census-designated place of
eastbound on U.S. Route 2
- Phylum Mollusca (digitalatlasofancientlife.org)
With over 70,000 living species (Rosenburg, 2014), the phylum Mollusca is second only to the Arthropoda in terms of total species diversity. The great diversity of mollusks is owed at least in part to their success in occupying most habitats on earth, including the marine realm, freshwater lakes and rivers, and even land. Some are filter feeders, some are herbivores, and some are deadly predators. The strong, easily-preserved shells of mollusks have left behind a rich Cambrian to Pleistocene fossil record and they have long been important subjects of macroevolutionary analyses of the fossil record.
westbound on U.S. Route 2
- Baring, Washington (Wikipedia)
Baring is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 255 at the 2020 census, up from 220 at the 2010 census. It is located on U.S. Highway 2 about 23 miles (37 km) west of Stevens Pass, along a very flat and straight three-mile section of highway that has been dubbed the “Baring Straight” (a play on the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia), since US-2 is otherwise hilly and curvy through the mountains. The settlement was first known as “Salmon”, but by 1909 it was known as Baring.