When It Rains, It Floods

For anyone who hasn't been watching the nation's weather, we have been having some exciting weather around here. First we had over a foot of snow fall in December, leaving us with a white Christmas. Then it got warm and started to rain. This melts all the snow we have, add all that rain to it and we get rivers overflowing their banks. Flooding is not an uncommon thing in an area that gets lots of rain in any given year. When it snows, I stand in the same places to take pictures, and when it floods I go to the same places each time to watch the water.

I start out upstream from the falls by traveling down this road. Normally you cannot see the river from here. There is a bridge that I cross, just after the yellow sign. If the river is running high, we can see it as we cross the bridge.

As I walk across the bridge, I watch this porch and BBQ float towards me. It got hung up in the trees so I am not sure it will make it into the main flow of the river.Here you can see where the river normally flows, only between the trees.Like a blackbox on an airplane, they stamp the year a bridge was built somewhere on the bridge. I think that is so when it floats downstream, they know how long it lasted. It is nice to see that something as old as my sister can hold up even in these floods. I hope I am doing as well when I get to that age.NO SHOOTING.. How will I take pictures?All the hay you want...??If you are coming to the park to watch a soccer game, or a baseball game, it is nice to enjoy a picnic too. Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.And when you take your dog for a walk, make sure you clean up any droppings.

I then come farther downstream to Tumwater Falls. They did not have the park open today, something about flooding. I had to shoot pictures from the other side of the fence, so all of my angles are a little different. Between the grass and the river, there is a grate over the fish ladders. (Who knew fish could climb ladders?) Most of the year you can walk on the grate and look down into the fish ladders. There is a cement wall separating the walkway from the river.I am standing next to the stone marker to take this picture. This footbridge crosses the river to a walking trail along the river to the lower falls. I was standing on another higher bridge. The smooth part of the water on the left is the falls you can see in the last picture. On the right is the cement wall and the fish ladder (covered in water)Again from a different angle, the falls on the right, the footbridge is the lower bridge on the left. I was standing on the upper bridge (you can see in this picture) to take the last shot. All of this in the shadow of the old Olympia Brewery.What a nice boy, and no water under his feet. Here we look down toward the lower falls from the footbridge. Fall is pretty in the NW.

To get a picture of the lower falls I had to go past a couple of road closed signs, into Tumwater Historic Park and all the way out to the river. Normally the river would have been 20 feet away from me, but today the river was flowing right by my feet. This is a different footbridge at the bottom of the trail. Normally these are the tall dramatic falls. Today it looked like

a small step down.