Back To The Road Again

I think my son got a bit riled about my philosophizing so I'm taking a back road today. I originally intended to tell about my trip to Virginia and back in chronological order, but I'm not that organized and so I have decided to write it more in reference to interesting places I've been and the people I met.

Right now I am staying in Seattle helping my daughter with her children. I haven't been with young children for a while and it has been an experience. Sometimes I really feel house bound because I have to meet their bus at three thirty daily and that doesn't leave me a lot of travel time. I get Thursdays off and so last Wednesday I contacted my friends B and B in Renton and asked to accompany them on a short trip they were taking. They thought it a great idea and told me they were leaving early and would pick me up at nine thirty. Thank heaven their early co-insides with my early.

We left Auburn and headed south, which confused me entirely because they said we were going to travel along the Hood Canal which is part of the Puget Sound. I had the idea that the Sound went from Seattle north to Canada. Shows how lacking I am in geography. We went on freeway and larger highways until we could join with 101 which is the Pacific Coast road. It is a beautiful drive following the edge of the canal, which really isn't a canal but an inlet of the Pacific Ocean. It is very calm waters because it stretches approximately 100 miles inland. I do imagine when there is very rough water in the Pacific that the Canal can also become turbulent. There is ocean on one side of the highway and high banks of dirt cliffs on the other dominated by huge trees, the ever present moss and vegetation. This road can easily become blocked by landslides similar to California but it is sparsely populated and therefore not a national event.

B is a ham radio operator and was going to Lillywup to help a fellow operator that was having trouble with his operation. Lillywup is a very small town and the name is Indian meaning inlet. B's friend lives on land that his ancestors settled in the westward migration. His immediate family and most of his cousins still live in this area. I don't know why, but I was expecting to see housing like one sees in the very small towns in Montana, Utah and New Mexico. Most are very small and rustic. Many of the homes along the highway fit the description, but when we got to H's place, it was a very nicely kept modern modular home.

H is a very interesting person. He is paraplegic and like my husband, very independent. His home is better kept than mine. We had picked up Subway sandwiches and so we all visited over a lunch of subs, cookies and pop. It took me back to times when B, B and I were teenagers. B and I had a very good time visiting. When B and H got the radio problem worked out, H showed us several pictures he had of his place. One of the pictures was from an areal geological survey the government had done. It showed his road and land. There is a stream that runs through the property and it has formed an amazing alluvial fan in the canal. It is shallow for a distance and quite built up with silt and then seems to drop straight off into the deep water of the canal. H said that half of the fan is public beach and half belongs to his family. Oysters grow in the shallows of the fan and are harvested by people who know of them and seafood companies that his family contracts with. I didn't realize oysters grew in the northwest. I thought they were found only in the middle east coast bays or around the shoals of the Bay of Mexico. His family also has a small pond that every spring they stock with fish from a nearby hatchery and sponsor a fishing contest for local children ages twelve and below.

H is also a hunter and showed us several pictures of game and predators he had shot. On his wall is a set of the largest antlers I have ever seen and coming from central Utah, I have seen a few. They were elk antlers and said the animal dressed out at five hundred pounds hanging meat. That animal probably weighed between seven and eight hundred pounds. He has an apple orchard and some of the trees are original, planted in pioneer times. He had a bad time with bears climbing the trees for the apples and breaking them down. He showed us some pictures of a bears he had shot out of his tree. He gives the bears to the local Indian tribe which they use for the pelt, claws meat. He also has a picture of a wild cat he shot when it attacked his neighbor's cat. The wild cat was just about to deliver a killing bite when he shot it. The neighbor's cat jumped up and ran off. Harold must be quite a shot.

On our way back home we stopped at a small cafe and B had an oyster sandwich. B and I chickened out and got some really good ice cream cones.

It was a fun and interesting day. I hope to go down that way again. I mentioned the fishing tournament to my daughter and she would like to take her girls.


Me