Tufted Puffins and more...

The dinner cruise, in support of the Dungeness River Audubon Center, was called the "Puffin Cruise," but in fact we saw young and mature eagles, a variety of seagulls, cormorants and harbor seals with pups along with the promised puffins.

John Wayne Marina, Sequim, WA about 6:30 p.m. Due to
the mist, it is hard to see the island destination well, but it
out where the sky is lighter, only when we got there it wasn't.

It was a misty evening with a light breeze, about 50-60 degrees, and not much wave action, but the wind waves picked up as the sun was setting, making it a little hard to get good shots. The lack of defining light was also challenging. I was glad I took along a windbreaker because once I went out on deck, the breeze and the mist were pretty chilly.

The 65-foot Glacier Spirit from Port Townsend was our
tour vessel. The captain and his team did an excellent job!

We were served a delicious dinner of dill and garlic salmon with a Caesar salad and Capt. Pete's Party Potatoes along with fresh-baked bread from Pan D'Amor that was yummy.

From my years of living aboard, I had a very good appreciation of what it takes to get a meal out from a galley and to serve it while underway.

Cruise time to the island was about 30 minutes. That was time enough for most folks to finish their meal and then go out on deck to see all the creatures on this island refuge.

The southern end of the island has a spit where the seals and
pups can lie on a beach and the water is somewhat shallow
so the pups can learn to swim safely.

Apparently the eagles, young and old, don't have enough challenging food adventures on the peninsula, so they come over to the island to grab a few eggs from the gulls or Canadian Geese, and the gulls harass the seals for the placenta after they birth their pups. This is a fine example of the "pecking order."

Off in the distance you could see the ruckus that the eagles were causing, and as we approached (only within 200 feet, please) we could make out pups lying next to their mums, geese in the water nearby, and puffins bobbing close enough to get shot or two before they dove down for fish for dinner.

If you look closely, just to the right in the photo, you can see dots of birds
circling and doing aerial maneuvers. We were too far off to hear much.

Rhinocerous Auklets, Caspian terns and other birds identified by our tour guide were flying or floating all around the boat.

In fact, it was rather difficult to know where to 'tern' next to see the next bird.

A closer shot of the chaos being created by the eagles...

Many of the birds are nesting now, so we often saw birds with fish in their beaks being carried off to the cliff homes for the little squawkers.

It was possible to see the holes the birds have made in the cliffs, but not much more from the distance we were required to stay offshore.

I was seated with a couple (John and Marie-Paul) who had lived in the Hague for awhile and they were delightful companions for dinner. The other couple at our table was mostly silent as we ate and as soon as we were close to our destination, they were up and outside. On the ride back they seemed subdued; no explanation.

"Bob" in the cap, was our birding
point man. Lots of local information!

Our tour guide was exceedingly informative, but I did not bring anything for taking notes. He had an excellent grasp of the history of the area and was knowledgable about the status of the threatened species and the numbers of birds on the island.

The tufted Puffin pair in all their bright colors, cruising near enough for my
camera to zoom in and get this shot.

We were offshore for about an hour and then we turned for home. The crew delivered up freshly baked brownies with whipped cream, chocolate sauce, almonds and a raspberry on top for our dessert. Wow!

Canadian Geese in the water, seals on the beach, gulls on
logs and in the air, and eagles - just out of the frame.

Lavender is in the air...

It's that time of year again on the Olympic Peninsula... the weekend of the Lavender Festival. (The link will tell you all about it.)

Lavender in bloom on the Olympic Peninsula a few weeks ago...

But it's been drier than usual, so some of the lavender growers have already started harvesting some of their crop because it doesn't do to have the flowers come to a fuller bloom too soon.

Still, there's plenty of the purple haze and smell to satisfy the tourists.

Last year I planted my own lavender bush and because I moved in January, the transfer of the bush did not go well. It needed to go into the ground earlier rather than later, but I think it will survive and maybe next year it will have the intensity of its neighbors.

Protection Island in Washington State, in the Strait of Juan
de Fuca, in the mouth of Discovery Bay, near Sequim.

This weekend, there's dinner cruise to Protection Island, a national wildlife refuge, to see the local marine birds. Some of the funds paid for the trip will support the local Audubon Society. I have been wanting to get out there since I moved to this area, so I'm hopeful this may be one of the nicest photo journeys I've been on in awhile.

Close up of the lavender flower, a wonderful scent, if you
aren't allergic to it, which I know some folks are.

The island is one of two of the local nesting places for the Tufted Puffin, and as one of my birder followers (Margaret in Italy) knows, these are interesting and an endangered species.

It's likely the weather is going to continue to be dry and warm, but I'm going to be prepared for the coolness that being on the water at dusk brings.

A good friend is moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a couple of weeks. She was one of the first people who befriended me when I arrived in Sequim, and it will be hard to not have her living nearby.  I completely get the reasons for her move, and people move in and out of our lives all the time, in one way or another. But I don't have to like it, do I?

Celebration of Life: Renn Tolman

From the Homer (Alaska) Tribune: "Homer boatbuilder and musician Renn Tolman passed away peacefully in his tiny beachfront cabin on the afternoon of Saturday, July 5. He was 80.
A celebration of Renn’s life will be held at his boat shop in Homer at 4 p.m. Saturday, July 12.
Renn was well-known in Alaska coastal communities for designing and building the Tolman skiff, a practical dory-style v-bottom boat that found wide use among hardy seafarers on Kachemak Bay and around the world. His two do-it-yourself books, describing an economical “stitch-and-glue” construction process involving plywood and epoxy resin, sold thousands of copies. Tolman skiffs can be found in Germany, Norway, Australia and other countries. An old-school outdoorsman, Renn traveled far across open water on hunting and fishing trips. At his death he had just completed a new design, the Tolman Trawler." (The link on his name has many photographs of his boats and a few of him.)

I have only just heard this news, and while I haven't actually talked to Renn in decades, he is part of the memory of my teen years in New Hampshire.

To celebrate his life today, at this great distance from his boat shop, let me just say that one of my treasured memories is sitting up in his cabin in Nelson, before he moved to Alaska, listening to my older brother and Renn playing music with their other pals. The cabin was smoky, dim, small and spare. It must have been a cool evening as there was a fire blazing while the harmonicas, fiddles, guitars, flutes and voices combined for a lovely flow of energy.

Renn was not an easy man to know, even if you were an adoring fan just because your brother was. But even then, he gave off the air of a hermit, a man who had much to think about and little to say, unless he sang it.

He was an integral part of the Nelson 'scene' with music and picnics and other dramas which others may or may not remember during those vibrant summers of the late '50s. Renn would have been in his mid-twenties then, and there were plenty of women who had their eyes on him. But there was something remote about him, almost ethereal, and however much I studied him, he was not someone I could easily describe to anyone else.

I know that when he moved away, his father, Newt Tolman, did not like to speak much about him. One night when we were having dinner at the Tolman's house, I asked him, "Are you angry at your son?" Newt cleared his throat several times, gathered up his voice, and with unusual sentiment for that crusty old man, he replied, "No, not at all... I just miss him something terrible."

Sometime after Renn moved to Alaska, my brother drove up there to visit, taking with him his strong-minded male Wiemaraner as company for the long drive from Massachusetts. I'm not sure where it happened, but along the way, apparently the dog decided he needed to get out to pee and opened the back of the camper and jumped out. My brother saw nothing until the flashing lights of a state trooper pulled him over to ask him if the dog that was chasing him was his. Reunited, they went on together and spent some of the summer with Renn. 

Having just watched the movie "Cloud Atlas," supporting the theory of reincarnation, which I tend to align with, I should expect Renn might be promoted to a distant star colony where his music and delicate soul can flourish.

(A more detailed obituary was published by The Sentinel (Keene, NH) and can be read here.)

Godspeed, Renn.

Reflections on a Fourth of July

I've been through a number of celebrations of Independence Day, some memorable and some must be forgettable as I cannot recall them now.

Waiting for the fireworks in Aberdeen, WA.

This year, as it has for several decades, the holiday falls close to my son's birthday, and I wanted to do something special with him.

Lady Washington, a full-scale reproduction
of the original 18th century sailing ship.

I arranged for us to be on Lady Washington, an authentic, full-scale reproduction of the original 18th century tall ship, for a display of fireworks in the harbor. (At the link you can see a video about the building of this vessel, and more details about her.)

The vessel is 112-feet in length overall, US Coast Guard inspected and certified, and is operated by Grey's Harbor Historical Seaport Authority, a not-for-profit organization in Aberdeen, Washington

A bit of trivia about the ship: she was the only real ship to be used in the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean," and her tiller was replaced with a ship's wheel for the movie and then she was refitted with the tiller used today.

The weather was cooperative to the degree that we could have fireworks, but the constantly threatening clouds and nighttime mist made it difficult to get good, clear and sharp photographs.

Still we had a lively time, watching the crew raise and lower the sails, along with a short sail up the Wishkah and Chehalis rivers.

Watching the crew manage the lines for raising and lowering
the sails was fascinating.

Out on the bowsprit as the summer sun
drops down to the horizon.

One of the crew members recalled another year when he was in Boston Harbor and experienced the synchronized and colorful display along with the music of the 1812 Overture played by the Boston Pops Orchestra.

I've been there, too, and it is the sine qua non of fireworks events, in my opinion. We were watching it just in the harbor, again on a boat, with a radio playing the Pops concert. Sometimes I wonder if I just dreamed the highlights of my past...

And the rocket's red glare....

Aberdeen was once a logging and fishing center at the southern end of the Olympics, but it seems to be a city struggling to re-define itself these days. It is less than two hours away from the state's capitol in Olympia, has beaches nearby, and easy access to the Pacific Ocean for fishing or sailing events.

But the buildings are grey with soot or dust or are so dilapidated as to create a feeling of abandonment, the quality of the restaurants leaves much to be desired and the population seems to need some kind of shot in the arm to take pride in their dwellings.

The bombs bursting in air... 

I left the city gratefully after two attempts to dine out; one place rebuffed us and the other was an expensive disappointment in dining. When the best food you can find in a city like this is at a Jack-in-the-Box drive-through, that is a sad statement of conditions.

This was supposed to have been an exemplary celebration, and it was frustrating that so much was beyond my control to make it so. Still, we took what was good from it, and counted the trip as being one of the better ones shared. Happy birthday, America, and Happy Birthday to my son.

He looks like a member of the crew...