How much fun can dogs have on the beach?
Digging razor clams is not like digging steamer clams. Some folks use a long narrow shovel and they may consider themselves purists but we have found that clam ‘guns’ work just fine for us. These guns are tubes, often made of plastic pipe but also made of aluminum or steel, with handles on the top. A clammer finds a clam ‘show’ – a dimple in the wet sand – and then carefully lines the gun up with that dimple and going at an angle with the handle a bit back towards shore, the clammer shoves the tube as far into the sand as she can. Then she puts her thumb or finger over a small hole on the handle and pulls the tube, now full of heavy, wet sand, out and with any luck, the clam will be in that sand. She may have to do this twice or just reach down into the wet sand and grab the clam before it digs away from her. These clam digs are timed with low tides and often are at night. We were lucky that our tides were in the early evening and the days are lengthening so we did not need lanterns and head lamps! There is a limit of fifteen clams per person per day. We got our limits each day. After digging, you have to clean the clams and that’s really the hard part. People get to drive on the beach to their favorite spot. We were lucky to be staying right on the beach so just walked out the door to our favorite spot!
Last week the dogs and I drove across the state and met Ken for a few days of razor clam digging. He’d been working on the Olympic Peninsula and the timing was good for a clam season. These seasons happen about once a month between November and April on the Washington coast. In addition to clam digging there was lots of other fun on the beach. Ken fished for surf perch. His brother joined us for one night. Our friend Mary Ann and her dog Frida and her friend Linda spent two nights there. The dogs loved running and chasing balls on the beach. Sky became seriously addicted to the ‘chuck it’ toy. We had some seriously good weather for February and some normal overcast and rainy weather too.
What kind of photo situation is the most difficult? I am always challenged with photographing my black dogs and today to make it worse, it was snowing this morning, the light was flat and there was more than half a foot of new snow. But how much fun is this? These dogs like snow and they know how to have fun. It looks like they are fighting and trying to hurt each at times but they never do. Well, when Sky was younger and had her puppy teeth, she did make Luna’s ears bleed more than once. Speaking of Sky, she is now over six months old and weighs more than 50 pounds! How big will she get? Luna is 65 pounds and she has lots of long curly hair. She needs a haircut soon. I know, this is a lot of images of black dogs in the snow but we like dogs.
These images are from last Thursday, the same day I photographed the bees. It was a very warm February day with the temperature approaching fifty degrees. Today it is near freezing and snow has been falling for hours. In the last week or so we’ve had nearly two feet of new snow but combined with warm afternoons, it is compressed and heavy with ice in the places exposed by the snow plow and shovels and in the trails that are heavily trod upon.
My Everyday Photos 