| First in spring came the sapsucker drumming on our downspout. Seen (and heard) from inside: |
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| And then from outside. These hardly do justice to how loud it sounded when we heard it, but you can always turn up your speaker volume: |
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| Next came the peregrine. He stayed from late spring to fall. Here he is having lunch in one of our trees |
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| As for our foray into logging: A large limb cracked off of a grand fir just north of the house. Luckily it fell northward, away from the house. It fell half on the bank, with its upper half cracking off on the bank edge and falling to the shore below. We were left with the the task of cutting out the fallen section on the bank. |
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| As I promised in the Christmas letter, here's John's narration of the event: |
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| In order to work safely on the last bit, closest to the edge of the cliff, we used rigging to pull it away from the edge of the bank. |
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| But that's not the only tree. Here's another. |
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| There are a few pictures from our January ski trip; First, Ruth and son John C. |
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| Then a goood picture of John and one of Ruth. |
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| When summer was upon us, we entertained family. We went for boat rides; Leah drove the boat. We hiked the beach on the growing Elwha River delta, where Ted found a stick too big even for him to carry. With Colby, John C., and Justin we hiked out Dungeness Spit. |
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Boating with the boys near Dungeness Spit we came upon an Orca pod. A flotilla of whale-watching boats had followed them all the way from the Canadian side. Keeping a respectful distance, we, too, got a few pictures; however our sightings were dominated more by whale-watchers than whales. |
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| After a busy summer at home, our October vacation to Catalina was a welcome change. We backpacked from Avalon across the Island, camping three nights. Once at Blackjack campground at the top of the ridge, and two nights at Little Harbor. Then we hiked back over the mountain to Two Harbors, on the east side. |
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Once in Two Harbors, we kicked back at an historic B&B, Banning House, enjoying a little kayaking and snorkeling before heading back to the mainland. |
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| The Halibut season was short this year, only eight days available for this sport fishery. Still, John brought home a significant catch. |
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| Then there was a trip down the Sol Duc River hunting the mighty spring Chinook with our friend Bill Crockett. |
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| We're happy in our lives and our choices, but just to be honest, there's a bit of a downside (pardon the pun) to living, as we do, at the top of a 150-foot glacial-till bluff. This year we saw a fairly significant piece of that bluff drop, kerplunk, into the intertidal. Fortunately our dwellings are sited well away from this edge, so we don't anticipate danger in our lifetime; but, one never really knows. Two views of the slump, one close in, one from further away for a sense of scale. |
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