Olympic Peninsula and Chuckanut

Glass in a cute shop in Fairhaven.  Yep I bought some.

Steve on the beach at Larrabee State Park

Lots of big trees

Oyster beds

Tasty crepe for breakfast

Beautiful sunrise for Monday's run around Green Lake

Sunday's concert at The Barn on the Olympic Pennisular. We sat on the lawn listening to a trio play Beethoven and Mozart.  very nice. perfect weather and nice wine to drink

Ferry ride from Edmonds to Kingston. then a drive across the Hood Canal got us to the Olympic Pennisular full of rain forests and mountains

I am sitting in the airport as the sun comes up. got my exercise walking from one end of the airport to the other. but despite having no TSA precheck, things went smoothly though I am mad at Delta. They have a heavily advertised policy of your bags in 20 minutes or free miles. Our luggage took an hour to come but according to their records, it came on time. Right. Only 400 witnesses to the contrary. Lying airline.  I will deal with this upon my return

Sunday I took a break from running.  We took a ferry to the Olympic Pennisular to attend an outdoor concert. extensive grounds and gardens. people picnic while they listen to the music, pieces I hadn't heard before. I sat in my lounge chair and drank wine eating local fresh goat cheese. A nice time. We had a long wait for the ferry home but walked around the cute town of Kingston. 

 

The next morning back to running as the sun came up over the lake. Many stopped to take photos of it    We had planned to go to Mt Rainier but unforecasted rain and clouds appeared. No use going to it when you can't see it. Anyway, we had seen it before back in 1986. I have a photo (on the 4th of July) of Josh stuck in snow crying. Instead we went on Chuckanut (yep that's the name) drive, Washington's answer to Big Sur in that the road is high on a cliff hugging the mountains with the ocean below. Much more trees however. Below in the southern part of the ride, were the oyster beds. Oysters need firm sand to bed down on. A new invasive species, the ghost shrimp, are killing off the oysters indirectly by burrowing holes in the beds sinking the oysters. They can rake up the shrimp so that the fish swoop down  and eat them all but that is labor intensive. There is an oyster restaurant high on a cliff that had a huge line of cars parked along the road for almost a mile on a Monday. Either very good views or good oysters though to me, I agree with the early Gilda Radner that they are cold balls of phlegm.

 

Going there, three goats peered out at us from the back of a van. It seemed so funny that they were giving them rides as if they were dogs. Why do goats have horizontal pupils versus the vertical pupils of cats and foxes? Better peripheral vision for the prey versus better means of judging distances for the predator. Recently discovered phenomenon: their pupils are always parallel to the ground so the pupils tilt as the goat's head tilts. Have to see this for myself the next time we are at a petting zoo. Round pupils are for large prey and predators. (and some animals have hyphens and crescents). We made several stops at overlooks and took a walk down to the beach at a state park. Even though we were there during low tide, we were unable to find anything interesting in the tide pools. The road ended in Fairhaven, a cute town on the outskirts  of Bellingham. Beautiful flower baskets, several art galleries (where I bought another vase) and cafes. We chose our lunch place because it had a very high rooftop patio overlooking the harbor. Fat Pie featured pizzas in three styles: Brooklyn, Chicago and a very surprising Detroit style. Wasn't aware that Detroit had its own pizza style. When I asked, the crust was midway in thickness between Chicago and Brooklyn. The Detroit pizza itself was also called 'Sicilian' though in Detroit, the pizza palaces are run by Greeks, not Sicilians. We opted out of the pizza for salads and sandwiches.

 

Back to Seattle to visit my mother-in-law one last time and then to a local alehouse where I had Ballard beer (a trendy section of Seattle). One last visit to the reservoir to see Mt. Rainier (back under the clouds). Then to try to sleep early to get up at an ungodly hour for our early morning flight. Was sleeping fine until the Delta app went off to tell me that my flight was going to be on time at 1:30 am Delta continues to annoy. And our plane, the oldest in its fleet with none of the updates. When I asked where the usb port was, the attendant snorted. But on the plus side, the plane was built before they learned how to shave every inch of footroom away so my legs didn't go numb like on the way there.

 

We are home. I spent an hour repairing the garden and filling feeders. The birds gave up on us.