, the grand prize would have gone to the Sauerkraut band/group.  These people were having such a great time out there, you just couldn't watch them without grinning.


This Viking was advertising a pumpkin toss/medieval faire and would stop and blow his horn and then shout "BECAUSE I CAN!!"



"Boba Fett!?"



These horses were made of poetry.



Hello handsome!



This dog was super happy to be in the parade!



The Sauerkrauts.  Great band, great costumes, and great smiles!



Haha.. vote for Pedro.

This was just the parade.  There was also a River Run before the parade, I think people could run 1 or 5 miles.  I enjoyed vendor/craft booths filling a couple streets, a chainsaw artist, and a man balancing a unicycle on his face.  This is just what I saw.  There was so much more to do, including a bed race, salmon BBQ, Frogtastic Kids Fair, etc. 
On my way back to the car, I stopped in to the Cabbage Patch restaurant for a bite.  I have never had anything there that was not superb, including the service, and enjoyed a fresh scone while I waited for my smoked salmon scramble.
Snohomish is just a fun, friendly and picturesque town, and full of great antique stores as well.

Flaming Geyser State Park & Snohomish Slough 2/8-9/14

Yesterday was a fun day to check out a state park Dave had noticed last week. Flaming Geyser State Park is pretty interesting with a history of coal mine exploration and a flame burning at the flaming geyser where a methane pocket deep below the ground (1400 ft if I read the sign right) is seeping out. 

It also has kind of a mudpot geyser where more methane bubbles up through some mud and water near a stream that flows into the Green River.

 Here is a video of the mudpot:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moHrCs32cP0&feature=youtu.be

It was an icy day and the water had frozen in cool shapes along the stream.

Flaming Geyser State Park had great picnic table areas, lots of river access for fishing or cooling down in the summer, and big field areas too.It seems like it would be a good place to come back to and check out again!
Later that afternoon we found ourselves in a snowstorm halfway up a windy steep hill that our GPS had led us up putting chains on the tires while other people slid off the road as they tried to come up or down it.

We got maybe 3 inches, but it melted a lot this morning and only about 1 1/2 inches of snow were left by the time we headed outdoors.  We have been wanting to do our Snohomish slough walk in the snow and this may have been our last chance this winter, so we took Cedar, picked up Junior and took both dogs out.

 What a great day for a walk there!  We saw tons of ducks and both our eagles flying up to their nest! What huge birds to come to a landing between the branches like that!  We saw robins, flickers, jays, a killdeer and a heron also!

Then on our way back along the dike, we got a real treat!  A squeaky otter was floating around talking to us.  This totally made our day.  : ) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qf7fEAh91k&feature=youtu.be
(if you turn up your speakers you can hear this little guy chirping as he swims)