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.