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Tag Archives: Pacific Beach

Days at the Beach

We went out to the Washington Coast to dig razor clams at the end of last month. Clamming was good the first three nights (yes, clam digging at night, in January) but then it slowed down for us. Still we managed to eat lots of them. I even made razor clam ceviche for the first time (yummers!) and we brought some home for the freezer. It was a good time.

During the day, we enjoyed long walks on the beach and Ken did some fishing for surf perch. The first two days we had some sunshine and a little bit of rain and then the last two days, it just rained. Oh well. It was January on the coast. We tried to see the Blue Moon Lunar Eclipse but a thin and then a thick overcast mostly obscured it.

She has two balls in her mouth.
Luna gets her ball and then gives it to Sky to return to be thrown again.
I found it. You throw it.
Despite warnings of landslide danger, they keep building on the bluffs.
The tiny town of Pacific Beach in the distance
Razor clam shell
Kelp
This dead bird was small, robin-sized and had blue webbed feet. It might be a Cassin’s Auklet but I don’t know for sure.
Washed up on the beach
Crossing the creek
A splash of color on the beach
Young Bald Eagle scavenges on the beach with some crows in the rain.
limpet
I love this rock

Beach Stuff

Some stuff from the beach. The blue jellyfish-like creatures are Velella velella, also know as by-the-wind sailors. Sometimes they get caught up in off-shore winds and end up on the beaches, dying and leaving a slippery and if it’s warm enough, stinky mess. Fortunately for us, it was not warm when we were there. You can read about them here. The first time I saw them, there were one or two here and there and by the time I left the beach, vast swaths of sand were covered with them.

 

Velella velella and dog
Velella velellas and crab
A good razor clam day
Kelp
Sand dollar

Days on the Beach

We spent most of last week at the beach.

One of my favorite scenes
Sand shrimp make good fish bait but first you have to catch them.
Dogs help with fishing
Ken flew his kite
Beach erosion. This used to be an easy level walk. Now it’s a ten foot drop to the beach.
Highly erodable cliffs.
And yet, they keep building.

Beach Sunset

One of my favorite things – sunset on the beach. A comfy chair on the deck, a glass of wine and dogs by my side. It doesn’t get much better than that.

This group of women gets together here every spring.
It’s a nice place to stay. Someday a tsunami or climate change will take it away so we enjoy it while we can.
Good light for Luna

Beach Scenes

The light at the beach is so inviting for photography. Maybe it’s just that it is so different from the mountain light where I live. It’s a different color and certainly less contrasty even when the sun is shining. Maybe from the moisture in the air? I return from beaches with lots of photos of just the beach, the waves, the sky – big empty canvases with little detail it seems. But there is so much to see if you look closely. Flotsam and jetsam from the sea and beyond. Birds. Anglers. Algae or seaweed.

A small flock of shorebirds
That brown color is an algae that the clams and fish like to eat. It also makes dogs very dirty.
I could look at waves all day long.
Flotsam
Jetsam.
I was much relieved to discover that there was not a body attached to this survival suit and hope it simply fell overboard by itself.
The day I arrived, this magenta/purple algae lay in long sheets at the high tide line. It was very stinky and slippery. Each day it dried a little more and at this point it resembled old tar paper, dried out and blowing in the wind. The dogs were fascinated by it.
Razor clam shell
Dungeness crab shell. One time we thought we were digging a clam but it turned out that a crab had buried itself in the sand. It nearly pinched Ken’s fingers before he re-buried it.
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