In The Early Morning Rain

What could be better? I'm sitting on the porch on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and a small piece of left-over pineapple bundt cake. There is a misty rain left over from last night. Much cooler than last week at this time. A-h-h-h!

This past week Kaliedoscope, SIE, and Miss Ingu ventured to the Pacific Coast for a couple days. We had a little room near Cannon Beach (that is the beach Fireling and Bikerboy visited last year). That is also the beach you may have read about in the journey of Lewis and Clark. They were camping for the winter about 3 miles north and decided to investigate a report of a beached whale. They weren't going to take Sacagawea with them. After all her help along the trip, she threw a fit and swore not to help them anymore if they didn't take her. I love to think we were standing where she did.

The 1st evening there, we flew a kite that SIE and I had made several weeks ago. He was able to get it up right away. So exciting because I've never really been able to fly a kite more than 4 or 5 feet in the air. Later we measured the string and we had let it out 154 feet!

We walked over toward Haystack Rock. That's a huge rock sticking up out of the ocean. It is covered in birds nesting - mostly sea gulls. But I got to see my 1st puffin! This was a Puffin Watch Week and they had counted 53 puffins.

When the tide goes out the area around Haystack Rock is called a Marine Garden. There are tide pools full of seaweed and all kinds of sea life and the rocks that are usually underwater are coverred in barnacles, shell fish, and anemones. It happened that Thursday morning was the lowest tide in a really long time. Someone said it was the lowest since 1907, but I don't really know if that's true. It was at -2.0. SIE and I got up early and we were able to walk out on the ocean sand almost 1/2 way around the main rock. Plus we saw lots of really tall rocks that had been hidden underwater. We saw hundred of large purple and orange starfish clinging to the walls. They were big - I guess about a foot across and they have a pattern of small white bumps on them that look like a spiderweb has been carefully spread over each one. We also saw some bright green tentacled things that looked like rubber bath toys. I'll have to look them up to see what they were.

One day we drove up through Ecola Park ("E-cula" is the native word for "whale"). We got to see 3 elk grazing really close to the road. They were big. They were a soft chocolate brown with black-brown head and neck; one of them had velvety antlers growing.

The place we were staying had an indoor pool. One morning SIE and his mom went swimming for 3 straight hours. I don't think he would have left the pool except that we promised him breakfast at a place called "Pig and Pancakes". K-girl had packed a book titled "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" so it seemed like a perfect place to eat.

As we returned home the highway takes us over the Coast Range through stands of tall fir trees and then along orchards and farmland on rolling hills toward Portland. About 30 miles from home a large border collie was weaving in and out of traffic. K-girl pulled over to the curb and openned the door. The dog jumped in without any coaxing. Poor thing must have been running and searching for his her people. She was covered in dirt and had thorny twigs matted in her long fur. Right away SIE named her "Captain Bogg" and we started calling her "Lucky". She is staying with me for a couple nights while we try to find her owners. Last night the fireworks went on for hours here and the animals were shaking they were so scared. Blue and Waylon spent the night on my bed and the stray dog slept on the floor next to us with her head under the bed as far as she could get it. I woke up this morning to find out that Lucky had properly christened the carpet in the little front room. Yuck and gag! There goes a little more purgatory off my karma.

All in all a beautiful week and lovely cool morning.