Busy October

This month is going to be almost as busy as last...well, it seems like it anyway. We started our month with a trip to Cabela's - see last blog - and this one starts with our new car. Yep, we bit the bullet and got rid of our Honda for a Ford Fusion. Oh my....why did we ever buy the Honda?? The ride is no comparison, smooth, quiet and oh so nice. It is a 2011, silver exterior and black interior. This pic is of me leaving for choir practice on Thursday. Has lots of options...we may be fighting over who takes the car!!

On Friday we went to Ocean Park, WA to clam for the weekend. Bill/Becky Doel are so gracious to invite us to clam and we love to get out on the beach and search for those little guys. Of course there is gear to be had, and Phil purchased his waders at Cabela's last weekend and I bought new rain pants and jacket. You never know what the weather will be like. Phil had to work on Friday so we got in late and didn't get to go out on opening day. But, we did on Saturday and that is quite a story. (see posting later on). When you get back from a clam dig, you need to dry out your boots, pants, jackets, etc. So, on Saturday afternoon, Phil, Bill and Dan created a boot drying hanger for five sets of boots.
This board had a long history with Bill and it needed to be used. So, Dan created the template, Phil carved it out and they all mounted it to the wall and hung the boots. What a great looking crew.
While they were in the garage working on their projects, we were inside working on ours. I have an embroidery piece of snowmen and trees that I brought along, Donna was working on her wool pineapple welcome hanger, and Becky was working on her son's tree skirt for Christmas.
We left our projects and went out to the beach about 3 hours before low tide. It was still light and raining a little. But when we got out to the beach, the rain picked up, the wind started to howl and it turned nasty. The Doels and Johnsons did get their limits on Friday night, and we were hoping to do the same on Saturday. Not to be done. After 1 1/2 hrs, where you couldn't see because the rain was coming down hard, it was getting dark and the waves were relentless, us girls gave up. Phil, Bill and Dan all had waders so they were happy to stay out to dig. We went in to make dinner.
Donna took pictures of us on the beach, so I will have to share them with you another time. My camera had already gotten a beach bath and I am not sure another one with salt water would be good for it. Anyway, everyone had a clam gun except one person and us girls took turns with the two we had. It was hard to see the shows and to be honest with you, they weren't showing very much. I had just walked back up the beach from the waves as I don't have hip boots, didn't have a gun and wasn't in too much of a hurry to go back out. Along came a clam floating right next to me so I scooped it up and caught my first and only one. I went out to let them know that we just had to be patient, someone else would do the digging, and we could just pick them up as they floated by. So, this bucket is our clams for the night - about 45 in total with 6 people clamming. Well, at least I got one!!!
These pics are of Sunday morning on the beach. Phil and I went to church and breakfast and then on the beach to enjoy the morning waves. It was still churning but not raining.
We saw some original sand art that someone left for our enjoyment. The brown nubs on the top are sand piles and the other items are the ocean long seaweed or something like that. Very creative.
This gull was just enjoying his Sunday on the beach as well.
There were a few surf fishermen out there and this man caught one as we drove by.
It was time to go home and we decided to go by the Cranberry farm on the way out of town. Ocean Spray has cranberry bogs there on the peninsula and it is harvest time this week. This is one of the bogs before being flooded.
You can see a flooded bog in the background, totally under water.
They have workers who are on beaters and they go back and forth beating the cranberries from the plants.
Very interesting and fun to watch. The museum has some of the original equipment in it and it looks like a little more time efficient now than before.
On our way into the beach on Friday, we had been waylaid by an accident around one of the curves. It was an oversized load of a huge crane that landed on it's side in a tight curve. On the way out of town we came across workers and a huge crane being prepared to lift the oversized crane out of the ditch.
It looked like quite a process trying to get this in place to do the lifting. I am sure they were at it all evening and were glad it was not raining like the day before. .
All in all, a successful weekend of clamming, great friends and food and relaxing at the beach.