Each year about this time Barb and I go hunting for chanterelle mushrooms. Today we came home with the biggest haul yet:
It wasn’t without some minor obstacles. There were weather warnings about high winds and heavy rains and as of yesterday we had mostly talked ourselves out of going today. But Barb looked out the window after getting up and said she wanted to go. There wasn’t much wind or rain at the time so we were on the road by 8:50. We had our rain gear and although the trees and branches we had to step on and over were slick we made it in and out of the woods by 10:30 with no injuries and only minor cold and dampness.
I’ve been saying for years that, as far as I’m concerned, clothes only have two purposes:
To protect you from the elements
To prevent your arrest (this can also be considered a special case of purpose 1).
Wearing clothes while sleeping always seemed silly to me. Now we have “experts” agreeing with what Dr. Joe has been saying for decades (I admit that I didn’t know or really think about the first three reasons):
Sleeping naked lowers your body temperature, which helps stops you from waking up in the middle of the night.
A lowered body temperature at night has also been found to help you burn calories while you sleep.
For women, it helps prevent bacterial infections such as yeast infections.
And it increases a man’s sperm production by keeping his scrotum at a specific temperature.
When couples sleep naked, the skin-to-skin contact releases oxytocin in brain, also known as the ‘love hormone’.
This strengthens their emotional bond and and increases trust within the relationship.
I am visiting daughter Xenia this weekend and she was telling stories of the different birds that come to her backyard and eat at the bird feeder. Then we went to Lowe’s and brought home a birdbath:
I told her of the birds I frequently listen to when I camp out at Boomershoot Mecca and that I had recorded them a few times. She wanted to hear them so here is one of the more interesting recordings. It is a dove and a meadow lark sing back and forth to each other. Crank your volume up because the sound level is a little low.
I find two or three of these every year in my lawn about this time of year. They look very similar to amanita virosa, but a. virosa is said to be a European/British species. Looking into it I find a close cousin said to live in Western North America, called a. ocreata. As best I can tell, that’s what I have here. Apparently as deadly as a. virosa, I come across these while picking the common Meadow Mushrooms that fruit in my lawn every Spring and Fall. Trouble is, they’re both white, with rounded tops and in the same size range. The distinct giveaway is the white gills of the amanitas, verses the salmon to dark brown gills of the good food species. Also the Meadow Mushrooms stain light yellow, whereas this white-gilled specimen doesn’t appear to stain when bruised.
Thin white gills of different lengths, not attached to the stem. Base of the stem in this case has turned yellow-brown. Prominent white annulus, or ring, on the stem. This one was found growing in the grass near a water spigot where the soil has been damp for a long time, with several deciduous tree and shrub species present. Others like it have been found in different parts of the lawn, East to West of the house, mostly on the North side.
Amanita ocreata? I don’t know
Gills apparently not attached to stem.
Cap flesh does not appear to stain from bruising, even after 20 minutes, though the base of the stem has turned yellow-brown. The whole mushroom appears more pure white in real life than in the photos.
Last June Barb had originally wanted to hike to Annette Lake for her birthday. But there was too much snow so she opted for her second choice, Cedar Butte.
Instead of 3.8 miles and 900 feet of elevation gain Annette Lake is 7.5 miles and 1400 feet of elevation gain. So they say. We discovered there was about 1600 feet of elevation gain and we reached an altitude of over 3700 feet. I’m not sure about the distance but 7.5 miles sounds about right.
It was easy trail to find and follow. Just follow the signs:
I just got a call from a rather hostile woman. She bought the property earlier this year just north of a piece of undeveloped rural property I own in eastern WA, and then had a roadway pushed thought on the boundary – it was part on her property, part on mine. I found out about it when another neighbor called and told me about it. My non-hostile neighbors and I met and looked at the situation. The road was clearly not all on her land. I talked to the bulldozer driver who’d pushed it through; he said he’d stopped part way along when he saw that the line they’d posted wasn’t lining up with his hand-held GPS. Continue reading →
It was two and a half weeks ago since I fell. But still, my left wrist hurts when I try to fully extend or flex it and it doesn’t seem to be getting better. It doesn’t hurt much unless I probe it too vigorously or push the range of motion excessively. It doesn’t really interfere with my normal activities and I only casually mentioned it to Barb. She encouraged me to see the doctor so yesterday I did. The doctor says there is a small hairline fracture in one of the wrist bones. I can’t see it, but the doctor referred me to an orthopedic surgeon for an expert opinion so I picked up the X-Rays today to deliver to the surgeon when I see him next week.
We planned to leave the cabin at 10:00 and were very close to on schedule. We drove the short distance to the parking lot for the trail head for Second Beach and walked through the woods to the beach. Barb and I walked from one end of the beach to the other as did several others.
We left home about 11:00 AM, 15 minutes earlier than planned. We arrived at the Seattle ferry dock at 11:30 and were about car number five in line for the 12:20 ferry to Bainbridge Island. Had we arrived perhaps 10 minutes earlier we probably have been on the earlier ferry. No matter. There were no hard deadlines we had to meet.
We had a pleasant ferry ride and continued our drive. We arrived at our cabin in La Push at about 5:00 PM. We settled in and had supper then started finding other people.
Barb called it a snowball as we found more and more people and our group grew. Here is what it looked like when we had a little more than half of our group:
Bob and family came in about 9:00. We stood around and talked with them for a while then Barb and I got a little chilled and tired of standing and snuck off to the cabin about 9:45. Max drifted off his cousins to the RV spot where Steve and family were parked. They had a fire pit and food so people hung out there until late.
Barb decided she wanted to go on a hike for her birthday. She spent a lot of time trying to find just the right hike. Not too short, not too long, not too long of a drive, not too much elevation gain, and absolutely required was “a nice view”.
She settled on Cedar Butte. It was only 30 minutes away from home, 900 feet of elevation gain, and 3.8 miles round trip. It seemed pretty reasonable. But what about the view? I’ll let you decide.
On Monday, May 16th, aboard the Celebrity Solstice Barb and I got up early, 4:24 AM, to get good indoor seats for our possible visit to a glacier.
The first glacier we attempted to visit, at the end of Tracy Arm, was blocked by small icebergs. So we turned around and went for plan B. This was Dawes Glacier.
The video below was this second attempt. When we were about a mile away Barb expressed her opinion, multiple times, that it was time to turn around. We continued. We got within about a half mile of the glacier then did a 270 degree turn before leaving.
The scale of the glacier was hard to comprehend. It is so big it seemed much closer than it actually was. We got to within about a half mile of the face. The face was several hundred feet above the surface of the ocean and a half mile across.
The ship is 1041 feet long and 121 feet wide. I created the image below from a screen shot of Google Maps with the Celebrity Solstice represented by a rectangle approximately to scale at the point of closest approach:
One of the possible excursion was to depart the ship and get on a tour boat which went into shallower and narrower waters to get a look at things much closer than what the Solstice could. Barb and I did not do this but others did. If you were to go on a cruise like this don’t count on getting so close to a glacier from the main ship. The cruise director told us that in doing this for 11 years he can count on one hand the number of times the ship has gotten this close to a glacier.
Here is the tour boat as seen from an upper deck of the ship:
We got up early on Sunday, May 15th, as we were coming into Ketchikan. We got a table next to the window in the cafeteria and watched the scenery go by as we ate breakfast.
We then went up on one of the upper outside decks and watched as we pulled into dock.
Gills apparently not attached to stem.
Cap flesh does not appear to stain from bruising, even after 20 minutes, though the base of the stem has turned yellow-brown. The whole mushroom appears more pure white in real life than in the photos.
