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Tag Archives: waves

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.

A Break in the Weather

Earlier this month I spent a few days at Pacific Beach on the Washington coast. The weather was mostly unpleasant with powerful winds, lots of rain and high surf warnings. This is the second year in a row I’ve experienced bad weather in December on the coast. Hmmm. Next year, let’s not plan to do that!

There was one partially sunny break in the weather and I took advantage of it and hurried outside with my camera and tripod and the dogs to watch and photograph the waves. I got maybe an hour out there before it began to rain again and I took my equipment inside. Too bad. I learned that I missed seeing a magnificent rainbow over the little community of Seabrook. A friend, Sheila Siden, has a place there and she was on the beach at the same time I was and she captured the photo of me and the dogs. I saw her from a good distance away in her orange raincoat. Later that day I saw on facebook that she was in Seabrook and saw her photos. You can see her image of the rainbow here.

This is the landscaping in front of the cabin. The pond just kept expanding into the grass!
This stream was more like a river.
With my tall boots, I was able to cross it, very carefully.
You can see the edge of the Seabrook community behind the row of trees in the background.
Sand shrimp sign
I like watching waves.
Me and my dogs. Photo by Sheila Siden.

Scenes from Sand Dollar Beach

We had really good weather for most of this trip. And low tides too. These things made it hard to leave the beach. It’s always fun to explore a beach and see what’s been deposited by the tides. This beach has nearly no driftwood, making it hard to find a stick for Sky. She used the same stick for three days!

Kelp
Do you know what these are? Several of them were left by the tide.
They did not seem to move on their own.
They were nearly transparent.
Nice to see small sand dollars at Sand Dollar Beach.
Anemone
Former barnacles
Stairs to the beach

Scenes from the Coast

We had a week away from home and got to spend a few days on the Washington coast at Grayland. Digging razor clams was our goal but the weather interfered with that. The locals warned us that high winds and heavy surf cause the clams to not ‘show’ and they were right. The first night of digging Ken and I got our limits but it wasn’t easy. The next two nights we did not get anymore than a small clam appetizer. It was pretty silly. At one point the wind was blowing about 40 mph and the rain was coming down sideways, in sheets. The beach had a steady stream of water running down to ocean. It was one of the dumber things we’ve ever done. I asked the owner of the place where we were staying, how often does it blow like this and he said it had been at least a couple of years. The next day it blew even harder! Clam digs were at night because that’s when the low tides occurred. Hopefully we can return in the spring when low tides are during the day! We did manage to get out and enjoy the beach a little bit even with the wind and rain and one afternoon the sun came out. I drove down to Tokeland to buy some crab and got to watch the waves from a better vantage point. A day or two after we left, some homes between Grayland and Tokeland fell into the water as a result of the high surf. The place is called Washaway Beach.

The ocean has encroached into the dunes. One place I used to visit, years ago, is impossible to get to now.
Lots of foam with all the wind and waves
Crashing waves near Tokeland
A crab boat
Small scale wind power
Salmon jaw?
Sea foam looks like a beautiful quilt