Category Archives: State Parks

Our Saturday hike…

Pauline and I pretty much hiked the entire park on Saturday. Of course the GPS went from full to dead 2.24 miles into it, but I think we did just over 6 miles total. We was both feeling it later that night.

We saw a garter snake on the trail, I also had it focused in when he bolted into the bush, I found it again and once again almost got a good shot when he bolted completely.

*sigh

Sunday we took both cats outside. We now have new cat harness’s for both, and I feel much more comfortable using these over the old “strap” ones.

Drew is really starting to enjoy being outside. He is still cautious, he makes sure I am still near him after every few steps, but he walks with his tail up and purrs like mad at times. He will come to Pauline or me and put his front paws on our knees with the look of “I’m going to jump up any second, be ready” and will usually walk around us a few times. When I walk with him, he goes a pretty good pace, and he walks with confidence, and he always walks towards the RV…

He has no idea what to do when he gets to the RV, he just knows that this is his box and he should be in it. He doesn’t seem to want to use the metal stairs, last time he jumped over them both, yesterday I picked him up and put him on them and he wasn’t too cool with that, so I find that interesting.

Sakura still hates the big wide world. She lays as low as she can get, and if she is being held, she will dig in with her claws to make sure she is still being held. But she is getting better. She tucks her tail for the most part, but if we sit or lay down on the grass, she uses us as a cover, and will eat the grass some, and at times, her tail will come out. She enjoys the sun and grass and flowers, she just would rather not go outside to have them.

We will continue taking them out when the weather cooperates and when there isn’t much park activity, no need to give them too much over load of humans.

I used my iPhone on these pics, and honestly, I am so not impressed. I think we will start using our Pentax’s again, I have been too disappointed with pics off the iPhone lately. Tired of the front camera being such a low quality, and even in perfect lighting, they look bad.

Today! Just 5 days later…

I really had planned to post these pictures the day we took them, but… you know… Stuff happens…

Pauline and I went to South Whidbey Island State Park to meet with a local volunteer, we got to look over our soon to be home a little better, we have 42′ of space and Ackbar is 35′ long.

Sweet!

Pauline and I are trying to get into the habit of taking a camera out when we do our park work, the iPhone just is not a good enough camera.

I’ll discuss this more in another post…

We came across 2 large Immature Bald Eagles on the beach on April 9, I got fairly close to them before one took off, and was able to get a few more pictures using Pauline’s “hiking camera” (Pentax point and shoot) I thought I had it zoomed in all the way, but when I realized I didn’t, the last of the birds flew off, hence the blurry pics…

Dinner time, more later…

A Bald Eagle, a Golden Eagle and a fish

Pauline and I came upon a large Bald Eagle sitting on the side of the road and of course, the only camera we had with us was our iPhones. We started to take a few pictures when a Golden Eagle flew over the Bald Eagle and the Bald Eagle started to take off when we noticed he had a large fish, that was still flopping, in his talons.

He didn’t quite get it secured so he sat back down on top of the fish as the Golden sat in a tree about 10 yards away. We watched for a few minutes and listened to both of them cuss each other out.

We slowly drove down the road and I got as far away as I could with the truck, and for the most part the Bald Eagle was cool with us, but at the last second he took off leaving the still flopping fish behind, so we continued on our way to dump a load of brush off at the burn pit.

We returned about 10 minutes later and the Bald Eagle was once again eating his fish with the Golden watching and complaining. As we got closer the Bald grabbed the fish and flew into a tree, we was able to drive past and walk back to get a better view, but honestly, unless you have 100% perfect conditions, iPhone pics are crap.

After a few minutes of standing close to the Bald’s tree, he had enough and took off with the fish further down the road. The Golden was still in the area and still cussing up a storm.

Not the best pics, but they are the best one’s we have of this event…

Oh, there is also two cat pictures cause why not right?

 

Birds and a bad cat…

Pauline and I went for a short walk yesterday. We was only gone about 2 hours and walked 2.15 miles which isn’t much at all.

We also got a new cat harness. MetPet Walking Jacket I think is what it is called. Pauline will have to chat about that.

He did really good. He was tense, but enjoying the grass and sun and even ate a few small flowers. He purred some, but would stop suddenly and look over the big wide world. He also made sure I was nearby at all times. He took a few steps away, but not too many. We would have stayed out longer, but a 5 or 6 cars suddenly went by all at once and I didn’t want to get him too stressed.

The next step is to resize it for Sakura and find out of we need a Med or Large for her, but it will be purple.

The Weather has been amazing!

Last Monday Today!

Pauline and I went birding Monday, while the weather was still amazing when we saw the forecast was calling for a week plus of rain and wind, we knew we had to get outside while we still could.

It was sunny with a slight wind and low 50’s so we grabbed the camera and binoculars and ended up doing 4 miles in about 3.5 hours. It’s amazing how far you will not go when you stop and stare at birds.

We walked mostly in the forested trails where it was peaceful, but not too birding friendly. The few birds we see move too fast to get a decent look at.

However we did get some good pics of a Bald Eagle as well as 2 new birds for our list, the Red-breasted Merganser and the Ruby-crowned Kinglet. The Kinglet was a bear to get a decent shot of, and the only reason I got these two pics was due to taking about 50 pics of blurred tree’s as it jumped from one spot to another and then another…

We have walked a lot of beach trails since we been here, that it has been a few months since we walked in the woods. Again, so peaceful. Could use more birds. Saw a few deer. A salamander. Heard some tree frogs and a few birds we never saw, even when it sounded like they was 10′ from us.

This week was suppose to be a nasty mess, but so far, we’ve had little rain, some winds, but much more sun then we expected. It still says this week is going to be a bad one weather wise, but at least we got this good weather.

We was going to go to Whidbey Island to meet some people we are going to work with this Summer, I just forgot to set it up, and when I thought about setting something up, I was never near my Mac to send a email, so that will need to be doe next week.

We are expecting neighbors this weekend. We finally was forced to give up our perfect water view and park like everyone else, in your own limited parking pad. We moved Ackbar yesterday and spread about 10 bucket loads of new gravel on both of these pads since they had some major low points with too many ponds. It took us about 3 hours to get it, but even I am impressed how well it turned out. Much better then expected.

Got our new MiFi today. Still having issues. Need to park facing East and not West. Miss facing South. Need another 10′ worth of sewer hose to be able to park with the hose going under the RV to the other side. Not happy about that. But we gotta do what we gotta do.

Feeling lucky to have had such a great view and appreciating it much more now that I no longer have it… Until next Fall.