Category Archives: hike

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hot weather flower

Yesterday the downtown bank recorded a temperature of 87! And this is after six months of seeing the sun about once every two weeks, and temperatures mostly in the 40s and 50s.

The beaches have been EMPTY. The delightful Salish Sea gets to a high of 55 degrees, so anyone who swims is brave. But yesterday the beaches were FULL again! Tourists and locals, summer is here! The water temperature yesterday was 9 degrees C, which is 48 F. Cold for swimming.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

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sand pattern

I took this photograph yesterday on East Beach in glorious sun.

I left the house to hike at 5:30 am. I didn’t hear about Roe v Wade being overturned until later in the day. I am grieving and will fight for women’s right to determine their own health. Each sperm is alive and each egg too. Don’t tell me they should all be saved, because then we would all starve. Life doesn’t start at conception. I think that some men wanting to control women starts with conception. They certainly don’t want their sperm controlled.

In the photograph are great blue heron tracks. I saw at least three great blue herons. At least four eagles, sitting in the tops of trees along the cliffs enjoying the sun.

The beach changes daily. We go to North Beach and one day it is long stretches of sand and the next it is covered with rocks of all sizes. We have been hiking so regularly that it is really clear that the beach changes as much as human moods! Every tide is different.

Here are chalcedony nodules found yesterday. We still call them agates, but since we are getting fussier and want the clear ones, they are more correctly called chalcedony nodules.

The beach changes like US politics. The water rushes in like a new administration, removes small and large boulders and rushes out again. A new Supreme Court Judge, a new person in this appointed position or that, change, change, change, a new pattern. I am grieving about Roe v Wade, but contributing to the fight for women’s rights and for women’s health. I wish that as a country we were less dramatic and nicer and did not need to have an enemy to shout at all the time.

Maybe that change is coming, but slowly. We might learn from social media and from all sorts of lessons. I have some hope.

Meanwhile I’d rather be with the great blue herons and the eagles.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: patterns.

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soft foot and arms too

Tenderfoot reminds me of my sister and our family’s summer visits to Lake Matinenda. We lived in tents. My grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins were all in cabins.

We were always the last to head home. We usually mislaid our flipflops, towels, t-shirts and flashlights, so we head down the path in the dark. When I was little I have cuts every summer in the arch of my foot. I learn to walk in the dark on the path with the foot curled and lightly, so that if there is something sharp I can change weight to the other foot. If there are two sharps in a row, usually rocks, I get cut anyhow, but less often. I still love to take my shoes off on the paths there.

I would go this summer except for the oxygen. We did not bring in electricity. I do not quite feel up to acquiring a solar panel/battery combination that is adequate this year. It’s also the heavy lifting. We drink the lake water and bring it up in buckets. We do filter it, but carrying the buckets. It just does not seem like a brilliant idea alone with my lungs still challenged.

Anyhow, here is another soft footed and soft armed creature. This is taken at the Baltimore Aquarium a few years ago.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: tenderfoot.

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half light

We had sun yesterday! But mostly, we have had rain rain rain and clouds on the Olympic Peninsula this spring.

With record breaking temperatures across the US, I can’t complain much about rain. I took today’s photograph a few days ago, in the early morning. We walk hoping the sun will peek through. It is peeking through but not on us. It is peeking far over the water in the distance.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: half light.

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colossal

The hills don’t look that colossal, do they? But this is taken zoomed in from the Olympic Peninsula and the hills are on Vancouver Island. Here is one not zoomed:

It was a colossally low tide and we were hunting fossils. Fossil clams, fossil snails and stories of fossil dinosaur bones.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: colossal.