Tide Pooling
With the full moon tomorrow night, today was an excellent day to go tide pooling. Northern Washington is famous for its tide pool life, and we were only about 6 miles away from one of the best areas "on the peninsula." Low tide was a -1.06 feet at 9:34 a.m., so we had to get up somewhat early, but not sunrise early. We found the day-use parking at Tongue Point
in the Salt Creek Recreation Area and climbed down the narrow steps to the tide pool area that jutted out from the coastline like a tongue. It was a huge area and packed with life. At first it was pretty boring mussels and seaweed, but as we reached the outside edge of the point, the amount and variety of organisms exploded. We saw Pisaster ochraceous that were 18" across and bright red or orange sea stars. We saw lots of Strongylocentrotus purpuratus and red urchins in the bottom of the tide pools in little craters they had carved out. I don't know how the urchins survive because there didn't seem to be much food for them in these outer tide pools. We saw huge chitons and emerald-green sea anemones all over the bottom of the tide pools. We saw very few snails or hermit crabs. I'm assuming that's because the only things that can survive the wave action here have to have 1) a very large foot like a chiton, 2) lots of small suction feet like starfish, or 3) be able to wedge into a depression or between rocks. Having taught marine biology and doing marine biology outdoor education trips with my students for 10 years, this morning was a fun flashback.
We drove into Port Angelus for lunch at Barbecue. "Barbecue" is the name of the restaurant. It had a sign out front with a blue pig on it and the word "Barbecue." It's a little strange. The restaurant was small with a very limited menu of Memphis-style barbecue dishes. The owner has chosen to do a few things very well. It was delicious.
We spent the afternoon trying to decide what to do and ended up not going out photographing at all. As sunset neared, we drove down to Ediz Hook to view Port Angeles from a sand spit that parallels the coast. The skies were hazy and the lighting was crummy, so we didn't even take our cameras out. We drove past a Japanese company that ships raw logs from Port Angeles to Japan on HUGE ships that are docked along the harbor. It's too bad we can't keep the milling jobs at home instead of shipping raw materials out of the United States.
We drove into town to have fast-food dinner at Wendy's. When we got there, the lady trying to take and get orders right was so inept that we left. We ended up at Cafe Garden, which was anything but fast food. We saw a full parking lot and figured the food was probably good. The food was good. The service was good. But it took us an hour to get our food. The kitchen had some serious issues. We didn't finish eating until after 10:00. By the time we got back to the motorhome, we were ready for bed. Tomorrow is a 4:45 a.m. morning.
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