Month: July 2017

Buttes and Mountains

karenstark

One adventure that we both had been looking forward to was to visit Kenny’s cousin Carla and her husband Joe, at their vacation home at Black Butte Ranch, in Sisters Oregon.  Add another state to our story!  They’ve had their place there since 2010, but for one reason or another, we’ve never been there.  So we set a date several months ago, and it was finally time!

The Columbia River is the state boundary between Washington and Oregon.  I couldn’t get a shot of the river through all the bridge rails and cars…. but I did get the Welcome to Oregon sign… well, maybe we weren’t really welcome? – just Entering.

AAAAAGHHH!  Portland traffic is as bad as Seattle!  They have many multi-layer bridges that cross various rivers, and Read more →

We lived to tell about it-barely!

karenstark

One thing that I was really looking forward to seeing on this trip ‘home’ was Mount Rainier, the Cascades, and the Olympic Mountain ranges.  Living in Florida now, I do miss the mountains!  Having lived around them all my life, I longed to go on some hikes to smell the alpine scents, to breathe the crisp clean air, to see big waterfalls, crystal clear rivers, alpine lakes and meadows, glaciers, and to get up close to these majestic mountains!  So we teamed up with our youngest son Brian, who has been hiking nearly every weekend this summer.  Big mistake.  He is in shape.  We are not.   He is young (late 20’s).  We are not.  But he did let me pick the hike.  Some friends (also younger than us) had just hiked to Comet falls, and said it was uphill both ways, but beautiful.  So hold on tight… here we go!  Brian told us that parking gets full early, so we headed out about 7:00 and arrived at the park entrance around 9:00, I think.

Comet Falls was MY destination selection.  Brian said there was a really cool viewpoint “just beyond the falls”.  I didn’t realize until we got there that he was talking about Read more →

Oh! Canada!

karenstark

Our next destination in the Canadian Gulf Islands is Pirates Cove Marine Park!  Yahoo!  That sounds like my kind of place!  This little cove is all set up for boaters to stay put with the tidal flow.  You go in and set anchor, then run a stern line to shore, where there are chains secured into the rock.  That keeps everybody bow out and not swinging with the wind or tide!

Rick & Rocky and Doug & Kim’s boats are the two in the middle that set bow anchors, and ran out stern lines.  Vern & Chere and Coco & Kathy’s boats saddled up to the sides and just rafted up to the two center boats.  I like to call this Read more →

Boats, Crab, and Customs

karenstark

As mentioned before, our trip across country was scheduled out such that we would arrive in La Conner, WA on June 30 so that we could hop on our friend’s boat for a 2 week trip to Canada.  We met Rick and Rocky at their boat, Ms D’Rocks, loaded up all of our stuff, and departed La Conner for Cornet Bay.  It is a state park near Deception Pass, and within the fishing area that would open for Dungeness Crab season on July 1.  We spent two nights at Cornet Bay with three other friends boats, and enjoyed as much crab as we cared to eat!  (We call ourselves the Red Neck Yacht Club.)  The guys went out in small boats to drop and pull crab pots.  Kenny & I didn’t get WA state fishing licenses, so we stayed at the big boats, which were docked up on a floating dock with only dinghy access to shore.  The guys would bring back crab and cook it up in big propane cookers right on the dock.  Then we’d crack and eat crab until we were bursting at the seams.  So GOOD!!

This is the Deception Pass bridge.  It crosses a very narrow channel that can ebb or flow more than 8 knots at tide change, so transit timing for a 7 knot trawler Read more →