October 17th, Day 1, First blog entry

Actually October 16th was the first day of our trip to Washington State, but it was just a long, frustrating, tiring travel day so I am going to spare you all the details. The only bright spot was that we got to see our friends Deidra and Kirk again. They met us south of Seattle near Olympia, WA, and we followed them further west and south to a private home on the Hood Canal on the Olympic Peninsula. Kirk and Dee immediately went to the beach for oysters and clams (it was low tide), but since it was two hours later on our biological clocks, we crashed for the night at 11:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight time.


Obviously it was dark (and raining) that night so we had no idea where we were or what it looked like. The next morning I was anxious to look out our bedroom window to see what our surroundings were. This is what I saw. That picture was taken from our bedroom window looking at the house next door. It sits lower on the bluff and is closer to the water. The tide is still out at this point so you can see some of the beach beyond the other house. It's not a sand beach, just smooth, round, mostly black, rocks. No one else was up yet, so we started the coffee and looked around. Denis motioned for me to look out the window to the patio at the 5-gallon buckets in the following picture. I thought at first that I was looking at rocks or chunks of wood. Nope. Oysters! Buckets of oysters. Wow! How did they get so many already?

Here's a close up look at the oysters in the bucket.

Another bucket was about half full of clams. They're small -- several would fit in your hand. Kirk called them butter clams. I think that's because you eat them steamed and dipped in butter. Yummy!

This is Kirk and Deidra, our hosts for the weekend. They look happy because they are engaged to be married.

Kirk brought his 15 year old daughter, Amanda, and she brought 3 of her friends on the trip. When the adults decided to go to the beach for a fresh (raw) oyster breakfast, the teenagers declined (emphatically) and opted to stay inside to play cards and eat junk food. If they only knew what they were missing.

...Casey.............. Amanda..................... Danny.......... Alex