A new year and new views! Its going to be many months before the sun comes back north and sets over the Olympics but we have the chairs in position in anticipation. I only have a couple hunting/gathering stories to share for January but I did make it out to the new place at least once a week to do battle with the blackberries to help insure our couple hundred feet of waterfront is not completely overrun.
The first outing of the month was a return to the candy cap patch I had discovered in a Seattle park but this time with the eagle eyes of young children. Even though I think I've finally got a handle on their identification, you will see below that I kept the harvest from each patch separate so I can give them the sniff test the next day.
The chanterelle patch in the same forest was completely done but we found a candidate for a world record artist's conk and resisted the urge to leave any artwork. Beyond that there were plenty of cool waxy caps to look at and new turkey tails coming in.
At the new place on the 7th, I could see a couple boats offshore and heard their air compressors or maybe pumps running, turns out we have a geoduck farm a half mile down the coast, very promising for the geoduck tides that start in late April. If you haven't watched them hydraulically mine the geoducks, its super slick. Makes a mockery of my multi-hour attempts to get down to a single geoduck.
While we were hosting some friends the next weekend we had a flock of geese pass right along the bulkhead and that woke me up to the fact that I still had a couple weeks left in the waterfowl season.
Goose Hunt #1 - I brought Oak, a shotgun, and a pile of landscaping blocks to help build out the stairs down the to the beach while we waited to see if the geese would return. We had one burst of hope at about 10:30am with a flock coming down the beach but they stopped about 4 properties to the north and stayed there until the end of legal shooting hours. Only one group of sea ducks got within range but I was distracted on the stairs and didn't realize they were there until I heard Oak hit the water...
Here he is feeling pretty embarrassed that his twelve year old puppy energy got the best of him:
Goose Hunt #2 - Same game plan as the previous week but this time I had an impact hammer (not the stealthiest tool). The plan was to anchor a couple handrails into the beach steps in between more blackberry battles.
We got one handrail in before a single duck started feeding almost within range. On its next dive we jumped to the front of the rock face and waited to see where it would surface. It took two more dives before I could take a shot and then I got to send Oak on his first saltwater retrieve.
It was a merganser but to my surprise it was a solid meal. I wouldn't recommend cooking a fish eater in its own skin/fat but skinned, sous vide to 140F and browned in some butter and it far surpassed what the internet led me to believe. We didn't see or hear a single goose but I had one more opportunity on some sea ducks in the afternoon and failed spectacularly on a much closer bird. Now it was my turn to look embarrassed and avoid direct eye contact with Oak.
The other adventure for the month was a family trip down to Portland. The grand plan was for everyone else to ride the Amtrak Coast Starlight train from Seattle and I would shuttle the dogs down. The boys were pumped but about 45 minutes into their ride, the train smashed into a stalled semi truck. Luckily the driver and passenger of the truck bailed out just in time but the initial estimate was a 4-6 hour delay with no option to get off the train.
Things might have gone sideways at this point because we didn't pack for 9 hours of train time but it really paid to have young boys. While I stewed in Olympia about the incompetence of Amtrak (built on a sparse but lifelong string of mishaps) and shamefully wishing the truck driver at least had a bruise, the boys were living it up. The giant windows in the observation car gave them a great view of the proceedings and firefighters came through the train making sure everyone was ok.
It ended up being a three hour delay and when they finally arrived in Portland, it was shocking to see how little damage the train sustained. Especially considering the semi was simultaneously crushed like a pop can and smashed into constituent parts. Portland was chilly but we got in some scenic walks and visited their awesome science museum twice. While we forgot to grab garishly garnished donuts, we were very impressed with the food scene, especially an inventive take on crepes at a Chinese restaurant and some solid BBQ.
P.S. If you are traveling the I-5 route and need to let your kids blow off some steam, Chehalis put in an awesome playground across the street from their youth prison... If it hadn't been covered in ice, it would have been a couple hours before we could have dragged the kids back to the car.
