Shilo Inn & Suites - Hazel Dell/Vancouver

Ilchee: Native American Woman Tribal Leader Statue

by glabah

Located along the Vancouver riverfront trail, this statue is somewhat hidden by a condominium building and tall bushes and grasses. She was a leader of the people living along the Columbia River in this area approximately in 1800, but unfortunately there is not a large amount of information available about her. There are some who think that she was a "medicine woman", while there are others who seem to think that she may have been some other spiritual or tribal political figure.

Further clouding the information is that her memorial stone has enough lichen and moss growing on it to make the letters hard to read.

Her statue looks out over the Columbia River towards the southwest, in the direction of the Interstate 5 bridge. She is sitting on a few rocks that have been placed on the site to provide a somewhat natural setting to the location.

The area where the statue is located has several benches and is a small plaza of its own, but is hidden from the river by several large plants near the statue.

Dad also says...
You will want...

by oneonta_ni

Dad also says...
You will want to visit the Clark County Historical Museum, the SP & S Railway Museum and the Covington House (that is a 1848 log cabin, was reportedly the first schoolhouse north of the Columbia River.

Fall Colors at Vancouver Lake, November 1, 2008

by glabah

Several people have written to the travel forums over the years asking about fall color tours of the Pacific Northwest. In some cases they were wondering why our part of the country doesn't offer such tours, like the northeast states do. Others were asking about what to expect, and when the best time is to visit our forests to view fall colors.

I'm hoping that this travelogue will help people to see and understand why the last several of these questions are difficult to answer, while the photos should certainly answer the first of those questions ("Why aren't these types of trips offered?")

The above photo actually offers a few hints already:

1. Fall colors look the best when they are in high sunlight. However, much of the Pacific Northwest doesn't get high sunlight that often during the season when it starts to get cold.

2. The trees along the pathway are all the same type. However, one has nearly completely lost its leaves, while one is a spectacular red and orange color, while others haven't even started to change color yet. Our more mild winters in the Pacific Northwest do not cause all of the trees to change all at once. What happens is that the trees will change color based on what they are and where they are, and what color they are.

Watch the weather predictions carefully, and if the temperatures have regularly started to go below 50 degrees or so, chances are the trees are starting to change.

However, even within a few feet of eachother, the same species of tree will probably be in a different state, as shown here by these: some have lost everything, and some haven't even started to change yet.

Here is yet another great example of the bizarre colors you will find in the Pacific Northwest. At far right is the edge of a tree that has completely lost all of its leaves. The rest of the trees in this row have not yet started to change colors, except the two in the middle.

Yet, the two in the middle certainly have made a spectacular display of themselves!

There are a lot of variables that determine when trees start to change, and apparently the two in the middle decided it was time to change long before the rest of these did.

Unfortunately, quite a number of the trees don't get that colorful during the fall. Many of them simply turn a greenish yellow, then suddenly everything falls off.

Again, you will notice that many of the trees are in a different stange, with one at the far right being completely dormant for winter now.

This is not to say that we don't have some great colors and trees that do put on a great display. Some of the flowering cherry trees and related trees do add their color to the show.

Yet, it can be really unpredictable.

The entire horizon is made of trees that haven't really started to change yet, while the nice purple tree at the right and the golden tree at the left have decided it is time to put on a color show.

Unfortunately, for them to really show up, you really need some sun light, but that only happened from time to time during this day.

Spectacular fall colors are not just limited to trees. The mixture of clouds and bare sky will frequently produce some pretty nice and interesting sky backgrounds for your photos.

However, getting this type of photo may involve getting wet, due to the passing rain clouds that you can see in the immediate top of the photo.

Oak trees are somewhat unpredictable. Some of them will just turn brown and all the leaves will quickly fall off those. Those tend to be the ones that stay green the longest. In some cases the trees do turn a bit of a dark red color.

In some cases, they lose their leaves very early. the tree to the right, and the oak trees behind the one in the center of the photo (you can't see them from this angle) have completely lost their leaves.

Yet again, it is possible to see that the colors don't happen all at once. The tree in the foreground has decided it is time to show a few colors.

So it is very difficult to find a time when all of the trees show their colors all at the same time.

Here is another great illustration of the different state of the various trees at the same location.

In the foreground, the trees have mostly changed color. One of the trees on the left in the foreground has already lost all of its leaves.

Behind that first row of trees, the somewhat older trees have retained their green color, except at the very tip of the branches. Within a few weeks they will probably have completely changed.

Behind those, the larger trees have continued to stay green, and will probably not change color until the leaves suddenly turn brown and fall off all at once.

Compare this scene with the ones above, when the sun had managed to poke its way through the clouds. The fact is that the trees may have some spectacular bright colors, but they just don't look the same if the sun doesn't shine on them.

All of these reasons are why it is very difficult to give good suggestions for fall colors tours in the Pacific Northwest - at least the western part of the northwest.