A few weeks ago we headed out on our first backpacking weekend of the year. You can't really get up high in Washington until July because of snow (unless you are a mountaineer), so we found a lower elevation hike along a river to Black Lake near the awesome town of Winthrop, WA.
The hike was fantastic because it followed a fast-flowing river and went through a forest that had been through a huge forest fire about ten years ago. As scientists, we find hikes through disturbed forests to be SO COOL. You can see everything you read about (think succession) right in front of your feet and it is quite awesome. Most of the plants that surrounded us were the primary succession plants, but tree seedlings had taken root and were starting to grow. In addition to watching biology in action, we could see evidence of times long, long, ago - glaciers! In the photo above I'm posing with some glacial poo. Yup. Poo. Glacial erratics, if you don't know, are huge boulders that were moved by glaciers a long time ago and then were left behind as the glacier retreated....sort of like a glacier taking a dump. Neat eh? I think so, hence my love for glacial poo.
This may not be obvious because of the poor lighting in the photograph, but this spot was covered in gorgeous wildflowers. What a treat!
Black Lake - view from our campsite
Wee little tent and some big views
The next morning we were packing our backpacks and getting ready to hike back to the car when I heard a shuffling sound on the trail above us. I looked up and almost fell over at the sight - a moose! Now, I've lived in Alaska where seeing a moose is not exactly a rare sight. But seeing a moose in the Cascades in Washington....now that is a rare sight. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife estimates that there are about 1,000 moose in the state and these are mostly found along the Idaho border. It isn't unheard of to see a moose near the Cascades, but it isn't common at all. In fact, later on that day we were chatting with a local guy who said he had never seen a moose in the area despite the fact he had lived in the area for over a decade. So were we lucky? Heck yeah! Pretty exciting....
Great hike back along the river in hot temperatures....ahhh....love it.
We were treated to some grand views of butterflies chowing on the nectar of columbine.
It is a tradition for us to end any visit to the eastern side of the mountains with a beer at the Old Schoolhouse Brewery and this trip was no different. What was different was that the Winthrop Marathon was going on when we arrived in town for our brews. You would think this would almost shut down the town - but noooo - this must have been the cutest marathon event ever with just two tiny tents, a local bluegrass band, and a runner at the finish line every ohhhhh 15 minutes? It was clearly a tiny race and a very local event. Pretty fun to walk into.... the Methow Valley never disappoints.
If you are interested in visiting us out here in Anacortes at any point in time, you might as well know what the visit will entail! I'm using a recent visit from dear friends, Katie and Chad, as my example....but really many of our visitors end up being dragged along to the same places because, well, they are awesome!
The main ingredient for a visit to Julie and Jay's is Deception Pass State Park. Everyone gets to sample this park and our BBQ skills, as long as no downpour is in sight. We tend to favor the flavor of Bowman Bay, which is on the Fidalgo Island side of this park, for the sunsets and views of the Olympic Mountains.
If you happen to time your visit to us during mushrooming season (spring or fall), you can potentially score on some foraged meals. Julie and Chad are protecting themselves from rain with their umbrellas of giant horse mushrooms. These ended up on our burgers at Deception Pass that evening and in an egg scramble in the morning. Bliss!
O.K. - so we always take visitors to Deception Pass and Orcas Island....but sometimes visitors introduce us to new sights too! Chad, skateboarder extraordinaire, wanted to check out an apparently famous skate park on Orcas Island. I didn't even know it existed! So Katie and I got to watch Chad rip up the surf. I don't speak skateboard talk, but I figure it is something akin to surf lingo? Which I also don't speak. Jeez.
June can be a funny month in Washington. Sometimes the oven is on high and we are roasting. Actually, that has only happened once since we moved here four years ago. Damn. Mostly we feel like we are still in the fridge with a bit of rain added to keep us from wilting. This June has been pretty damn nice so far - Katie and Chad certainly scored on the weather. And clear days on Orcas Island mean you are heading up Mt. Constitution for the view.
All visitors to Orcas Island must stop to pay homage to the BIG tree of the island. As you can see, we have taken many visitors to this tree. By no means is this a BIG Washington tree - they get soooo much bigger here, especially on the Olympic Coast. But, for the San Juans this is a pretty darn big Douglas Fir and we love it. Katie and Chad got their time in with this nice huggable bark =)
All visits require a stop for locally brewed beer somewhere! This is a required ingredient for the visit - no substitutions allowed. In this particular visit Katie and Chad got to sample the brews at the newly opened Island Hoppin' Brewery on Orcas.
If we can pull it off, all visits get a home cooked meal by Julie and Jay. In this case we took a trip to Indonesia. We have also been known to take visitors to Malaysia, Thailand, India, Italy, and Japan. Name the country! We are up for the cooking challenge!
Soooo who is up next for a visit to this gorgeous state we live in? We have an open door and lots of ideas for good ingredients....
British Columbia is stunning and we can't seem to get enough of this place. I first began sea kayaking when I worked for four fantastic seasons in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska - a place that is still deeply embedded in my heart and life. But learning to paddle in one of the top kayaking destinations of the world can make paddling elsewhere seem mundane. Enter British Columbia. While I have not been paddling close to the face of tidewater glaciers in B.C., many of the places we have paddled in this Canadian province certainly are capable of rivaling the beauty of the lower part of Glacier Bay (although maybe lacking that wild feel and the wild animals of Glacier Bay). But hey - we can drive here in just a few hours!
Although the Sechelt Peninsula is part of mainland B.C. you still need to take a ferry from a spot just north of Vancouver because of the rugged mountains in the way of road builders (yeah!). From the ferry you drive on a windy road north to Egmont where you can not only launch your boats but also see some of the fastest tidal rapids in the world. Skookumchuck Narrows Provincial Park was a place I've been drooling over on the map for a longgggg time so Jay and I settled on a two-day paddle (instead of three) in order to devote an entire day to watching both the ebb (whirlpools) and flood (standing waves) tides roll over this narrow inlet. Lucky for us, these happened to be some of the largest tides of the year so the show was on and it was awesome. Plus - who wouldn't want to go to a place named "Skookumchuck"? In case you are curious, the word means "strong" or "fast water" in the local tribe's language. I love it.
This may be one of the cooler couple photos ever... tidal rapids, my shadow, evening light, and my man
You may think this is a crappy photo (it is) but I put it in here for a reason. I am, after all, a marine biologist and I can't resist the coolness of this photograph. Rocky intertidal zones exhibit strong patterns of zonation, which can be seen here because the tide is dropping. For example - look at the lighter black line above the water, the white line, and then a darker black line....those are all diatoms or critters of some sort. The white line, for example, is the barnacle line and the dark black line is a line of mussels. I won't go into the science about how and why these intertidal zones exist (unless you ask me to) because that is not the reason why I stuck this photo in the blog. I put this image here to help you understand why these rapids exist. During a flood tide (the tide is coming up) you have water from a wider and deeper inlet trying to get into a smaller inlet (Sechelt Inlet) and this narrow and shallow spot gets in the way! As a result, the water piles up high and blasts over the shallow section and into the smaller inlet. You can actually see the "water pile" in this crappy photo! See the intertidal zone lines on the left? There are fewer zones visible on the left side than on the right side (the right side is located past the rapids).... in other words the tide was a solid foot higher on the left side than on the right. That is totally cool. Get it? Ask questions if not.
Check out the power of the rapids in this video AND enjoy the clear water. People do dive this area at slack tide and I could see why based on the clarity of the water. Tempting.... but not during tides this huge.
Sexy water
Well hello there gorgeous oyster mushrooms. We found you on our walk back from the rapids. You shall be consumed and loved.
Oyster mushrooms for dinner with our canned IPAs!
View from our campsite near Egmont
The next morning we launched early to catch a northern ride on the tide to Hotham Sound, B.C. We passed through Jervis Inlet and gawked at the massive mountains. If we had about five days we could have paddled up and back this part of the inlet that is so wild it has brown bears. But we didn't have five days, so we headed to Hotham Sound instead.
Hotham Sound did not disappoint - we didn't really know what to expect so we were rightfully blown away by the wild views! Note Jay's tiny kayak in the distance and the double waterfall on the mountainside (if you click on the image you can see a larger version).
Happy Julie
Before we pushed off into the water we talked to a great local guy about paddling conditions, crossing conditions, and where to camp in Hotham Sound. We have a kayaking guidebook to this section of the B.C. coast, but the recommended spots to camp only sounded O.K. for this area. We scored because the local guy told us about a small island to camp on that turned out to be a GEM! Here is Jay staring off into the wilds of B.C. and wishing he had looking into PSP levels in B.C. oysters. Why you ask? Well - see all the white stuff on those rocks? All oysters... I think this was tempting to him, but not tempting enough to eat something that could kill you if the PSP levels were high. Smart man decided to stare instead.
Why we paddle
If you blow this photo up you can find Jay sunning himself on the rocks of our island paradise.
Oystercatcher
We got up the next morning at 4am - we needed to hit the morning tide right and avoid the higher winds of the afternoon in order to make sure we got back to Egmont in time for our ferry back to Vancouver. How the weather changed - but isn't it equally gorgeous?
Harmony Falls
Talk about still water.... these conditions made the 4am wake-up call worthwhile - it was like paddling through silk.
Hey - do these photo links work? I've had one person tell me I don't have the setting right for people to view directly from the link. Right now I have Google+ set so anyone with the link can see the images but the photos are not public. Does the link work for you?
Diving in the San Juans for fun is a real treat that doesn't happen too often for us. We decided to head out on the local charter dive boat for two dives in our backyard and, despite relatively crappy visibility, were treated to some fantastic critter sightings. The most exciting for me was this sweet juvenile Puget Sound king crab. I've done a fair amount (but not a lot) of dives in these islands and this little crab continued to hide from me until this dive. It was a great way to end our first dive off James Island.
There is another awesome crab in this photo - see if you can find it! It is called a rhino crab and it was a coveted sighting when I used to work as a diver in Glacier Bay National Park. Well, these rad crabs hang in the state of Washington too and are sort of common if you know how to spot them!
Triopha catalinae (sea clown triopha) - or a really cool nudibranch
This candy stripe shrimp, Lebbeus grandimanus, is always fun to find. We know that they associate with this particular species of anemone (Cribrinopsisfernaldi) so we were searching for Lebbeus on purpose and found this big dude. Sometimes you can find an entire bunch of them on the anemone, but this huge one seemed to have control over the entire turf.
Both of our dives had great walls of anemones! We are in filter feeding heaven in the San Juans because the currents rip through these islands and deliver lunch to millions of invertebrate mouths. For the divers it just happens to be a gorgeous treat to find these walls of white but I think it means something even more to divers like us who are also biologists and appreciate what all those mouths mean to the ecosystem.
Jay
The lovely sea cucumber is a filter feeder that tends to get less attention than its filter feeding friend the anemone. But the rocks on our second dive were covered in these tiny white sea cucumbers (with a sea urchin chillin' on top). Clearly the sea cucumber plays a massive ecological role as a filter feeder in this marine community, but alas when salmon are around who will study sea cucumbers? Me! Me! Me! If only there was funding for all those neat invertebrates....
Dirona albolineata (or another cool nudibranch)
Some type of Dendrontus sp. Perhaps some of my dorky nudibranch loving friends can ID this to species?
That is all for my dive stories....I just went diving again for work on Thursday in the same spot but found no juvenile Puget Sound king crabs. Boo! And I'll be diving tomorrow on a geoduck bed to scope out a spot before starting to survey the bed for a potential fishery. Exciting!
