A stolen wood-carving was recovered within hours of its theft, with help from eyewitnesses and five nearby King County Sheriff’s deputies.
The carving, an eagle statue standing more than three feet tall, was taken from the Snoqualmie River RV Park and Campground.
Reading is a big deal at North Bend Elementary, where youngsters are racking up huge numbers in reading every day. Millions is no exaggeration, either; 14 students have read more than a million words in the school’s Accelerated Reader program since it was implemented Sept. 23, and one has read more than 3.6 million words.
Tanner Swanson, a third grader, leads the field with 3,659,000 words, and counting. He’s a marvel to teacher Chrissy McCloskey, who administers the program, and an inspiration to other students.
Only jazz mattered for the hundreds of high school students who went to Essentially Ellington this year—jazz, and the people who played it.
“Everybody’s there for the music,” said JT Hartman, one of the 20 Mount Si Jazz Band members who recently returned from the prestigious event this year. “The whole thing was a really great experience.”
North Bend businesses and homes are slowly recovering from the April 25 explosion that destroyed three buildings on North Bend Way and affected 50 others. Some, like the North Bend Shell station, seem almost back to normal. Some, like the Mount Si Court Apartments across the street are approaching normal since lots of cleanup work and new windows were installed. Some closest to the blast, like Michelle Dunbar’s now-homeless Kutters salon and Lisa Riley’s planned restaurant, may never be the same.
By the early morning of Tuesday, May 13, 25,000 hatchery-raised juvenile steelhead had, against Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) rules, joined the wild fish migration down the Snoqualmie River. The Tokul Creek Hatchery fish were intended for release in eastern Washington lakes.
School impact fees in Snoqualmie Valley School District are on the rise again, a change from last year. Enrollment continues to grow at just over 2 percent annually, but the fees are calculated by a state-set formula, and have fluctuated widely in the past.
According to the district’s recently approved capital facilities plan, enrollment will grow steadily.
Bright colors ruled in the last house in the row on Snoqualmie Ridge. At least they had that morning, before a crew of volunteers arrived to repaint the interior of the house, future home to a new family in the Habitat for Humanity program. By early afternoon, the blue, purple and blood-red walls upstairs had all gotten at least one coat of white paint, leaving the pink T-shirts and matching safety glasses of the work crews as the brightest things in the house.
“Who thought of that?” wondered Kami Bratton, spokesperson for Habitat for Humanity. “They are just the perfect touch!”
Only the view is left at Shelly Gildersleeve’s salon, where she and stylist Michelle Dunbar jointly operated as independent contractors.
Her salon, destroyed in the explosion that shook North Bend awake at about 3:45 a.m. Friday, April 25, had been a great place to work for the past three years, Gildersleeve said.
Last year, North Bend Elementary fielded a young team for the Snoqualmie Valley School District’s annual five-school battle for reading supremacy. All fourth graders in a field of mixed ages, the team finished last in the 2013 Battle of the Books. They knew they’d be back, and their team name was a no-brainer — Revenge.
Forget what you think you know about cats getting stuck in trees, and just ask the experts. They’re the guys in climbing gear, not uniforms, and here in the Snoqualmie Valley, they’re probably named Shaun and Tom.
Just after midnight Sunday, April 27, a witness reported seeing a truck sliding into the Snoqualmie River. Fall City firefighters spent the next several hours on an unsuccessful search for the truck, and resumed their search by daylight this morning.
“We had a witness who saw this tree shaking,” said Fall City Fire Chief Chris Connor, pointing at a small tree on S.R. 202 downstream of the Fall City bridge, where a wide track of crushed blackberry vines marked the truck’s path into the water. “They came over and looked down and saw the taillights sinking into the river.”
The old house sitting on skids at North Bend’s wastewater treatment plant is finally, and once again, slated for demolition.
Empty since 2010, the house was spared from two earlier dates with destruction, once by relocation, and once by court intervention. However, earlier this month, King Superior Court Judge Dean Lum reversed his 2012 granting of an injunction to stop the demolition, and North Bend officials immediately renewed their plans to destroy the house.
Every year, thousands of hikers, kayakers, anglers, bikers and campers visit the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River. They come for the recreation, and for the remote beauty of a wilderness so close to home, about 30 miles from Seattle.
Also every year, and some would argue because of those users, the narrow, winding road into and out of the popular destination develops more ruts and potholes, the trails get worn down and the riverbanks are peppered with bootleg trails, campsites and even toilets.
