Fall in Seattle

Another fine summery fall day in Seattle. I wanted to record how nice the weather is since we leave tomorrow for 2 weeks and I suspect (hope) it won't still be the same when we return. We really need some rain!

Was on the UW campus twice today , first for our Ocean class, -but wasn't wild over the few photos I took then.. Then we picked up the girls from school for just a couple hours as we are changing our regular day from thurs to monday and we won't be able to do it for a couple weeks. We went to the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture on the UW campus - it's our favorite cafe there, and there was a lot of time playing with the dinosaur collection but we also looked at the International Conservation Photography Awards exhibition. This was created by Art Wolfe, nature photographer, to "advance photography as a unique medium capable of bringing awareness and preservation to our environment through art." Some of you might be interested in entering next time...here's the link.
There was a photo from Botswana of a usually vegetarian baboon eating a steenbuck!

This photo was taken from the front of the museum - with the NW coast killer whale. (edit: this whale was carved and finished by Bill Holm then director of the Bill Holm Center for the study of NW coast Art in 1985 as a replica of one carved by a Haida carver John Wallace, around 1880) and the Maple trees in brilliant sunlight but not yet turned color.. (not a great light situation for my camera however...with one shot..)

So....our 2 small bags are packed, zipped, locked and standing by the front door. We are ready for an adventure!! We did forget this was a holiday (Columbus Day) so we couldn't get any cash from the bank., but we have the morning to do that. The plane leaves late afternoon to fly over the N. pole to Dubai - in 14 hours! then a 9 hour layover at night in Dubai (but day time for us --so we'll find some sort of tour...), and an 8 hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, arriving on the 11th!!!! I have no idea how the internet service will be (supposed to have some everywhere...) but we're pretty sure no government will shut down the internet and phone service like it did when we were in Egypt in January 2011 for the beginning of the revolution! :-) So I hope to post something from my ipad, but probably not spend any other time in blipland... We'll return on the 24th... with pictures and stories.... we're excited about this trip with safari camps in Zambia and Botswana!