Watermen and Bishops

The oystermen on the Chesapeake refer to themselves as watermen.  St. Michaels has a great marine museum chronicling there boats, tools and life style.

The museum has a wonderful collection of restored wooden boats.  They even have a "apprentice for a day" program where individuals can  work with ship wrights learning how to bend wood and make hulls fashioned together with wooden pegs.

Marine Museum

On the road too Black Water Refuge is the oldest church that has been in continuous use since it was build. Definitions are very important.  Everything is the oldest something due to some clever semantics.   I've seen the oldest church, the oldest gothic church, and the oldest church still in use.  Old Trinity Church was built in 1670 and someone has gone to church every Sunday since then.

It is an Episcopal Church now, but when it was built in 1670, it was part of the Church of England.  After the revolutionary war, the Church of England fell into disfavor due to the requirement for clergymen to swear allegiance to the British Monarchy.They reorganized into the Episcopal Church. In it's grave yard are people who served in every war the United States  has ever fought. Does your neighborhood cemetery have a revolutionary war veteran?

 

Old Trinity Church

The best laid plans

often gang aglay.  We left Seattle looking for sun and warmth.  We found the warmth, but landed amidst the remains of a unnamed, but still note worthy tropical storm.  St. Michaels on the water became St. Michaels in the water

but the rain was warm and we're from Seattle.  Our mother's really didn't teach us to come in from the rain.

The tourist section has some great restaurants for dinner

and the usual tacky places to shop

But on the back streets there are some really cute little houses

and some marvelous parks and walking area.  Can you park your sail boat in your community park?

Photos of St. Michaels

Whidbey Island

 

There was a very low tide at Whidbey, but due to a variety of conflicts, Molly and I could only spend one day there.  Vangie came up and joined us.  It was like an episode of animal planet.

When we got up in the morning, three deer were eating apples from the tree in the front yard. I’m not sure what knowledge they gained, but they appeared contented.

We walked out to Baby Island and saw a baby seal that had been born that morning.

 

And of course there was the usual collection  of starfish, eagles, herons and seagulls on the walk out.

 

 

Pictures from walk to Baby Island

Back to Whidbey With Tim

 

Tim got  into town from Arizona with the proper clothing for Washington such as long pants, polar Tec shirts, and sun glasses, just in case we got some sun.  We were joined by Bridget, Jason, Mary, and Adam on Friday night. Joe, Kathy, and Tim headed up on Saturday for a week end of coffee, fire works and sunsets.

There was not a low tide, but there was a little bit of beach

 

and plenty of room on the dock for Joe and Adam to set off the fireworks

See the fireworks

The weather was over cast, but it cleared at night so that we had good sunsets from the dock

 

 

See additional sun set pictures

 

And finally, we headed into Langley to get some Sweet Baby Island Coffee

 

See people wait while Joe gets everyone's coffee

 

We had a good time reading books, eating crab, drinking wine and in general just leading a decadent life. 

Whidbey with Friends

We went to Whidbey Island this week end with our long time friends the Seeks and the Posts.  The goal for the trip was food, wine and relaxation.  We figured six people, two bottles of wine per meal and three meals.  Six bottles of wine ought to do it and so each family brought six bottles of wine.  We may have over achieved.  Our meals consisted mussels, crabs, smoked salmon and pork.  Everyone brought a special recipe, secret ingredients, a lot of work in the kitchen and we expended  a lot of effort not to waste any of it.

And after all of that, if there was any room, and there always seemed to be more room, there were s’mores by the fire.

For relaxation we walked along the beach, sat on the dock, gazed at the ocean and hiked to Baby Island.

Photos of Beach Walks

The water line is narrow moving boundary between where you can find things on dry sand hunkering  down until the sea returns to cover them and squishy things  breathing a sigh of relief as the waters covers them again.  We put on our boots and walked the narrow margin poking at star fish and saying yuk to the moon snails. It would seem that people are more common than beach creatures, because while we stopped, pointed and talked about everything we saw, there was no indication that they were aware of our existence.  

T

Things on dry sand

Things in the sea

With seeing things on land and in the sea, it is only appropriate that we saw things in the sky.  There was disagreement as to whether we were seeing Egrets or Herons but the  Audubon book allowed us all to safe face by stating  that the Egret was a type of Heron.  However, we could all identify the eagles and seagulls and regardless by name, they were all beautiful.

Bird Photos

 

One evening we went down to the water and saw the sky reflected in its smooth surface.  In a place where waves, like tea and oranges, can come all of the way from China to churn the water; the ocean lived up to its name and was truly Pacific.

There was sky above us and sky below until an off shore breeze started stir the water and began to break the reflection in ever widening circles.

Sunset across the water

And as a final treat, we went to Ebbey’s Landing for a hike along the bluffs to check out the wild flowers, the view, and plan our trip into Coupeville for ice cream.  Alas, the smallest cone you could purchase had three scoops, but we chose carefully and with wisdom. 

Photos of Hike

It was a wonderful time with  friends, good food, funny stories and no problems.

Joe’s Birthday

 

Memorial Day was the third week end in a row that we have gone to Whidbey, but this time we were joined by most of the family to celebrate Joe’s birthday. We headed up in the rain and long ferry lines on Friday, skipped a fast food dinner at Ivar’s and met for dinner at the Freeland Cafe.   The dinner was far better than you would have expected by looking at the outside of the cafe.  Looks can be deceiving. We woke up in the morning to fog and 10 foot visibility and so we headed down to the beach to see it in the fog.

It had a nice serenity about it and made for a pleasant stroll along the beach.

Islands in the mist

By noon the rest of the family arrived from the mainland telling stories of short ferry lines, but bringing food.  If the Donner party had the Keefes or Domingos, the story would have been, “the snow fell trapping our wagons in the mountains until spring.  We were down to our last berry pie by the time help arrived.”  It being a low tide, we walked to Baby Island

Photos of walk

telling stories, looking for shells, and watching the crabs and other marine life in the tide pools

photos of beach life

 

And then we went up and ate another great meal, sang happy birthday to Joe, played boggle until the wee hours of the morning and headed back home as the sun was starting to break over the ferry.  It was hard to leave.

 

Joes party

Back to Whidbey

I’m a little behind on my posting.  We went up on May 23 to see the Coupeville Water Festival, but Molly has been filling my life with so much fun, that I haven’t time to post until now.  But it’s not a problem, so nobody has to talk to her about it.

  Coupeville has at least two festivals.  The water festival in May and a Mussel festival in March. If you like eating mussels, I highly recommend the march festival.  But it is may and so we went to the water festival.  We headed up on Friday night and the weather started to clear.  I headed down to the beach to watch the sunset and play with my camera.

More sunset photos

 

On Saturday the weather was clear and we headed into Coupeville.  Coupeville has a lot of charm and a great bakery. If charm doesn’t do it for you, go for the calories.  The houses are painted in Victorian splendor.  The main street is only two blocks long, but there is plenty to do for a morning or afternoon.

Additional photos of Coupeville

There were old cars, food booths, canoe races and lots of craft shops at the festival. But one of the high lights were the Indian dancers.  They were in full regalia. They were not in costume.  Costumes are when you dress up and pretend to be something you are not such as Halloween or your Sunday church clothes.  Regalia are the insignia and privileges you have earned the right to wear.

Given that the dancer’s grand parents were sent to jail for performing traditional ceremonies, they have certainly earned the right to do the dances now.  But they were not bitter and told great stories about their culture.  And if I remember correctly, they were the same tribe that traveled down by canoe and committed the Ebbey massacre about a mile away from Coupeville in the 1850s. I guess dancing with your enemies closes the circle.

Indian Dancers