Hear that sound? It’s a call to action for North America’s largest rodent to make it stop: running water. Of all of the species of rodents in the world, Castor canadensis is second in size only to Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris, the capybara. My curiosity about this creature began while I was running. During a morning trail …
Category Archives: Recreation
Eaglemania
Bald eagles are found only in North America. In Washington state, “The early summer bald eagle population when white settlers first arrived in Washington may have been around 8,800…Persecution, the cutting of forests, commercial exploitation of salmon runs, and finally the use of DDT reduced the state’s population to only 104 known breeding pairs by 1980…The population …
Washington State Ferries
I began this post as a way to share a few ferry photos, but controversy concerning the Washington State Ferries (WSF) sent me in a different direction. I feel fortunate to live in an area that allows me the opportunity to choose to travel occasionally by sea rather than land, typically along the Mukilteo-Clinton route, …
Padilla Bay Estuarine Research Reserve
Migrant Trumpeter swans from the north dotted farmlands along the road to my destination a few weeks ago: Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Skagit County. Paraphrasing from the PBNERR site: Padilla Bay is an eight mile long by three miles wide estuary at the saltwater edge of the large delta of the Skagit River in the …
Silver Falls Trail Half Marathon 2015
In August, my sister and I signed up for the November 8, 2015, Silver Falls Trail Half Marathon, my fourth and her first trail race. Registration for the super popular 1,000 participants race, in existence since 2010, typically fills up within an hour. We looked forward to the chance to run along the Trail of Ten …
Another One Bites the Dust
It was just a blip on Hollywood action movie fans’ radar screens when Nicolas Cage’s camp announced that a plane used during the filming of his latest movie, USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (2016), was unintentionally destroyed. According to Tyler Rogoway, “After four days of being half sunk and rocked by the surf on a sandbar near …
Leavenworth Half Marathon 2015
Standing stock still at mile five, I knew I was in trouble. I’d already given up on the sub-8:00 min/mile pace I’d been training for the past few months. Now I was just trying to keep going. I inspected the neon pink headphones my sister foisted on me in the car on the way to …
“All That the Rain Promises and More”
A barred owl’s call lured me into the woods yesterday evening near Heart Lake in the Anacortes Forest Lands. “Who cooks for you. Who cooks for you all,” provides the correct pattern of this species of owl’s call, but it doesn’t do justice to the super soft, spectacular sound. I grabbed my camera and headed out …
North Beach, West Beach and Cranberry Lake at DPSP
There are several locations within Deception Pass State Park that a person could spend an entire day: Bowman Bay, Cornet Bay, and Rosario Beach (plus the satellite sites: Kikutali Preserve, Dugualla State Park and Ben Ure Island), but most folks wanting to check out the “4,134-acre marine and camping park with 77,000-feet of saltwater shoreline, and …
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Sage Hills Trails
During the safety briefing, I realized that my fire shelter had been breached. I had never been so scared. It was the summer of 1986, the year before I graduated from college, and I was one of a group of many Gifford Pinchot National Forest employees highly encouraged to volunteer to help fight forest fires …
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