Author: stvheld

Throughout my vacation in Puget Sound, I kayaked. There is nothing that amounts to the emotions taken in while out on the waters paddling in a place touched by the hand of God. The colors from the setting sun and Mt. Rainier hovering nearby were absolutely stunning. I loved listening to the sounds of nature, the birds and splashes from seals.

I really enjoyed kayaking with the seals. They would pop their heads up to see what I was doing, some would grunt to get my attention. I would look them in the eye and they would stare back. Then another one starved of my attention would make a splash and I’d have to look at him. They followed me kayaking as if I knew where a great source of food lie. I tried to get a picture of them but the second I held out my camera they all ducked beneath the waves. I tried having my camera ready for when they would pop their heads up again but not one would ever come up until I put my camera away. The very moment my camera was off and inside my kayak they splashed up and grunted, as if saying ah ah ah you can’t get a picture of us. I think they were playing with me.

I did get the better of one seal though. I was kayaking up along the beach early in the morning when I saw what I thought was a sparkling white rock. It glittered in the sun. As I came closer I was amazed to find out it wasn’t a rock at all but a seal. I quickly pulled out my camera and snapped a picture. The seal didn’t move, it was asleep. I silently paddled closer inching my way towards this seal. I was now within 15 feet from her, she was still asleep, when I took this picture. I sat in my kayak just admiring my luck when one of her eyes opened. She closed it lazily as if still in a slight dream when suddenly both eyes rolled open. She let out a shriek so piercing that I almost fell out of my boat. When I looked again she was gone beneath the rippling waves.

One of my most favorite memories of going to Martha’s Cabin is visiting the ocean. We decided to drive to the coast again on this trip. We left early and arrived only to find the Pacific blanketed in a white fog. I could barely even see my hand in front of my face. We waited nearly all day for the fog to lift by stopping in a little town nearby to eat lunch and buying a sweatshirt because it was very cold. When we went back the fog had dissipated a bit but the full glory of peering out to the ocean seeing the slight curve of the horizon was still shielded by the fog. I was slightly disapointed but nothing could dampen my excitement of standing in the Pacific Ocean.

Thus ends my Puget Sound Vacation.

Phew! I’m finally home. What an experience it was, let me tell you: I went to my cousin Erin’s beautiful wedding in Minnesota. Oh the wedding was glorious, just stunning, beyond words! Anyway more on that later… see because I have to tell you a funny little story that happened to me, that is not at all funny for me.

My whole family decided to drive to Minnesota (a two day drive) because we’re crazy I guess. I thought we should fly but my mom believes she would die on a plane. So anyway on our return drive home we again had to make the worst trip through Nebraska. (Think of the most boring thing you can and then stare at it for hours and that is Nebraska) Then we drove nearly the whole way across Wyoming and finally after 11 excruciating hours of driving…driving…driving, our beloved town of Green River came into view. I’ve had to go to the bathroom for quite some time now and was glad that I soon would be able to. Ahhhh home sweet home.

I was driving and after taking the exit to Green River I noticed that all the stop lights were out. Hmmmm… that’s strange…. It took longer to get through the city because without stop lights traffic becomes a gnarly mess. We all want to get home, we’re sick of the car. We’ve been sitting in the car for 11 hours and on top of this the order to go pee is imminent! After getting through the mess of all the stop lights, I turn down the street that winds its way to our house. The home stretch… almost there… almost there. OH NO! I’m stopped dead in the road when I see all these flashing lights. The whole street is blocked off by police vehicles. I have no clue what is going on. All the electricity in our half of town is out, our very own street is blocked off by ten police cars, what the crap??? At this point I really have to go to the bathroom. A police officer motions for me to turn around.

OH GREAT!!! I have to take the long way home and finally pull into our drive-way. Yip-PEE I’m so ready to go to the bathroom but without electricity our garage door doesn’t open. HOW WONDERFUL! It even begins to rain, a drenching rain. This doesn’t help my situation. Not to worry my mom has a key to the front door. I’m right beside her dancing the best I-Have-To-Go-Pee-Performance of the world. She turns the key and opens the first lock then puts it into the dead-bolt and turns…..Nothing. It doesn’t budge! I’m about to explode! I have my legs crossed and I’m squeezing with every ounce of strength in me. My mom tears through her bag and tries every single key but nothing turns the dead-bolt!!! AHHH!!

I REALLY HAVE TO GO and NOW!!! In a semi-run half waddle I lurched my way to our backyard. (NOTICE: The following is not PG) I ran to the side of the house and at the very last sliver of a moment before explosion I found a secluded area and let the flood waters out. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh…. Ahhhhhhhhh….. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh. How GLORIOUS! If you’ve ever heard Adam Sandler’s The Longest Pee it was quite similar. That was my agony and the ecstasy.

After that I ran around the house but there was still absolutely no way into our house. We tried the keys again to no avail, the windows were all locked shut too. It was continuing to pour down rain. My family thought I was hilarious having to go pee in our backyard when we all sat dripping in our car. We were all anxious to get home only to find out we’re locked out of our very own home for who knows how long! We sat in the car another hour as I read a couple more chapters from The Agony and the Ecstasy, the title of the book literally how I felt at the time, until the rain started to let up.

The thunder roared and split the sky. There was still no power, no way to get into our house. We took a walk down the street to where all the police vehicles were and discovered a crowd of people. It looked like a disaster scene from War of the Worlds. With sparks flying, police lights flashing, and a crowd of people jabbing each other for a better view. I saw two power poles in the middle of the street and across from that there were still power lines dangling and sparking. The power company was working at getting everything under control and to restore power. They told us it would be another 7 hours at the earliest until there would be any power. We all groaned. I heard rumors from the crowd that a big truck had caught a power line and dragged down the other two poles.

Seven more hours!!! It was already getting dark. Luckily we own a camping trailer. At least we wouldn’t have to spend the night in a car. I slept well in the trailer despite being so frustrated with everything that had happened. I guess it was an adventure and now I have a story to tell. :-) That’s my agony and the ecstasy story.

I was going to try and get a post up of my last couple of days at Martha’s Cabin in Puget Sound but when I hit publish button everything disappeared!!?! Ohhhh ARRRGGGH AHHH!!! It was so lovely too, the photographs, the nice beautiful post… everything…..g.o.n.e…. Ohhh well… Anyway I’ve let bygones be bygones and will post again sometime soon but tomorrow morning our family is leaving for my cousin Erin’s wedding in Minnesota. I’ll be back next Thursday. Maybe if I feel up to it or have nothing else to do while I’m at the hotel, I’ll retry the post but don’t expect anything.

The above is a scanned image of my face (something rather strange and fun to do) that I changed with Photoshop.

Just so this isn’t a complete post waste I’ve added a new feature to my blog. I found it on this blog. I am pretty excited about the new Guest Map (the link is also on the right column) please check it out and leave your mark!! I am always interested where readers of this humble blog are located, so “Guest Map” was a bit of geekiness I couldn’t resist implementing.

The guestmap has a satellite, map view feature or hybrid. You can scroll about the globe and leave comments and links to your own blog/website.

Just find your spot on the map (you can move the map with your mouse or use the sliders on the left of the map), zoom way in, click on your location, a message box will pop-up, enter all the fields and leave an icon marker (if you don’t select a marker the message will not appear). Finally, click the button Place! and voila you’re done! Nifty eh?

Early in the morning my mom incessantly said, “Steeeeeve honey time to wake up.”
“Ummm….arrggg….It must be 6 AM mom.”
“Actually here it is 5 AM we’re in the Pacific Time Zone. I wanted to leave early to beat the rush hour traffic.”
“Arrgggggg.” THUD! I rolled out of bed. “Alright I’ll get ready.”

After appearing that I was awake by taking a shower and dragging a comb through my hair, we got in the car and headed for Port Angeles, Washington. Here there is a ferry that takes mainly tourists across to Canada. None of this was on my mind as I lulled off to sleep again. I finally awoke again when the car changed speeds and my mom told me she was getting gas. Already the sun decided to greet the day and my eyes by glinting off of anything remotely reflective. “Only one more hour and we’ll be in Port Angeles,” my mom said as I finished tapping off the gas tank.

We arrived in Port Angeles and started looking for the place to buy tickets to get across to Canada. I thought we drove around forever. Turning around once we even made a trip down a one way street! After receiving evil glares from passing cars we finally stumbled upon a sign, ‘Ferry Parking $5.’ “Go here mom!” We parked in a nice spot and my mom read the instructions on how to pay.
“Steve you don’t have $5 do you?”
“No why?”
“You have to pay this metal container thing and there is no way to receive change back because there is no assistant or anything. I only have a $20. Let’s go buy tickets and then I’ll have change.”

The ticket office was just off of the dock and I stopped to take pictures while my mom purchased the tickets.

She came back with one of those looks that you just know something wasn’t right. “Guess what?….We’ll have to bum around for three hours because we missed the ferry by 15 minutes.”
“What!!!”
“It left at 7:00 and the next one doesn’t leave until 10:00.”
We’re going to miss our whale watching tour now, I thought. This really stuck a stake through my heart. Anyone that truly knows me knows that I absolutely adore dolphins. My mom could see on my face how crushed I was and quickly pulled me out of it.
“I called the whale place and they changed the time to 11:15 for us, so don’t worry okay? Let’s just go eat I’m starving.”

We found a little cafe and sat down. It took them forever to hand us a menu let alone prepare our food but luckily we didn’t care because we had to waste time. After eating we strolled along the streets looking at all the nick nack shops. My mom found a post card of Mt. Rainier in one and filled it out until finally it was time to board the ferry.

“Please have your customs sheet ready before getting into line,” bellowed a speaker every few minutes. A sign said, ‘Prepare for random searches of all backpacks and bags.’ We got into line, inching our way up to the end. A young customs agent waved us over to him and asked us a few questions before we could board the ferry. He sounded like a recording too I thought.
He quickly said, “Do you have any firearms, drugs, illegal plants, animals, or have a warrant for your arrest?” We both said no and he eyed our driver’s licenses and then said, “enjoy Canada then!”

The ferry across takes about an hour. The last time I was on it I remember staring out into the sea hoping to see dolphins. The ferry was overpacked back then and there wasn’t a place to sit for my parents but I didn’t care because I was hanging over the ledge hoping to see some dolphins. (Orcas more commonly referred to as Killer Whales are actually dolphins) When I finally saw some I screamed, “Whale!” You could feel the whole ferry tip to one side as nearly everyone rushed over to where I was looking. This opened up a lot of seats and my parents and brother could finally sit down.
My mom reminded me of this and said, “If we can’t find seats this time I want you to yell whale again,” but there were lots of empty seats this time. I didn’t see any whales this trip. Instead everyone watched two US Coast Guard boats on either side of our ferry esccort our ship out of the harbor. I thought they would just follow us a short distance but they followed us until we reached the Canadian border. Look at those machine guns! Scary how in ten years, since I was last on the ferry, our world has changed.

Like I said I didn’t see any whales but I did find a seagull below me gazing at all the tourists dropping crumbs and snapped this picture.

We arrived in the Canadian port of Victoria City as I was taking pictures of all the ships and buildings. We had to go through Canadian Customs now. They just wanted to see our driver’s licenses and quickly let us through. After that we had to rush over to the whale watching tour place. This would be about all we would have time for. The whale watching tour was four hours long and the last ferry back to the United States was at 4:00 giving us only about an hour to stroll around Canada once we got back from the whale watch.

My mom and I adorn our whale watching suits.

The whale watching expedition was incredible!!!!!!!!! I could write another 5 pages just about that experience but I’ll save my blog audience from that and just tell you about one amazing encounter.

We were next to a pod of about 5 orcas. One came to the surface, sprayed her spray and then turned straight towards our zodiak. She was right under the surface. I could reach out and touch her if I wanted to and then she swam underneath our boat. Everyone including me screamed in excitement. This was so incredible that I forgot to take pictures but thinking back on it now I’m glad I didn’t because I’d rather have this memory then to have looked through a view finder losing the experience.

Another zodiak next to us ooos and awws over an orca next to their boat. This is how close we got to the whales.

Look Whale!

The whale watching tour was definitely a huge highlight of my entire trip. Our whale watching tour guide was a great guy. He was Canadian and would launch our zodiak over huge waves making me bounce out of my seat. Oh it was great! He had his commentary too, explaining the blah blah blah of blah blah about everything whale. I especially liked the speaker that he turned on so we could hear the orcas clicking away, eh.

Once the whale watching tour was finished my mom and I picked up a few Canadian shirts and then boarded the ferry back to Port Angeles.

Coming up in Puget Sound Vacation Vol. IV, Sea Kayaking and going to the Pacific Ocean!

The First Night

The sun sets on Mt. Rainier our first night at Martha’s Cabin. I remember watching the colors dancing across the sky.

Sea Shells

The next morning the tide was out. This is the best time to beach comb and both my mom and I were out collecting sea shells.

A boat is stranded in the sand by the outgoing tide.

Look at all the sand dollars!

This is my favorite photo. Look at all the colors in the water. These are all living sand dollars. They turn white when they die. Sand dollars are very interesting. They have little tiny hairs that trap food particles and slowly move them towards their mouths in the center.

My sandal leaves an impression in the sand. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

We set out our findings on the picnic table to dry. Does anyone want any sand dollars? I’m currently a millionaire with all of them. My mom and I both enjoyed collecting sea shells nearly everyday. Every crevice of my car was stuffed with sea shells when we made the journey back home.

The next day we head to Canada, in Puget Sound Vacation Vol. III