Bright Star

 First day of crabbing in Sequim! It sure felt like the first crab hoop we pulled for today had a really BIG crab in it, but as it rose to the surface in the relatively clear cold water it looked empty! Just the empty dark bottom of a trap with no crab. And yet the chicken in the bait bag was also not visible which it should have been. Vas es loaf? as the Dutchman would say. The answer to all the questions was soon answered. The ENTIRE bottom of the crab hoop was covered by a gigantic sea star with 20 arms. We have never in all our years of crabbing come across something like this. It was a thing of mystery and beauty.
 

 

As it turned out we crabbed about three hours and brought home only a single 6 1/4 inch across the carapace male dungeness crab for the day. But it was a beautiful day and we talked to a bunch of locals who really had some good local knowledge for us regarding the fishing rights between what one business owner called the "Indians and the Cowboys." VERY INTERESTING STUFF!

Just another word about the dungeness crabs that we brought up on this day. Most of them had a deep purple color on the legs which we have not seen anywhere else. Very pretty. Just mostly not big enough to keep and eat.

Edelweiss and The Lonely Goat Herd

We spent most of the day two days ago humming tunes from The Sound of Music! Why? Because we made our first foray up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains of Washington State. The ridge is only a few miles from Sequim where we are camped. The road to the peak of the ridge literally puts you at eye to eye level with the top of Mount Olympus. That will take your breath away. On Olympus and the adjacent peaks that make up the Olympic Mountains there are any number of glaciers. The vistas are magnificent. The meadows of the ridge peak are jam packed with black tailed deer and on a clear day (which this was) you can see many many miles in every direction- including Canada on the far side of the Straits of Juan de Fuca. We strolled trails along the ridge in wonderment breathing in the cool smell of the pines. We literally hummed a few tunes from Sound of Music and felt like we were "there" in person. I may have actually yodeled across the valleys to a lonely goat herd- only there was no goat herd and no answer was echoed back.

I will use a few stills from that day trip but not nearly all the shots as there will be another post that gets in to the subject in a bit more depth in the not too distant future.