Fall Fun

We always enjoy watching the hummingbirds out the kitchen window.  This particular hummingbird seems to have forgotten to migrate.  He was still hanging around and it was almost the end of October.

On a recent trip over White Pass, the fall colors were beautiful.  The road work continues in spite of all the color and beauty around it.  They have done a lot of improvements on the pass recently.  New paving in places and shoring up the slopes to prevent falling rocks.

Brandon is preparing his trumpet for a fall concert.  Their band is huge and we applaud the teachers for the great job they have done with students.  Each concert shows much improvement in skills.

Courtney and Megan always enjoy the pumpkin patch.  These are great pictures taken at Hunter's Pumpkin Patch near Olympia.  (Thank you, Facebook, for letting me borrow them.)

Bill and I and Kay and Lee spent a little over two weeks camping near Rimrock Lake on White Pass so the guys could go elk hunting.  There will be a separate post on elk hunting.  Kay and I took one day for a field trip.  The first thing we did was to meet our sister, Coralee, in Graham at the Mongolian Grill to celebrate Coralee's birthday.  We got together on her actual birthday, October 26th.  We enjoyed visiting since it isn't often that we are all together in one place.  It was fun.  We had a server take this picture, and all I can say is, we aren't getting older we are getting better.  This is probably my favorite picture of us.

The next stop on our field trip was at my granddaughter's, Merry, fastpitch softball game in Yelm.  She was walked several times but made it around the bases for runs for her team.  Their team only lost 1 game during the entire season.  This loss was to the team from the other school from Yelm.  They will combine the two teams at the high school.  They should be a really awesome team.  Look forward to watching some of the games next year.

The last stop on the field trip was to Brett's new residence.  He is renting this park model home near Yelm which has everything that he needs in a home.  It's brand new and really cute.  We enjoyed seeing him and his place.  We also delivered a TV to him that was given to him by his sister, Becky.  Following a stop at Subway in Eatonville for dinner, Kay and I got back to camp about 9:00 pm without a hitch.  It was a very good day.

While Jason was with us at elk camp, Courtney went to a Halloween costume party at her friend's, Dynnette Brill, place.  Courtney is the flapper on the left.  Isn't she cute and funny?  We think so.  Look for the post on elk hunting near Rimrock Lake.

Simply September

There was a covey of quail hanging around in our backyard during the first few weeks of September.  It seems there is something in our rock garden that they really like.

These pictures of Merry and Megan enjoying the pool are a little blurry because it was getting dark so my camera was being fussy.  The girls spent the night with us so Jason and Courtney could celebrate their 11th anniversary with a night at Whistling Jacks and then a white-water rafting trip.  We had a good time with the girls and Jason and Courtney enjoyed their anniversary trip.  What a hoot to see them in the rafting get-ups.

We also had a birthday party for Megan at Becky and Mike's house on the same weekend.  Since Megan really enjoyed her soccer season, we got her a soccer cake.  After we had a BBQ, she got to open her gifts and then we had birthday cake.  Brandon did the honors of lighting the candles and Megan got them all out after making a wish.  Aunt Becky let Megan choose what piece of cake she wanted and she chose the one with her name on it.  How fun!!

Here are some shots of Lindsey playing in a volleyball game.  She made the freshman varsity team and she plays a position called libero.  What is a libero?  Here's a definition that I found online:  The volleyball libero is a defensive specialist position in indoor volleyball. The position was added to the game in 1999 along with special rules for play in order to foster more digs and rallies and to make the game more exciting. The libero remains in the game at all times and is the only player not limited by rules of rotation. She usually replaces the middle blocker position when they rotate to the back row and never rotates to the front row himself.  This is a new position since Becky played in high school.  They have also changed the way they score points and the number of points in a game.  I guess it's called progress.  Lindsey got a concussion during a practice the week following this game and lost almost 2 weeks of play.  She is doing fine now but had to follow strict guidelines set up by the school district before being able to practice and play again.

We spent the last two weeks of September in Sekiu hoping to catch lots of coho (silver).  This was during a special season that you are allowed to keep both wild and hatchery coho as well as pinks.  Well, the fishing was really, really slow so I took pictures of other things.  There were lots of boats out so I took some pics of them and there are a number of landmarks the fishermen have named.  There is the rock formation called Big Mussolini and the buoy call The Bell.  If you google Mussolini, you might see a similarity of the rock formation and the real Mussolini wearing his beret.

Besides this quillback rockfish that Pete caught, we only caught 8 salmon (4 wild, 4 hatchery and 1 pink) after 9 days of fishing.  In 2010, we caught 33 salmon and in 2009, we caught 40 during the same season.  What a difference!!!  Not only was the fishing really slow but the last week we had storms after storms.  There were two days that we couldn't even get out because of small craft warnings due to wind and rain and there were several days that the winds kept us from fishing more than several hours.  During the first week of fishing, Kay and Lee joined us for 4 days of fishing and Lee did get several fish.  I guess the disappointing number of fish kept me from getting excited and taking pictures of the salmon we did catch.  We wished it had been better fishing for all of us.

While we were at Sekiu, Jason and Courtney participated in a 5K.  They are 24 and 25 at the beginning of race.  Courtney walked the race with friends and won a raffle - a body media arm band.  How fun is that.  Jason looks like he is really concentrating on his run in the other picture and he was the 2nd man to finish the race.  We thought that was great since it was his very first 5K.  He is off hunting deer in Wyoming right now and we wish him good luck there.  Thanks to whoever posted these pictures on FB so I could use them on our blog.

Brett has friends in Port Hadlock so we arranged to meet him there.  We drove from Sekiu and he drove from Yelm.  We really enjoyed seeing him and meeting his friends, Kasi and Tom Skaarer.  Brett stayed a few weeks with Kasi and Tom during the summer.  They have been an awesome support to him.  We are thankful he has them for friends.

Kasi and Tom's kids are so sweet.  Adison and Aiden are 3 and 4 this year and are real characters.  Tom is holding the kids in a picture and then there is a picture of Adison.  The picture of Adison, Tom and Kasi and the one of Brett with the kids are pictures from Kasi's album on FB that I borrowed (stole???) to use here.  We loved meeting Kasi, Tom, Aiden and Adison and really enjoyed the afternoon we spent visiting with all of them.

We are getting ready to leave Sekiu.  Pete towed the boat to our house with their motorhome and we really appreciated not having to make a trip back there to get the boat.  Suzy and Teri drove their car that they usually tow behind their motorhome.  Bill towed our trailer and here we are all crowded in our driveway.  We all managed a smile for the farewell pictures because we had a good time in spite of the poor fishing.

The one advantage of rain and clouds are the great pictures you can get while on the water.  A nice, serene picture to end September.

An Awesome August

We met Brett in Spanaway in early August and spent several days at Jason and Courtney's house in Clearwood near Yelm.  We were taking our boat to Sekiu for the first salmon fishing trip of this season.  We took our boat to Sekiu on Saturday and Brett hung out with Jason while Courtney and Megan went to the Renaissance Fair in Bonney Lake.  Brett moved into a men's recovery house near Yelm and is doing awesome.  We are happy to see him in a safe place.

Brett's picture after he shaved his head and Courtney's picture in her Renaissance costume. 

Jason and Jayden joined us on the first weekend of our fishing trip.  Fishing was great on Friday, on Saturday we limited but it was very slow on Sunday.  In fact, we only caught the quillback rockfish that Bill is holding and a native king salmon that Jason had to release.  The weather and water conditions were great.

Kay and Lee came to Sekiu on Tuesday.  Bill, Teri and Lee caught their limit on Wednesday.  Teri caught the biggest silver of the trip weighing in just below 9 lbs.  Lee caught a nice 7 1/2 lb silver later in the trip.

Becky, Lindsey, Lindsey's friend (Elicia) and Brandon joined us on Wednesday.  Bill, Becky, Brandon and Lee fished on Thursday and caught their limits.  Elicia wanted to have her picture taken with a salmon so here it is.  Lee is holding his nice silver salmon.  Brandon learned that catching the fish is the fun part of fishing.  Then the work begins.  He learned the skill of scaling the fish.

Mike came up to Sekiu on Thursday and fished with Bill, Brandon and Lee through Saturday.  Brandon participated in a kid's fishing derby on Saturday and got a fishing pole for his entry.  The derby was sponsored by the Clallam Bay-Sekiu Lion's Club.  On Saturday afternoon, Lindsey and Elicia went out with Bill and Mike.  They had a great time and everyone that fished caught salmon.  In total, we caught 84 salmon - pinks and silvers.  Everyone had salmon to take home and we have lots of pinks to smoke and can.  All-in-all, the trip was one of our best.  We enjoyed all the company and the fishing was awesome.

So, our RV park is only 30 miles from Forks - yes, of Twilight fame.  The gals took an afternoon to see the Twilight sites.  We had so much fun.

We got pictures by Bella's truck(s) that were parked by the Chamber of Commerce.  The staff of the Chamber of Commerce were friendly and helpful.  They provided a map so we could do a driving tour of Forks to see all things Twilight.  They said that tourism has increased by 90% since the books and movies came out.  Most of the residents of Forks have got on the bandwagon to give tourists the best of Twilight.  Some of the sites we visited were actually used in the movies and some of them were places that were just written about in the books. 

Lindsey and Elicia knew more about Twilight than Becky and Kay but I was kinda out of the loop.  I learned a lot during our exploration but I have to admit that I haven't read the books or seen the movies.

The Swan house was the first place that we saw on our driving tour.  The house was the actual house in the movies with some shrubs and trees removed.  We drove by Forks Community Hospital where Dr. Cullen practiced and it is next door to the building where Dr. Cullen's office was located.  The high school in Forks was not the high school in the movie but we saw the local high school and took a picture of their sign.

We went out to LaPush to see where Jacob of the book and movies lived.  We had lunch at a burger place near the treaty line that divided the vampires and werewolves' territories.  We saw the Black's house and the motorbike that Bella and Jacob restored. 

Forks City Hall had a display case with lots of Twilight memorabilia and the owners' of the "Cullen" house encourages tourists to read messages from Esme on the porch and take pictures, too.

Our last stop in Forks was at the Thriftway Store.  It adjoins Forks Outfitters.  Bella worked at Newton's Outfitters and it is said that the store was based on the Fork's Outfitters.

 

Becky, Brandon and Teri took an afternoon during our fishing trip to go to Neah Bay.  We visited the Makah Museum and hiked to Cape Flattery.  The trail to Cape Flattery is through a beautifully forested area.  We enjoyed the the lookout perches, taking pictures at the viewpoints and Becky loved posing in the odd shaped trees.

The weather was just perfect for our short hike to Cape Flattery - the most northwestern point of the  continguous United States.  The sun was shining and it made the views amazing.  The 3/4 mile trail to Cape Flattery is a combination of cedar boardwalk and earthen trail and was recently renovated by the Makah Indian Tribe.  There were beautiful rocky coves that we could see from the lookout perches along the way.  At the end of the trail, there was an amazing view of Tatoosh Island.  In the far distance across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, you could see Vancouver Island.