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Week Twenty-Three, August 20-26
Sunday, August 26, 2001
I had a chance to explore a new nature preserve today when I joined Natalie and K on the trip to the Morse Nature Preserve in rural Pierce County. Natalie and K were going to the preserve to meet with a book reading group, so I tagged along specifically to explore. While the group talked about the chosen book, I wandered trails through the property, interrupting a rabbit as he munched on grass alongside a wetland area, then as I walked out to the viewing platform that looks over the wetland and ponds, I snapped the shot of a small northwest ringlet butterfly fluttering from one grass seed stem to another in the failing evening sun. Aside from the butterfly and rabbit, I also watched a pair of red tailed hawks, a common nighthawk and hundreds of starlings and at least a handful of killdeer.
I enjoyed the visit to the nature preserve. With its prairies of tall grass, the look and smell of the place reminded me of my childhood in Rochester, Wash.
Saturday, August 25, 2001
We returned to the annual Makah Days festival in far away Neah Bay today, taking the road trip this time with Natalie's parents along for the ride. The Makah tribe holds its festival on the third weekend of August each year, and last year Natalie and I drove out there to take photos for our yet-to-be-published book, Insiders' Guide to the Olympic Peninsula. This time I took a lot of photos in the hopes of possibly doing a magazine article or two...and just to have some nice new photos of the area at the northwestern-most tip of the Lower 48.
Makah Days celebrates the Native American culture and the Makah Tribe. We ate salmon baked on sticks alongside an open fire, as can be seen in the photo above. And as we ate the salmon dinner, we watched the canoe races that take place in the protected inner harbor - races varying with either one paddler, two paddlers or the large eleven person canoes. The shot below is of traditional style canoes lined up along the shore with folks watching the canoe races scattered along the beach.
The traditional canoes of the Makah people were once made from single cedar logs. The craftsman would cut down a tree, then create the hollow cavity where paddlers would sit for hours on end to go rowing for transportation or to set out on a whale hunt. The canoes at Makah Days are styled after the original boats, although they are not made from single, hollowed out cedar trees because the huge western red cedars that once provided for the Makah and other Native American tribes along the Washington coast are not longer available. They've been logged, along with every other stick of wood outside growing at one time or another outside the boundaries of Olympic National Park.
After taking in the food and sights and sounds of Makah Days, we made the drive a few miles west of town to the Cape Flattery Trail. This trail winds about a mile one way down to a rocky bluff that overlooks Tatoosh Island at the northwestern-most point of the mainland United States. Much of the forest along this damp boardwalk-lined trail is actually second growth timber - douglas fir, true fir, hemlock and a host of native bushes and ferns. The land is owned by the Makah people, but they allow visitors to walk this trail and see the beauty and feel the fury of the Pacific Ocean as it pounds the rocks that hold the wooden viewing platforms. This was my second visit to Cape Flattery and Natalie and I both think we need to make the trek out to this trail at least once a year. It epitomizes the damp side fo the Pacific Northwest.
I snapped the photo above as we wrapped up the uphill climb back to the car. After this week's rains, there were mushrooms poking up here and there and everywhere along the trail, but this tree with its host of mushrooms and a stereotypical slug climbing among them was a real treat. I am glad that the photo turned out despite the low light conditions.
Friday, August 24, 2001
The rain was but a memory today, as sunny skies returned to Puget Sound and we started the process of drying out from an unseasonal 2.8 inches of rain over a period of three days. Signs of the wetness are all around though. My photo today is of a fennel shoot that until the rains hit this week stood at an amazing 10 feet tall or higher. It seem permanently bent over at this point, so the only way that I can imagine righting it will be to stake it up...
Thursday, August 23, 2001
Nearly all of our rain today fell in one 20-minute period this afternoon when a thunderstorm passed through and dropped rain so hard that when I was trying to drive to the grocery store with Natalie we had to pull over to the side of the road because we couldn't see well enough to drive. Once the rain slowed down just a bit, we drove on toward the store but took a detour and decided that despite the lightning in the sky and our lack of adequate clothing for such a torrential downpour, we wanted to see what Puget Creek looked like in a deluge.
When we arrive at the base of the creek there was water everywhere on the road, but the creek itself wasn't running much higher than usual. We decided to walk up the trail a bit to the first weir and see how the creek looked there, and along the way we watched water spraying up six to eight feet high out of a drain hole cover on Alder Street, right next to where the car was parked. The storm drains were running at full capacity, but the creek wasn't showing the effects of the rain just yet. The creek still wasn't much higher than usual when we arrived at the first weir, but in a matter of seconds that all changed. We could hear the water rushing down from the mouth of the creek and then a small wave of water pushing sticks and turning the creek from pretty clear to a deep muddy color washed over the weir and brought the water level of the creek up about six inches higher than normal. We stood and watched and listened as the water flushed out of the drainage basin and toward Commencement Bay.
With the water clearly running higher and the rain slowing down enough for me to risk grabbing the digital camera for a wet photo or two, I walked back to the car and then wandered over to the base of the park to snap the shot of the already receding creek where it crosses over a weir at the bottom of Puget Gardens. I also snapped a shot of a waterlogged spider web.
It was something else to witness the peak runoff in Puget Creek, and I am glad that Natalie suggested it. Even though we were soaked after the experience, it was exhilarating!
Wednesday, August 22, 2001
Water everywhere...that pretty sums up what the conditions were like outside today. We set a new record for rainfall for this day in Puget Sound history. My rain gauge showed 1.37 inches of rain from midnight last night to nearly midnight tonight. And of course I picked this day to try and snap photos of kids walking outdoors at a day camp at the Tahoma Aububon Center. All in all, the shots came out pretty good, but it was a challenge shooting decent photos outdoors in a steady rain.
I decided not to include any kid shots from this morning in my nature Weblog. I am saving those for their original purpose for the Aubudon center and its Web site. But I did snap the shot above of a plum hanging among the dripping wet leaves at the Adriana Hess Park today. In truth, walking in the rain felt good. It is much warmer now than when the seasonal rains will kick in during the fall, and with our region still so far behind in annual rainfall, it is good to have a few days with heavy precipitation to help make up for a dry year...
Tuesday, August 21, 2001
Let it rain! We had nearly nine-tenths of an inch of rain today, giving us an even better hint of fall than yesterday. The rainfall has been interesting this summer. We have had rain for a total of about 4 days since mid-May, and on most of those days the rain totals were nearly an inch each day. It brings to mind the saying, "When it rains, it pours."
Monday, August 20, 2001
Hints of a change in the weather were in the air today. We haven't seen it rain here in Tacoma in a couple of weeks at least, and in the midst of this dry season, clouds filled the sky. As night fell there was a brisk southwest breeze blowing and it felt like rain was just around the corner. Another early hint of fall...
I shot today's photo looking to the northwest and across the street from our house as the first clouds in the cold front moving into the Puget Sound area made their appearance.
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