Roslyn and Ronald

Suzie and I decided to go over the pass to get a bit of picture-taking in.  This time we chose the town of Roslyn and it's nearby cousin, Ronald.  For those of you that don't know it, Roslyn was the town featured in the TV show Northern Exposure.

I can honestly say I have never seen a cemetery as big and sprawling as the one in Roslyn.  It went meandering all over the place, and was actually separated into several areas.  There were areas based on nationality, lodge (like the Masons, etc), and who knows what.  There were old and new, fenced and unfenced, marked and non-marked.  We first arrived to find a grave being dug, by hand, by a pair of able-bodied fellows.  As I raised my camera, the stocky white guy with Slavic features held his hand up and said, "Uh uh."  After a brief exchange, he ducked out of the way and I took a picture of the black gentleman.  When is the last time you saw a person digging a grave without a backhoe?  He was very amiable and seemed to be enjoying himself:

We wandered around for quite a while taking pictures and having a good time.  After all, this was the first day of Spring, and the weather was fantastic!  After spending a good hour or so in the cemetery, we were hungry.  We drove into Cle Elum for lunch.  We did it a little different though (after all, that's our style):  We had lunch at Subway and Quizno's.  Why?  Well, we hit Subway hoping for $5 footlong subs, but they weren't offering them any more at this store.  Instead we shared a foot-long skimpy BLT.  We went up the street to gas up the car, and there next door was Quizno's, so we thought, "Why not?"  They did have $5 foot-longs, and we each tried out something new called a Torpedo (only $4).  We both really enjoyed them.

Heading back toward Roslyn, we continued through town to the little burg called Ronald.  There wasn't as much to see there, but we did get some pretty good shots of old buildings.  We drove the side streets, stopping for the cool shots.  At one point a neighbor got into it, referring us to the next-door building and giving us a quick history lesson on what the buildings were.

Having quickly exhausted Ronald, we continued back to Roslyn, this time parking the car.  We found lots of interesting stuff to take pictures of in the middle of town, not the least of which is this famous building mural:

We got a lot of great pictures and will be putting them on our SmugMug pictures site very soon.  Trouble is, we both have to wade through a couple hundred pictures each to decide which to post.  That is always the problem.  The cool part of the day was the fact that these old mining towns are full of brick and bare, weathered wood.  Both of those make good picture subjects.

Sue is taking part in a "365" site, meaning that the members post a picture a day.  She got so many today that are killer shots that she's having trouble picking out one.  She is trying to keep it at a picture that she actually took the day she posted it, but when we have such a bonanza of good pics like we did today I think it would be best if she lets that rule slide a little so as to not shortchange the people that might otherwise miss some good stuff.

Well, it was a great day.  Great weather and lots of fun.

Now it's hot tub time.