Standing on a concrete bridge in downtown Issaquah, the cold worked its way up from the soles of my feet to my legs, and onwards. Drops of rain clouded my eyeglasses. I struggled to balance an umbrella and hold my cellphone steady as I waited, fearing my fingers would freeze. My mission: photograph a Coho salmon approaching its final hurdle before returning “home” to the salmon hatchery. It was early November, slightly past the height of the salmon run. But two mergansers, bobbing their cinnamon-rust-colored heads as they circled the water, offered a clue that fish were still coming. They were awaiting a feast. 

For the fourth year in a row, Lolita the fortune teller sat in residence on a bench outside the post office in La Conner during the month of October. “Look in my purse for your fortune,” her sign proclaimed. Joanne, “Jo” Mitchelle, the artist who created Lolita, hand-writes hundreds of uplifting fortunes, placing them in a container inside the seer’s waterproof pocketbook. 

It was like déjà vu all over again. Rushing into the Snowy Owl Theater at Icicle Creek Center for the Performing Arts in Leavenworth, a sculpture near the entrance stopped me in my tracks. Could it be? The artist had to be Richard Beyer, whose whimsical aluminum sculpture of a couple holding marketing baskets I’d just seen in the Mercer Island Town Center, and whose Waiting for the Interurban - a group huddled at a bus stop near the Fremont Bridge - epitomizes Seattle. A quick Google search during intermission confirmed my hunch.

“You are so lucky,” my waitress told me. “It’s gonna be sunny and warm through Friday.” 

“Isn’t it like this most of the summer?” I asked, unaware that the peninsula in southern Washington is famously foggy and cold. Earlier that day, I’d cursed the sun as it beat down while I struggled to sync my phone app with an electric charging station. On an 85-degree, cloudless day, sweating with palpable range anxiety, I worried I’d never get my electric car fully charged. After driving 172 miles, I had 106 miles left. Not enough to explore the peninsula, let alone get home.