Vacation 2010 Part 2

We've been home since Saturday night, but here are the details of vacation after the last post. . .

March 30, or Tuesday I guess, was a nice, sunny day. . . Okay, nice, sunny morning when we went to two beaches -- one rocky, and one sandy. The sandy one was, I think, Crescent Beach. The rocky one was a state park, but I forget which. We managed to reach them at low tide.

It got a bit interesting getting the boys down to the rocky beach. Everyone fell at least once going down or back up, as we had to walk across some rocks covered in seaweed. But in the tide pools we found small fish, anemones (mostly small, but one about 6"x4" on its major and minor axes), limpets, barnacles, one small hermit crab in a snail shell, and mussels. Several different types of seaweed, as well. Very cool, all in all. Jellybean developed a barnacle fixation.

At the sandy beach we walked a lot and collected shells. There was some type of critter that reminded me of sand fleas, but I wasn't successful in catching one, or in showing it to the others.

Later in the day, we found Jennifer's maternal grandparents' graves. Jennifer left some daffodils on each.

The next day, we went back to a beach before leaving Port Angeles. This time we were there at low tide, and found lots of tiny crabs under rocks. Dungeness crabs, at that. I picked up a few, and tried to get Jellybean to hold them, but he was too worried about them pinching him.

After that, we went to Kirkland to visit Jennifer's aunt and cousins. On the way, we took a short ferry ride. The boys loved it, especially Field Pea. At Jennifer's aunt's place, the boys got quite a bit of play in -- particularly with Ainsley, who's their age, and Joe, who's an adult but pretty much perfectly matched for a rambunctious 5-year-old. It's too bad we don't live closer.

The next day, we went from Kirkland to Ellensburg, stopping at Uwajimaya on the way. Well, the nearest oriental grocery is 190 miles from Blackfoot. We have to take our opportunities when we can.

Ellensburg is where Jennifer's friend Evelyn lives. She has a therapeutic riding center (more info here). We arrived while she was giving lessons, so Jellybean got to play with the siblings of the riders -- great fun for him, and some much needed exercise. The next day, both Jellybean and Field Pea got to go riding. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay longer there, either.

We left Ellensburg on Friday afternoon, and got home Saturday night.

All in all, it was a good vacation, despite events omitted from this narrative. The weather, though highly variable, didn't get in the way of any good times, although it made for some interesting riding, and I learned that crocs don't work on new grass covered by wet snow.

Jennifer tells me that we have around 250 pictures from the trip. It will be a few days, but I'll get some of those incorporated into this and the previous blog.

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