Well, I guess its official. Last Wednesday at noon, Haley and I boarded our one way flight from JFK to Sea-Tac. For the first time ever, we left right on time. It was a pretty weird feeling getting on the plane knowing you won’t be coming back the way you have a dozen times before.
Our destination was Haley’s beach cabin on Whidbey Island for a little R&R and Fourth of July festivities. Before the crowds arrived, Haley, her parents and I took advantage of one of the lowest tides in decades for one of the great Whidbey Island pastimes – Geoducking. For those of you who haven’t yet had the opportunity to dig for geoduck – pronounced “gooey duck” – it’s a fairly straight forward operation. You wonder around on a tide flat until you located one, dig like crazy (usually with the help of a metal tube to keep the sand from caving in), and then you reach down into the hole and yank it out. The unfortunate part of this whole operation, for me at least, is that the ducks are buried about three to four feet down in the sand. And since my wing span is a few inches longer than most people’s, I am usually the one lying down on the wet mucky ground, with my ear in the sand, trying to pull those suckers out. All in all, our excursion was fairly successful. The weather was pretty nasty and all of us were muddy and soaked and several dangerously close bolts of lightning had us running for shore, but we did manage to dig our limit of geoducks and snagged a few horse clams while we were at it.
On the Fourth, we walked a few minutes down Maxwelton Beach Rd to watch the annual Fourth of July Parade. This year’s event lasted all of thirty minutes and was filled with the standard local Boy Scout troops, politicians, fire trucks, etc. The biggest disappointment of the parade was the absence of the enthusiastic and hairy arm-pitted group of environmentalists waving their ‘save the salmon’ signs. I’m not sure where they were this year, but the parade just wasn’t the same without them. Most of us skipped out on the post parade foot races (fyi: I was two time champ back in my younger years), three-legged races and egg toss and opted for food and beverages back at the beach cabin. Once night time came around, the fireworks were out in force and I was pretty impressed with some of the displays going on around us.
As the rest of the weekend wore on, the crowds slowly dissipated, and Haley and I had a good chance to kick our feet up, crack a few freshly caught Dungeness crab, and to just relax and enjoy the nice weather for a couple days. It was a great first weekend back in the Pacific Northwest.
Here are some pics:
Posted by haleyandjim 
