LA wedding and Allison's visit to Anacortes

I love the White family (for those of you that don't know, the Whites are Jay's maternal relatives). When we found out that Amy (Jay's cousin) and Avner were going to get married in LA, we were thrilled for them but we were also elated to have an excuse to get together with the entire White family to celebrate! We had so much fun together in LA across the entire weekend. The festivities seemed to start immediately at a little Mexican taco joint, followed by cappuccinos at a funky cafe with outside seating, which was followed by the discovery of an remarkable wine and cheese shop and the subsequent consumption of the goods we purchased in the shop. Yum. And the rehearsal dinner had not even started yet!

Everyone in the family rented Air B&B houses or apartments for the weekend. The one Allison found for our group had a lovely view of the LA skyline and awesome red paper lanterns. And to make things even better, we were one block away from the wedding location! 

Street art that matches Allison's awesome Slow Loris Studio "octoboat" t-shirt!

Amy and Lee at Sonny's Hideaway for their rehearsal dinner. Amy is wearing her grandmother's dress!

The wedding took place in a gorgeous three-story house that had high ceilings, decks off each floor, and a lovely garden at the bottom. A friend of Amy and Avner's lives in this house and offered it to them as a place for their wedding. I can see why they accepted that offer! What a place!

The house from the garden

 

 Amy, their officiant Jen, and Avner

 Amy's reflection in artwork - she looks like artwork herself! 

Lee, Avner, Julie, and Jay

Great songs were sung by the father (David) and aunt (Allison) of the bride

Beautiful couple (Allison's photo)

After the wedding and a great brunch on Sunday, we flew back north to Washington. Allison stayed in CA for a few more days to visit with relatives before flying up to Seattle to join us for 10 days of F.U.N.

The fun began with crabs! The Dungeness crab fishery opened while Allison was visiting, so I was able to get to crabs for the carnivores in the house.

 We got to take Allison to Jay's last hockey game of the season! He seems pretty happy to be in the penalty box?! They sure have fun in these games.

#77!

We took Allison to one of our favorite local wineries, Challenger Ridge, where they were having a special....draw your own $1 dollar off coupon for a buck off a bottle? Sure thing!

No visit to Anacortes is complete without a freezing dinner at Deception Pass State Park. Yes, this is June in Washington.

 It may be chilly, but god damn, it is gorgeous. This is the view from the hill above our house.

Allison harvesting oysters for the big fried oyster dinner! Jay followed the rules and shucked them right on the beach...leaving the shells behind provides the necessary habitat for the next generation of oysters.

On the last full day of Allison's visit we headed over to Guemes Island and wandered up Guemes Mountain. This seems to be a new tradition whenever Allison visits. Go up Guemes Mountain, then get a beer or glass of wine at Anderson's and sit in the sun, look over the channel to Anacortes, and feel really, really, really happy. In this photo, Allison is scheming her retirement on Guemes Island.

Before we dropped Allison off at the airport, we stopped in Seattle to check out Seward Park and walk in the magical forest. Following our lovely walk in the sun and shade, we headed to Poppy, a fabulous restaurant in Capital Hill. The food blew us away! I think we will be visiting that restaurant again! It always sucks to say goodbye to our parents when they visit, and this goodbye was not an easy one.... we can't wait for her to visit again!

The only thing that made our goodbye to Allison easier was the knowledge that we were scooping up another relative the day after Allison left. Jay's cousin, Phil, and his partner, Maia, were in Seattle for a half marathon. We picked them up in Tacoma the day after the run and headed back north to Anacortes. The weather was warm (shocking!) and we headed out to, guess where??? Yup, Deception Pass. We were cooking Indonesian food at home that night, so we only dragged a bottle of wine with us and sipped in the view.

Deception Pass is the best place to bring visitors.... we can't get enough of this park that is only 10 minutes from our house. Phil and Maia had to leave the next day, but an overnight is better than nothing. So ya'll better start planning your trips to visit us - short or long. Anything is acceptable. We promise to spoil you rotten.

All June photos are here: https://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/June2014?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCKT6-qaOjsKEbQ&feat=directlink

Joshua Tree National Park

 

Flying out of Seattle can be lackluster sometimes, but not on this flight to LA. Nope. Mt. Rainier was a dream in the sea of clouds.

Jay's lovely cousin, Amy, was getting married in LA over the first week of June so I decided to take advantage of the flight to LA to check out a national park I had never visited before - Joshua Tree! Because Jay just got back from Saudi Arabia he couldn't take two extra days off to join me in the park, so I went by myself because I couldn't pass up the opportunity to camp and hike in a desert.

I headed straight to the Hidden Valley Campground to set up my home for the next two nights. I scored on a spot where I could sneak my tent in underneath a tree so the thing wouldn't turn into a pressure cooker during the day. I also made sure my spot wasn't too close to other campground sites because I prefer hearing natural sounds over human noise when camping. Jay and I like paddling and backpacking because we prefer to be alone. It is amazing how loud people can be when they camp - why bother camping if you aren't going to listen to the birds and the trees waving in the wind?

Once my territory had been established in the campground, I headed straight out into the park for a long hike. Almost all of the day hiking trails in the park are super short (i.e. three miles). At first I thought it was quite wimpy of the park, until I covered three miles in 100 degrees in the middle of the day. I get it now. Yup. But the trail I headed to this afternoon, the Willow Hole Trail, was much longer and it was fine for me to tackle it because it was later in the day and the sun wasn't overbearing. I was actually thrilled to be hot and in shorts. The hot sun is not a common thing for us to deal with in Washington, so I soaked it up in the California desert!

Black-throated sparrow

I spent about four hours on this trail and each step was amazing. I couldn't get over all the plants, mammals, birds, and lizards I was seeing in this living desert. Considering the harshness of the environment, evolution was working some wonders with the flora and fauna of the park. The Joshua tree stole my heart, I loved watching the jackrabbits, I got pissed at myself for forgetting my binoculars, I marveled at the red-tail hawk drifting over my head, and I soaked up the bird song from a black-throated sparrow. About five little gray blobs of birds teased me (surely because I forgot my binoculars) by hiding in some type of shrub. I managed to fire off a few photographs so I could try and identify the birds later on....which I did attempt. I've concluded that they were a tiny flycatcher species, perhaps Hammond's flycatcher, but who the heck really knows? Flycatchers are known to be extremely difficult to identify and I didn't take all the right shots with my camera. In addition to the biology surrounding me, the geology was fascinating! I'm not a geologist by any means, but the rocks are totally awesome at Joshua Tree. This hike took me along the Wonderland Rocks formation and eventually into an area that clearly sees water occasionally (flash floods?). I wandered along the sandy trail, enjoying the sound of silence and having the entire place all to myself. Only Jay would have made this better.

 

Canterbury bell

The next morning I hiked up Ryan Mountain, hitting the trail at 7:30 am in order to avoid the heat of the day.....although it was already at least 85 degrees when I set out. There was one other couple on the trail, but I quickly got in front of them and had the trail all to myself for the entire hike up. This was lovely because I was able to spot all the lizards and birds before they were spooked off the trail. The view at the top was fantastic - looking out to the north over the Mojave Desert and to the south over the Colorado Desert. Although it isn't easy to see the difference in the two deserts from the height of a mountain, when you drive or hike on the land the difference becomes quite obvious. The Joshua tree (which is a yucca, not a tree) thrives in the higher elevations of the Mojave Desert. When you cross into lower elevations and the Colorado Desert, you lose the Joshua tree and gain patches of cholla cactus.

Happy

Southern desert horned lizard

After hiking up Ryan Mountain, I decided to drive north to a trail called "Fortynine Palms Oasis". In my mind I was thinking, stupidly, that the trail would involve hiking in the shade. Sometimes I'm not that smart. The three mile trail was the longest three miles I've ever covered.... a mile and a half out at 1:00 pm with no shade was brutal. I found one tiny spot of shade halfway out and I curled myself under that rock for at least 20 minutes to just cool off before continuing to the oasis. I knew once I got there that I would be able to cool off under the shade of luscious palms. Hiking alone in the desert in this kind of heat isn't always that smart, but I had a massive amount of water and salty snacks with me so I felt fine even if I was sweating like a pig. There had only been one other car in the parking lot and I eventually passed a couple heading back to their car. Unless someone arrived after me (and no one did), I had this wild little desert spot all to myself. And it was lovely. I took a nap in the shade of a tree, munched on stuffed grape leaves (thanks Trader Joe's!), and drank coconut water. It was idyllic, beautiful, silent, peaceful, and relatively cool in the shade. Does it get any better? 

Fortynine Palms Oasis

 

Now I'm in the Colorado Desert - note that there are no Joshua trees but there are cholla cactus gardens. This little spot was just off the road, which was great because I was pooped - mildly overheated from my two very hot and long hikes - and I couldn't handle much more than pathetic walks at this point. This was a great little walk though because the NPS had an educational pamphlet with numbers marked along the trail, so I could learn about everything I was seeing. Perfect for the dorky biologist in me! I saw jojoba, cholla, and desert woodrat nests. I would have been stoked to see a kangaroo rat, but alas, they are nocturnal and in the Colorado Desert. I am diurnal and sleeping in the Mojave Desert, so that wasn't meant to be. 

My last stop of the day was at Jumbo Rocks to walk another short trail among the, well, jumbo rocks!

Loving the shade and the wine in my campground. I had stashed the bottle well back in a shady spot so it never actually got that warm! Woohoo!

I wandered around the Hidden Valley campground at sunset, dreaming of clouds to help make the photographs even better, but happily settling for the gorgeous blue sky. 

Early morning light

I got up at an insanely early hour the next morning to drive up to Keys View, where I had been told you had a good chance of seeing bighorn sheep. One of the rangers even drew out a little map for me to follow so I could wander up a hill to a spot where they commonly hang out. I had been warned that even 8 am was too hot for the sheep, so I arrived at the viewpoint at 7 am. No sheep. I hiked up the unofficial trail to the top of the hill at Keys View, and found.....their poop. Still no sheep. Oh well, wildlife cannot be told when you really want to see them right? Seeing such a fantastic mammal in the desert would have been so cool, but at least I saw their poop. Only a biologist can be pleased with a poop sighting right?

Keys View isn't too shabby of a view, even if there are no bighorn sheep around.

I headed back, sheepless, to the campground and packed up my stuff. It was time to drive back to LA, meet up with Jay and his family, and party like rock stars to celebrate Amy and Avner's wedding!

Photos are here: https://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/June2014?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCKT6-qaOjsKEbQ&feat=directlink

Eastern Washington Morels and Stuart Island Kayaking

May was a mostly lovely month, except for the weekend we spent driving and hiking all around eastern Washington in search of our beloved morels. Last year we went to a burn and managed to harvest our daily limit of three gallons per person per day....six gallons in a few hours! Woohoo! This year we returned to that same burn hoping for a second year flush but found nothing. Sooooo we looked at maps of other burns that were a few hours away and decided to ditch our plans of camping near Winthrop and drive south toward Leavenworth. We checked out two more burns that day and still found nothing. Same thing the next day - we checked out more burns and more burns and found no signs of the coveted mushroom. Although we got 100% skunked, we managed to take in some great views and have a beer to wash away our sorrows in Leavenworth.

We are not looking for morels here, wrong habitat right? But we were happy to take in the view of the Cascades and enjoy the blooming wildflowers! 

 At least you don't have to search hard to find beer in Leavenworth! 

We bought this awesome basket in Madagascar, thinking it would be perfect for harvesting mushrooms - especially large boletes. But I was looking forward to getting my three gallon limit of morels in that basket. You can see that I didn't get my wish at all.

A weekend later, while on a trail run, wild oyster mushrooms (image below) came to the rescue of my mushroom desert. Jay was off in Saudi Arabia, working on a research project with his stepdad (Jim), a physical oceanographer, in the Red Sea. So I got to eat all of these beauties on my own! I doubt I'll get Jay to write a blog about Saudi Arabia - he has basically given this blog over to me and he let's me run with it. Maybe if you pester him you can convince him to tell you some stories from his trip! I'll at least try to post some of his pictures (if nothing else).

When Jay came back from Saudi Arabia, I was itching to get out on a weekend adventure. Based on the amazing wind and weather forecast, we decided to take our kayaks to Stuart Island. Crossing Spieden Channel requires fair weather and slack tides - and just look at that water! It was a dreamy crossing, complete with just a tad bit of current pushing us in the right direction. Can't complain about that!

Harbor seals can be found all over these islands and this particular group was especially cute - full of snorts, burping, and farting sounds. Everyone should get in a kayak just to hear the noises these mammals are capable of producing. This is not something you can hear with an engine idling nearby.

Jay found the one and only secluded campsite in Prevost Harbor- which is part of Stuart Island State Park. The remainder of tent sites were all on top of one another. Who wants to be on top of a stranger in a tent? We hate that idea. Our spot was surround by forest and views and it was lovely.

The next morning we jumped jumped in our kayaks and paddled up to Turn Point to check out the lighthouse and look for orcas. Despite seeing the gorgeous lighthouse and watching orcas, I must admit that the best sighting of the day was this RARE pinto abalone. This poor critters are just too yummy and they have been seriously overfished and show little signs of recovery. A cool non-profit that I LOVE collaborating with for my job, Puget Sound Restoration Fund, is working on restoring populations of these fabulous invertebrates. Sadly though, there is a long way to go on the road to recovery and NOAA is currently reviewing petitions to consider the species for listing under the Endangered Species Act. Until then, they are considered functionally extinct in Puget Sound and without human help (we are the ones that took them down, we can be the ones to bring them back) they probably won't be able to find viable mates and reproduce.

Paddling to Turn Point

Male orca tail lobbing

Turn Point Lighthouse

Big boy

We were pretty darn lucky to be in the water with orcas - although they never came that close to us. While I loved the experience of hearing them breathe and watching them tail lob - it was a bit of an odd experience for me. I'm guessing this is because of my time spent working in glorious Glacier Bay National Park. There the orcas travel up and down the bay with a rare boat stopping to watch them....but here in WA the pods are followed by a flotilla of boats. More boats than I bothered counting. My photographs are misleading, I just angled the camera away from the flotilla and didn't upload all the photos with boats. These resident pods are surrounded by boats all day during normal working hours and maybe beyond. So my first experiences with wild orcas were, well, a hell of a lot more wild. This sighting made me feel bad for the orcas and miss Alaska all at the same time. Nonetheless, the orcas are totally cool to see (even if they can't beat a pinto abalone sighting).

After spending the morning in our boats, we paddled back to our campsite and walked out to Turn Point. This way we could watch for more orcas, drink beer, and soak up the sun from land. The secondary growth forest on Stuart Island is stunning.

The station house at Turn Point

We didn't see more orcas, but we chilled out with a bald eagle and enjoyed our lukewarm IPAs while attempting to avoid sitting in deer shit.

The next day we decided to paddle all the way around Stuart Island by heading northwest around Turn Point again and then back southeast to the channel for the big crossing. It was a bit more windy this day and even though it was approaching slack tide when we crossed back to San Juan Island, we still hit some decent tide rips. All those rips paled in comparison to the massive boat wake we had to encounter when a whale watching boat decided to come way too close to us in the middle of the freakin' channel. Seriously? The wake was massive. I screamed like a girl when I saw how steep the waves were - the boat was so close to us that the wake didn't have time to chill out....so we had to paddle into the breaking waves heading right at us. Our kayaks handled it better than my nerves did and we survived. I'd like to have a word with the captain of Mystic Sea Charters though.

Photos are here: https://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/May2014?authkey=Gv1sRgCJnH_KPE3JuzqAE

Next blog - Joshua Tree National Park and a lovely family gathering/wedding in LA!