Summer Boat Trips

Last summer we went on two of our more memorable boat trips in the Puget Sound. There are a couple of orca pods that hang out here every year to hunt king salmon and look for other delicious food treats. The whole family + Terry took the boat out in June to sit in the sun and look for whales. I studied my GRE vocabulary flashcards during the lulls - Terry taught me how to remember what enigma meant by reminding me that the Joker's name in Batman was E. Nigma. I'll never forget now.

On the first trip, we saw all of the normal fauna: seals, marine birds, fish, and river otters. It was also the first summer afternoon where it was warm enough to wear shorts:

At the end of a long day of NO whale sightings, we decided to head back to Anacortes. Around the edge of Lummi Island, a pod of orcas surfaced around the boat and chased fish. We watched them until it was safe to start the boat engine again and came away with a really awesome hunting picture.

On the second trip (4th of July), we went fishing. On all previous fishing occasions, Eric and I caught unimpressive flatfish and rockfish - throwbacks, so my expectations were not high. We waited forever for a bite and when we got one, everyone let me reel it in.

This time, I got a little more than I expected.

At one point, I honestly thought I hooked a shark because it was so strong. Thirty minutes later, we got a glimpse of what I had - my very first king chinook salmon. Then the seals started to follow us and I reeled faster.

Celebratory Mike's:

Waldport

We went to Waldport once when I was in college (a little further down the coast). I was studying for finals at the time at OIMB and my family met me at a house we rented within driving distance to school. I don't remember a whole lot from that trip because I would play during the day and then study for my tests for hours after everyone went to sleep.

The few things I do remember were:

-Driving my mom to the rented house and stopping the car in the middle of a tunnel when she was trying to hold her breath.

-Finding a salmon shark on the beach, calling Eric and his friend Charlie (sleeping in) to tell them about it, and instead of walking down to see it, asking us to just "rip out a tooth please".

-Body boarding in the water hours after finding the salmon shark. Not feeling concerned.

-Watching Wheel of Fortune on the limited television channels during dinner.

-Walking through a weird swamp area to get to the beach - we were beachfront, what the hell?

-Learning that Waldport is a haven for blue agates.

Blue agates are super hard to find because with their dark color, they just look like plain rocks (hold them up to the light and you can see through them though). We started to make it the daily challenge to find a few. One day in Cape Kiwanda, we thought it would be fun to take a day trip down to Waldport, explore the small towns along the coast, and walk down the beach to look for blue agates again.

We stopped first at Depoe Bay to see whales, but we only found the fake kind:

Ate ice cream and gained a buddy (He may have been drunk):

Walking to the beach in Waldport - it was SO cold:

On the way back, we insisted the car be pulled over:

Beach Signs

My parents went on an adventure early one morning in an attempt to hit up Agate Beach on a low tide. They left around 5 in the morning and the rest of us refused to go because the tide wasn't even supposed to be below zero. To find the best agates, a "minus" tide is absolutely necessary. We thought they were crazy.

They called around 10 am to report that their lunches were already eaten, sand was covering the normally rocky beach, and their agate buckets were nearly empty. To make up for a crappy morning, they found a random beach and looked for other treasures for a while.

Being a marine biologist, I'm asked pretty often what things on the beach are and I do my best to answer correctly. Sometimes, my mom's descriptions of things can be shaky (and hilarious), so she takes photos to show me later if I'm not there.

When my mom came back to the house, she yells at me: "I found red beaked boobies"

Me: "You mean, like blue footed boobies with red beaks?"

Mom: "Yeah! And I took pictures"

Me: "I'm confused about what you actually saw. Those don't exist. Let me see the picture"

Me: (Looks at picture) "Oh my god mom, that's an oystercatcher. You're so embarrassing"

What she also returned with was a great photo collection of signs that they came across at the beach. They didn't have matching descriptions, so I had to do my best to guess what they meant.

No drug dealing:

Watch out for extremely large falling boulders:

Don't enthusiastically ride turtles:

No practicing for your log rolling competition:

Amputees are prohibited from climbing:

Dory Launch

Near Cape Kiwanda is the Pacific City dory boat launch and it was on our list of places to visit while we were in the area. Oregon Coast Magazine has done some features on the dory boats before:

"The flat-bottomed dories, originally built from spruce planks in a design that is unique to Oregon, are legendary for their fresh catch and their trademark launchings and landings—taking off through the waves right from the beach near Cape Kiwanda and returning with a slide up onto the sand with a day’s catch. Commercial dory fishermen have been fishing out of Pacific City since the early 1900s, although they began to rule the area as the primary fishermen in the ’60s and ’70s. There were hundreds of boats in the dory fleet then, and by the mid-’70s, Pacific City was the second largest salmon-fishing port on the Oregon Coast. The boats were first powered with oars, but most of them are now under motor power. However, all dory fish are still caught with a hook and line."

Beached dories:

Dory headed out to fish:

It's crazy watching them come into shore after a day of fishing. The captains will accelerate as they approach the shore and the boat is further propelled forward by the crashing waves. When it hits the sand, it just keeps gliding forward like an air boat until it stops and can be loaded onto a trailer.

At the launch, there is a large plaque with the names of the dory boats listed. We read through all of the titles and picked our favorites:

Annie:

Eric:

Katie:

Mom:

Dad:

New Moves

We invented some creative (not dorky or embarrassing at all) body boarding moves on the Cape Kiwanda vacation. I feel like each year, especially since we invested in long wetsuits, we try to make our time spent in the water more interesting. It all began with "brisking". Brisking is a really ridiculous practice where you have to sit down at the edge of the surf, raise your arms and legs in the air, and just let the wave hit you - this game received it's name because the first time we did it, Eric popped his head above the freezing water and yelled: "that's brisk!". It's now a tradition.

"Brisking":

New this year: "The Strangler"

The rip tide was rather strong on our beach and caused some volatile waves to crash in. The general rule of thumb was to avoid the rip tide area but try to take advantage of the large waves - this beach is hugely notorious for amazing surfing conditions. Also, the wind had to have been blowing at least 30 miles per hour. WHEN COMBINED: you get flung off your board as you ride a large wave to shore, laugh as you roll like a beached whale to the sand, choke as the wind whips the board around your neck.

Seriously, it was windy:

"Big Baby"

This is Eric's invention really. There was one day where a notable cycle of small waves were followed by large body boarding appropriate waves. During the small wave cycle, Eric must have felt inspired because he used his board as a flotation device and hooked his hands and feet on it while clinging to the underside. At the mercy of the water, he floated there until he was forcibly flipped over, and it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Eventually, everyone was doing it and "Big Baby" became a daily trend.

Finally, sand boarding: completely unsuccessful

Cape Kiwanda Problems

On late notice, our family vacationed on the Oregon coast again in July. Terry couldn't come with us this time, but the rest of us could go and we brought Eric's girlfriend Katie through a miracle of scheduling (I was working on the GRE and had a full time job with a very small vacation availability window, Katie was a big traveler last summer, and July is always blueberry/planting season for my dad). HOURS were spent online attempting to find a last minute vacation house to rent on the coast for the week. This was made more complicated by the rules:

1. Has to be waterfront

2. Has to be waterfront

3. Has to be waterfront

4. Rental price for a week in the summer cannot make you choke on your own spit when you see it

5. We did have to drive, so it couldn't be too far south

6. Has to have a functioning kitchen and washer/dryer

7. The lower populated the area, the better

We found an incredible house in Cape Kiwanda that met every single requirement and was an affordable price for the week that we needed. We've never stayed in Cape Kiwanda before, but the pictures seemed cool and the house was literally built on top of a sand dune. Really, it looked perfect.

Traveling to the house, we cut over to the coast at Tillamook after buying groceries. Lots of groceries. The Fred Meyer in Tillamook was the closest large grocery store to where we were staying and it's an hour away. Since the back of the car was full with wetsuits, body boards, suitcases, etc. the groceries were put in the backseat on the laps of Eric, Katie, and I. Not really being able to move our legs, we patiently waited while we moved down the coast closer to our destination. About 40 minutes after leaving Tillamook, we were turned around because of road closure/construction. We had to drive all the way back to Tillamook, turn south along a main highway, and then cut over to the coast to get to Cape Kiwanda. Now that all of the dairy items were warm after spending two hours in the car, we stopped at the rental office after hours and picked up the keys to the house (which were scotch taped to the outside of the office door with our names on them).

After finding the house and extracting ourselves from the grocery store in the backseat, we found out that the keys that were assigned to us were for the wrong rental property. Luckily, we had a phone number for a woman who worked at the office and she drove in with the correct set of keys for us, after acting like we were incompetent: "Did you turn the key after putting it in the lock?" (+ 1 more hour).

The house looked great when we finally got in and I started to unpack my duffel bag. Near the end I thought "where is my small bag?".

It was sitting next to my bed at home, forgotten. Inside: extra contacts, contact case, glasses, retainer, makeup, hair ties (for running), contact solution, face moisturizer, and deoderant. Super. My mom and I drove to Pacific City to a convenience store and picked up contact solution and a case and the only hair ties that they had - with the metal bits that rip chunks out of your hair. Everything else I borrowed from her. Without my retainer for a week, I was slightly concerned that I might look like Quasimodo when I got home, but I just had to live with it.

It's a good thing we looked like this most of the time:

The night of day two, I started to wash everyone's towels and dirty beach clothes. When I opened the closet the washer and dryer were kept in, I found a broken knob on the washer. Someone had placed a wrench on top of the machine and after some experimenting, I figured out how to make the washer start by popping the plastic knob off and turning a metal piece to where I wanted it. I felt like a real MacGyver for a minute. When the clothes were ready to dry, I put them in the dryer, turned the knob, and...nothing. The dryer was completely non-functional. I found enough hangers to air dry the clothes overnight and when I woke up, everyone had the stiffest towels on the face of the earth. It was like I had used an entire container of starch.

We stopped by the rental office and told them that the dryer was broken. Apparently, they had known this for some time and suggested that we hang dry our clothes outside. Um, you know that this house is built on a sand dune right? The windows don't even open to attempt to keep the sand outside when it's windy (which is always). Good idea.

Padilla Bay

After I finished my Disney internship, I got a job with the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. From late May to mid November, I was able to work with some really really cool people and I was (and still am) so grateful for the opportunity to learn the things that I did.

Officially, I worked for the Department of Ecology as a research technician and I did A LOT of seagrass sorting. To make a lengthy job description short: I collected seagrasses from the bay, sorted them into different species, weighed them, and created a monster database for the reserve to use when I left.

Me helping with sea star and barnacle counts on Saddlebag Island:

Seagrass collections and density counts at low tide in the mudflats:

When the low tide was at night during collections, we played with sharks!

Sneak peak of my seagrass sorting:

On the left: What a PVC ring should look like when it comes out of the oven.

On the right: What happens when I'm left in the lab unsupervised with an oven.

We switched to aluminum rings shortly after this because they can withstand the heat much better.

The reserve received an octopus rescue in the fall and I snuck up on it one night before we went out to the mudflats:

Et Cetera

I'm back! I didn't really go anywhere...but life did get REALLY busy around May. Since then, I was hired by the Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Eric graduated from high school, we went back to the Oregon coast, more time was spent on the boat, I took the GRE, and Terry and I moved to Bellingham - and those are just some of the major things! Another reason why I ventured back to the blogging world: internet in the condo is a major upgrade from the wireless internet at my mom's house (envision a house near the airport where a cell phone will lose service every time a plane flies overhead, a shoddy wireless box, and very questionable "high speed" service - I think it was less than 1Mbps). I swear that each post would take 20 minutes to load.

I didn't even know where to start for an update, so I decided that an "et cetera" post was appropriate. That way, I could cram some of the miscellaneous photos from the last few months into a somewhat scattered layout.

First, right before I was hired by Padilla Bay, I ran in a 10K race in Mt. Vernon. Those of you who know me well could tell anyone about my serious running habits - I go every morning, no exceptions. However, I suffered a mystery ankle injury in 2010 that sidelined me for 12 months. I may have ground my teeth down to nubs in frustration, but I did eventually find the root of the problem. I went through several doctors who had ideas ranging from a stress fracture to tendonitis. Nothing worked. After a recommendation from my grandma, I saw a podiatrist who took two minutes to look at the calluses on my feet and gave me the easiest solution I could have hoped for. I now have a rather expensive pair of shoes and inserts to align my ankles when I run. In March of 2011, after a year of irritation and break downs, I trained last minute for a 10K race to try to get myself back into shape. It just felt SO GOOD to be able to run again. In the beginning of May, I snagged third place in the Have a Heart run and I haven't stopped running since. My shoes don't even have a year of use and I already need another pair.

This is a hug at the start line with my mom. She ran the 2 mile race and I continued.

In June, Eric graduated from high school.

Summer fire pit s'mores. They made me take a break from studying for the GRE. Someone should have told me what a bad idea it was to take the GRE at the end of August. I spent so many summer weekends trying to learn vocabulary - do this in the winter!

Wet & Wild

We brought the skim board because Eric finally has functional knees and can teach the rest of us how to do it. As you can see, he was ready to go:

And I'm awful at skimboarding. No amount of practice will make me good at this. I'm pretty sure my mom is in the same boat. This is me FAILING:

We are all good at bodyboarding though. Our long wetsuits were a lifesaver and we could stay in the water for about an hour until our lips turned blue. We went in the water every day and without fail the coast guard would fly over us no matter what time it was. At least they were checking...

I'm about to get killed by a wave here:

And right before we got out, there was a traditional session of "brisking":

Beach Finds

I know that a beach beaver is an epic find, but it's also unusual and unnatural. So I'm dedicating this post to things you would expect to find at the ocean...but JUMBO sized.

Our first morning at the beach, my mom and I went for a run to the jetty. We met my dad and my brother there and one very very large washed up tree. This is probably the biggest one I've ever seen in my life. And it was oddly balanced on the jetty. That didn't stop us from climbing on it though.

Can you find us?

The next day we went to what we call "agate beach". It's about a 45 minute drive away from Rockaway and fairly unknown. Which is good for us because our family hunts for agates like they're diamonds. We have been visiting agate beach since as long as I can remember. Even before there were stairs built down to the beach from the cliffside we were sliding down there. I believe that qualifies us as hardcore agate hunters.

There are a lot of different types of agates, but they are generally varieties of compressed silica developed from volcanic rocks. We recently found out after a visit to Waldport that blue agates exist. They are the hardest to spot and some of the prettiest. My favorites are the orange ones. You might think that finding them is easy, but it's really not. By the end of a day at agate beach, all of our eyes, necks, and backs hurt from searching. We have also developed agate eyes. In a beach primarily composed of rocks, over 10 years of agate hunting gives you a really good search image for your brain to find a needle in a haystack.

Our haul this year was exceptionally good:

And Eric found the largest agate to date (JUMBO!):

Oregon Coast

We had to skip our annual Oregon coast trip last year because I was in Florida when we normally go. Now that we're all together again, everyone decided to take a few days of spring break and spend our time at Rockaway Beach.

There are several things that you need to know about our family before you fully understand this post and those to come. We have been going to the Oregon coast on vacation since I was around 7 years old (my parents even honeymooned there) so it's like our second home. On long road trips, my mom has recently adopted an "animal sightings for money" game. It starts with a list of random animals and their monetary values based on how likely you are to see them. They have to be living when you spot them and you also have to have a witness so that you can claim your money fair and square. The list for the trip went something like this:

Bear: $20

Donkey: $1

Baby goat (my mom calls them goatlettes): $1

Beaver: $10

Elk: $1

Fox: $10

This game is actually kind of fun because we usually see something on the list. It's also an upgrade from previous road trip games where my mom would just make the matching animal noise as we passed things. Does anyone know what an alpaca sounds like? Me neither, but she made up a "pak, pak, pak" whisper and now that's all I associate with alpacas. Very weird. You'll be glad to know that I made a whopping $12 this vacation because I saw a baby goat, a donkey, and one morning as I was running along the beach, I found a beaver. First of all, I never expected to encounter a live beaver in my life, and second, what is a beaver doing in the ocean? To be able to claim my ten dollars, I had to sprint back to the house and grab the camera to get photo evidence. Lucky for me, beavers are not fast.

We stopped by a surf shop in Seaside on the way down and everyone was gifted with wet suit upgrades. It turns out that a full wetsuit makes a world of difference when body boarding in the Pacific Ocean. In 55 degree water temperatures, we could stay for at least an hour. The only bad part is the first ten minutes when your feet feel like they've been put in an ice bucket.