People rave about this park. One friend said it was her favorite place. We just couldn't get into it. Perhaps it is because we already live in a rural location with a lot of wildlife. Perhaps it was because the water was too cold to swim in. Perhaps because we'd been in similar spots. I don't know. Don't get me wrong, nice place, just not quite our cup o' tea.
We did do some unique things and saw some unique things though! Kelly wanted to go for a walk. One of the nice things about our Gig Harbor dinghy with 7ft oars is it rows really easily. So, I rowed Kelly to a shore, dropped her off on an island and followed her as she walked along the shore. While she explored ashore, I explored the marine life, both our interests served!
So, we saw a raccoon searching for breakfast amongst the rocks exposed by the low tide. It was grabbing rocks nearly its own size with its two hands (paws?), yanking, rolling them over and looking for presumably tasty treats underneath. We watched it for about 10min and saw it munching something several times.
Kelly was then picked up and delivered to the south end of a different island where she walked around to the north end. I rowed around, checking out the sea life. Picked Kelly up on the north end and delivered to the south end of the next island and the process repeated. In all, we saw starfish, minnows, clams, anemone, hermit crabs and snails. Kelly collected a tiny limpet shell!
On the north end of the last island, we saw three 8in squid move into a shallow (2in deep) cut and work the sand, presumably searching for a meal. We watched them for about 5min and while it would have been easy to pick them up and make a meal, we had 200 Von Donop clams waiting aboard!
The rest of the day was just relaxing, no boat projects, no have to dos. Dinner featured the clams. Cleaned and sorted, finding 4 dead, and then steamed them in fresh water, took about 5 minutes with the big gun propane burner. RT and I shucked them and then we made a tomato based clam spaghetti sauce - sauteed onion, garlic, dry Italian herbs with fresh basil. Simple and tasty! Had a pinot negro to go with it.
Afterward: I labeled this one with marine mammals for the raccoon. The October 2015 National Geographic has an article about a new species of wolf ranging on the British Columbia coastal islands. While the wolf does not live in the water, it eats almost exclusively from the water. Perhaps the raccoon is the same....
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