{"id":57,"date":"2005-08-20T08:34:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-20T14:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stevenheld.com\/blog\/2005\/08\/20\/puget-sound-vacation-vol-iv\/"},"modified":"2005-08-20T08:34:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-20T14:34:00","slug":"puget-sound-vacation-vol-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stevenheld.com\/blog\/puget-sound-vacation-vol-iv\/","title":{"rendered":"Puget Sound Vacation Vol. IV"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/steveheld\/31009258\/\" title=\"Photo Sharing\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/photos22.flickr.com\/31009258_3f465c2511.jpg\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" alt=\"From My Kayak\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;t get a picture of us.  I think they were playing with me.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t a rock at all but a seal.  I quickly pulled out my camera and snapped a picture.  The seal didn&#8217;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.   <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/steveheld\/31040331\/\" title=\"Photo Sharing\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/photos21.flickr.com\/31040331_43d40680a7.jpg\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" alt=\"Tired seal\" align=\"left\"\/><\/a>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.<\/p>\n<p>One of my most favorite memories of going to Martha&#8217;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.  <br \/><center><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/steveheld\/31974762\/\" title=\"Photo Sharing\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/photos22.flickr.com\/31974762_7642e1dae1.jpg\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" alt=\"The Ocean is this big\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Thus ends my Puget Sound Vacation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stevenheld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stevenheld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stevenheld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stevenheld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stevenheld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stevenheld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stevenheld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stevenheld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stevenheld.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}