Camping the Key Peninsula 2015

We went camping!  It was great! Before you ask how Lucy did, let me assure you: she did great -- at home with Nana!  We wanted to get away together one more time this summer, and it turned out that Lucy was recovering from a pretty icky virus, so she and Nana stayed at the condo and snuggled and slept and swam, and generally had a great time.  

Isaac and I went to Penrose Point out on the Key Peninsula, south of Gig Harbor.  It was hot, but quiet and beautiful!  

Our accommodations

Our campground was filled with so many cool trees! 

We were able to talk, laugh, play lots of games, dream, and just generally enjoy one another without interruption.

Kicking my butt at Farkle! 

And losing spectacularly at Golf! 

We bought a crabbing license, borrowed some gear, and improvised the rest, and did some crabbing!  Sadly, we weren't able to toss the trap deep enough, so we didn't catch any legal crabs.  We did catch dozens of juveniles, though, about 4 inches side to side.  It was really fun and we really look forward to crabbing some more before our license runs out (especially now that we know what all we actually need).

He's a stud!  

Improvising a bait hook.

Almost big enough to eat!

I did the meal planning and Isaac did the cooking.  I got to sit back, relax, sip hot coffee or soda depending on the time of day, and watch this handsome guy cook up a storm! 

We did lots of walking along the beaches, some kayaking, and wading.  We found so many cool creatures: the most anemones ever, the most sand dollars ever, etc.  It was epic!  Seriously, it was like levels of a video game.  Isaac even named them all... I wish we'd gotten pictures of all of them. 

Hey mom, remember the time you made us all search for two identically sized sand dollars so you could make earrings? Well, I found you some!  Unfortunately, they didn't survive the trip home or you'd be getting some new jewelry soon! ;) 

Pretty sure we were the only ones to enjoy this log before the rangers came and stole it away. 

Poor little guy only had half his limbs. He's a fighter, though! 

Huge jellyfish

First Getaway without Lucy!

We got away! We got awaaaaay!  We finally (I finally) worked up the courage to leave my baby in my sister's capable hands and we got away for two whole nights!  Lucy had a great time at Camp Coury Cousins. 

Isaac's parents have WorldMark timeshares, and they were able to get us two nights at a condo in Birch Bay.  It's a beautiful area, right across the street from the water.  We went for long walks on the beach and in the water, which was bathwater warm! We were able to walk out hundreds of yards and were only in knee-deep water, it was crazy!  It was just the recharge we needed to spend two days together to talk, to laugh, to dream, to play games...just to date each other without interruptions! 

I love this guy! 

Giddy to be carefree! 

Skipping rocks in the tide pools

Wading out -- way out! 

We chased herons and we got pretty close! 

We found thousands of hermit crabs!

Isaac's title for this:
"Plating"

Isaac's first ever lobster dinner!
The verdict: delicious, but not much meat!

 While Isaac was seeing how far out he could walk, I saw a clam squirt and decided to see if I could dig it up. This is how Isaac found me.  I ultimately caught him: a "big one" maybe two inches across. As I'm calling to Isaac to come see, he's calling to me to come help him dig up a really big one. He wasn't kidding!  It took two of us, but we did it with our bare hands!

Our first couple of attempts were foiled by the tide. It comes in deceptively fast on such a flat beach! 

Curses! Foiled!! 

That is one big clam!

Isaac pulled out this big guy and lo and behold! A CRAB climbed out of the clam! I kid you not! We looked it up and apparently we had found an oyster pea crab, which lives inside the outer muscle of the clam as a parasite. They're super rare.

This poor exhausted clam! We half-buried it back in the tide, but it was too exhausted to dig itself down.  Good thing the tide was coming in so fast!

This is a time-lapse of two minutes or less showing how quickly the tide was coming in and joining up to the nearest tide pool.

Why yes, that IS a bald eagle just sitting on the beach!  I think I was the only one to see if just sitting on the beach and I was trying to get other tourists' attention as I was also trying not to scare it off before I got close enough for a good shot.  I had no idea how enormous a bird it would be -- at least two feet tall sitting there! 

Since we were so close to the border, we hopped over to Vancouver, BC for the day!  We played tourists and went to see White Rock where Psych's outdoor scenes were all filmed. Yes, we are nerds. We do not apologize.  

We tried to go to the Capilano Suspension Bridge, but ended up just touring the city and some of the beautiful woods and parks around the area.  Okay, we made it to the parking lot, paid for said parking, then realized it was $37 per person to get in and go across the bridge.  $37 to be "I hope I don't pee my pants" scared crossing a ridiculously tall, swaying bridge? No thank you! I was okay with it when it was free... I was not willing to shell out good money for terror!

THE White Rock for which the town is named.
"Hey, take a picture of me touching the rock"

"Hey, I'm going to touch the rock with my tongue"
Me: "And no more kissing today."

Senior Portrait moment at the art installation

For our final night out we found the best Chinese restaurant in Washington.  I am not even exaggerating: the food was amazing!  

We love games, but often we're too tired to play once Lucy is in bed or we forget to get them out of her room before she goes down for the night.  Have you ever played Farkle? It's so easy and very addictive, as you can see from the number of games we played! So much fun! It came down to a FTW match and I won, which softened the blow of being soundly beaten in Trivial Pursuit! 

On our way home we stopped at Whatcom Falls.  For all the time I lived in Bellingham, I'd never made it to the falls.  Isaac grew up going here for church picnics, so it was fun to see where he played as a kid!  It was hard to believe this is right outside downtown in the middle of Bellingham proper! 

On the left is where Isaac (and the other youth) would jump off into the water...at the egging on of his dad, of course! It's a good 15 foot drop at least! 

My kingdom for a trash can in all this nature!