Pigeons perch on the I-205 bridge crossing over the Clackamas River in Gladstone, Oregon. View Larger Image

What was with the zombies, the aliens, and the sinister hearses convening at the Double Tree hotel in Portland on the night of January 15?  The West Coast Haunter Convention was filming a promotional video for their upcoming convention in Portland from June 1 to June 3, 2012.  Fans will gather to check out the [...]

I head out to Goodnoe Hills, an area about 15 miles east of Goldendale, Washington. Like many areas east of the Cascade Mountains, the land is mostly grassland with very few trees. It also has many wind turbines spinning when the breeze blows. The road I am traveling on is Hoctor Road, a two-lane paved [...]

Five years ago on this day, the Portland Aerial Tram opened to the public. The $57 million, 3,300-foot long aerial tram has been shuttling passengers between the South Waterfront terminal and the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) almost daily for the past five years. The tram cars also have names: Walt and Jean, n

What does Clackamette Park in Oregon City look like 48 hours later? I headed out to Clackamette Park today to shoot some follow-up photographs of the park flooded by the Willamette and Clackamas rivers. The scene at the park looks vastly different than it did 48 hours ago when I posted the flood photos in [...]

Every Tuesday, The Oregonian’s ThisWeek/Food Day complimentary newspaper (I did not subscribe to) wrapped in a plastic bag lies on my driveway. Unless the weather is dry, the newspaper usually ends up soggy no matter how light it rains and it becomes unreadable. The pages tear when flipping through the soaking wet pag

Today’s photographs features Cape Horn, Columbia River near Wishram, the Stonehenge replica, and a small rural town named Kent, Oregon. Fog filling the Columbia River Gorge blankets the hillside and Hwy. 14 at Cape Horn. The fog also reduced the visibility to about 200 feet on some stretches of the highway. Despite th

Last Wednesday, a strong warm weather system dumped heavy rain in the Willamette Valley, causing major flooding, extensive damage, and a few fatalities. Most of the floodwater is draining into the Willamette River and flowing downstream northward to Portland. There is some flooding along the banks of the Willamette River. C

Snow is now falling and sticking to the street surface in Milwaukie. At 9:20 p.m. rain fell from the sky and the temperature was at 39°F. Shortly after 10:00 p.m., the rain turned to snow and the temperature plunged to 34°F. One-half inch of snow covering the ground at the 125-foot elevation as of 10:45 [...]

Depending on where you were in the Portland metropolitan area for the past three days, either you had some snow or you did not. Some towns in the region received a couple inches of snow accumulation. Other towns only saw a light dusting or no accumulation. In Milwaukie, the snow accumulation amounted up to nothing, [...]

The Hector Campbell and Historic Milwaukie neighborhood associations have cancelled their regular neighborhood meetings for January 9, 2012, because of schedule conflicts. Milwaukie City Council is holding a special session meeting on Jan. 9 at 7:00 p.m. in the Milwaukie City Hall to discuss the baseball stadium project. Du

Engineering and bridge buffs will get a kick out of two major Willamette River bridge constructions now underway. Observers have the convenience of watch the construction from the most convenient public places. Getting from one bridge site to another is just a short bicycle ride on a scenic trail. In July, the Portland-Milw

The year 2011 came and went. It also left a mark of some of the best and the worst of the year. Here are the links to the ten moments that are featured on my website (in no ranking order). 1. Davis Graveyard Abbey The Davis Graveyard replaces the old church facade with an abbey [...]

There was an impressive weather scene today at Rowena Crest and near Grass Valley. Looking down from the overlook, fog fills the valley and blankets the Columbia River, but disappears ten minutes later. Then near Grass Valley, sunlight beams through a break in the dark clouds in the late afternoon. Meanwhile, looking back t

The weather wasn’t frightful and the Milwaukie bonfire was warm and delightful tonight. About 500 or so people showed up at the Milwaukie Riverfront Park to gather around a blazing gargantuan campfire, sipping hot coffee or hot cocoa while waiting for the Christmas Ships to sail by. Carolers sang Christmas carols as f

The weather may have been delightful, but the round-trip one-mile hike on the icy trail at Little Zig Zag Falls was more frightful. My two four-legged friends did very well on the hike, but me, not so much. Luckily my camera pack is well padded and my tripod is quite heavy duty because I’ve crashed [...]

On March 17, 2011, I went out and photographed a few images in the Ardenwald-Johnson Creek neighborhood in Milwaukie on a cold and wet evening. The “Low Beer Open” sign has been up there since I’ve moved here almost ten years ago.

A federal judge in Oregon ruled “investigative” blogger Crystal Cox must pay $2.5 million to Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin padrick for defamamtion damage. The judge also ruled that she was not protected under the Oregon Medial Shield Law because Cox was not a journalist (bloggers are not covere

The bad news is the morning fog blanketing over Milwaukie is blocking the moon, so I have no photographs of the lunar eclipse from today. I’m not fretting over missing this event because I’ve seen a few lunar eclipses in the past and nature is to blame here. The last lunar eclipse I captured on [...]

The last time I headed out to Stein Pillar three years ago, the sky was gray and Owen, my Labrador mix, had a lot less gray on his face. I return to Stein (pronounced “Steen”) Pillar today. Mother Nature rewards me with blue sky and the low winter sun casting warm light onto the basalt [...]

This is something you don’t see everyday. The black vintage Seattle, Portland & Spokane 700 steam locomotive appears around a bend, puffing steam into the blue sky while tooting its steam whistle. Holiday lights line the locomotive and the passenger cars for the Holiday Express excursion. The ground shakes as the

Would Coca-Cola in a white can taste any different than Coca-Cola in a red can? Can you tell difference between the new white Coca-Cola can and the Diet Coke can? A few weeks ago, Coca-Cola released the “Arctic Home” cans that promotes partnership the World Wildlife Fund to protect polar bear’s habitat. In

Browsing through my photo collections, I found some great weather photography from 2010. The photos may have once been posted before this website rebooted on May 31, 2011. Several photos goes to show how often I visit central Oregon, but I recently decided to cut back on long-distance day trip and stay local.

A very calm and pleasant scene this afternoon from along U.S. 197 south of Dufur, Oregon. Sunlight casts a warm glow off of snow-covered Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams. Meanwhile, thin clouds hover over the shadowy Mt. Hood and the golden fields while the sun descends into the horizon.

About a hundred people wait in the cold and wet Thanksgiving night, anxiously waiting for the Best Buy store in Clackamas, Ore., to open early Friday morning for Black Friday so consumers can swipe the steeply discounted goods for the holidays. Some customers waited outside while some waited inside their own tents. Others w

You can count me out of Black Friday. I have no interest in stampeding to a big box store for steeply discounted goods made in foreign countries and feed the big corporation. It’s just stuff anyway that I can wait for later or I can do without. There’s no need to deal with the mob [...]

A Pacific storm had me drawn to the Oregon Coast on Tuesday. On a sunny day, I’m not so much as a fan of the Oregon Coast because of the millions of tourists flocking to the beaches and tying up a winding two-lane road with “houses on wheels.” During the storms, I love watching Mother [...]

In the midst of a chaotic Pacific storm along the Oregon Coast, I spot this surfer taking advantage of the waves at Boiler Bay on Tuesday afternoon.

Every fall and winter, the Pacific Coast Highway (U.S. 101) floods from high water in the Necanicum River. A short section of the highway was flooded at milepost 23 south of Seaside.  Occasionally a section about mile and a half to the south also floods, but today the Necanicum River only grazed the northbound shoulder [..

An incoming Pacific storm dumped several inches of rain overnight onto the Oregon Coast Range, increasing stream and river water levels. This gallery shows the Necanicum River along U.S. 26 at Klootchy Park on Nov. 22, 2011.