Keystone in May

When we arrived at Keystone we went through our normal set up routine. However, we had no power. Ron was sure he had us plugged in correctly, but went to check that he had switched on the right breaker. Still no power. After a little more checking he noticed that the fuse had come loose from the transformer. We got on the phone to Puget Power and they sent a crew out to check on the problem. Turns out there was a whole in the top of the transformer and water had gotten into it. Now we needed another crew to come and replace the transformer. After several hours of excitement we had power.

On Saturday we had some sunshine so the girls decided to head into the Coupeville Farmers Market. It was a busy place with lots of vendors and lots of shoppers. We also discovered that the town was celebrating the Penn Cove Water Festival. The Victoria Clipper had stopped by, which I don't think it usually does. It must have been a special celebration stop for them.

In town there were more booths with information about the area as well as crafts for sale. We got there just in time to hear this group sing. As we walked up they were talking about the Chetzemoka ferry, which is the new ferry on the Keystone, now called Coupeville, to Port Townsend run. Evidently the Salish ferry will be joining it this summer and then the Chetzemoka will be leaving and a different one will come to Keystone. Oh, the ferry shuffle is on. People have waited a long time for the Chetzemoka ferry to arrive here and I'm sure they are sad to hear that it will be leaving all ready.

This is Russell Morton. He is an advocate for clean water and has been working on a major art piece called Four Season of Water. This is a very time consuming beaded project. He began in January of 2006 and figures he is about half way done. The piece is 5X15 feet, and will use about 3 million beads and 15,000 yards of thread.

This is a close-up showing the area he is working on now. We learned a new campsite recipe while we were in Arizona. The Canadians call it "Bun du jour". First Ron had to make the sticks that we needed for the process. Next you take a Pillsbury "Grand" bun and mold it over the stick. It looks like Jennie is about finished with hers and ready to start cooking. Notice we are still having a little sunshine. We decided to get our outside dinner cooked while we could.A few hot briquettes and we are ready to cook. It's kind of like toasting marshmallows, but you don't want to rush it as the dough has to cook all the way through. Once finished you carefully slide the bun off the stick and begin filling it with goodies. Tonight we had taco fillings and also shrimp fillings. Put in a little of this and a little of that and then mmmmm, they are ready to eat.

Brad is having his dessert "Bun'" We had blueberries, peaches, apples and whipped cream to put in them. I see Bead has a blueberry on top, but I think he actually put a little of all the fruits inside. This turned out to be a fun dinner. We are already talking about different things we could use for the filling. How about a "Breakfast Bun" with bacon and eggs? Yummy!
We were going to go out shrimping, but look what the weather did AGAIN!!! The rain, wind and fog moved in, so we stayed in the RVs. Brad brought his boat, but it only got wet from the rain and not the salt water.
Will and Jennie's trailer in the rain. Where, oh where, is that sunshine?

Chetzemoka

On Saturday we took the ferry and went over to Chimacum to visit the Finnriver Farm and Cidery. Robin had seen it on Evening Magazine and we thought it would be a fun adventure. Besides, this was the last weekend for the Steilacoom II ferry, so it was a great opportunity for one last ride.

Here you can see the Steilacoom II leaving the ferry landing with the Chetzemoka holding back in the fog just waiting to make it's grand entrance for the Christening Celebration. The Coast Guard was very visible to keep the ferry landing safe.

And here is the new Chetzemoka ferry. It is a 64 car ferry that will greatly increase the number of cars that will be able to travel between Keystone and Port Townsend. We camp right near the ferry landing and it always fun watching the ferry traffic.

Governor Gregoire Christened the ferry. She had been told that it is bad luck if you don't break the bottle of champagne, so she really hit it hard against the railing. However, the bottle had a Kevlar bag around it to keep the glass from going everywhere and she hit it so hard that she broke the bag and the glass went flying. We obviously have a powerful little Governor.

It was a rainy and rather cold day, but there was excitement in the air and we had a great time. After the ferry left for it's celebration on the Port Townsend side we went to the Keystone Cafe and got one of their new coffee drinks....... the Chetze - Mocha.

Kite Festival

We headed to Keystone, on Whidbey Island, Friday afternoon. After dinner we went for a walk and look at the sunset we saw! We often have beautiful sunsets there, but we are thinking this was the most amazing one so far. I wish I had a panorama camera, so you could see how the whole sky was lit up.This was the weekend for the Whidbey Island Kite Festival. Sunshine and wind are 2 things that are needed for this event. Well, we had the sun, but the wind was blowing around in circles. Occasionally it would just stop all together, which caused all kinds of problems for the kites. We saw several events just paused in hopes that the wind would pick up again.

This is a team from Canada flying their multi-line kites. Imagine keeping all these strings untangled!

Nate came camping with Brad and Robin for the weekend. They took him to the Kids Kite Making tent and he made a blue kite that he was pretty excited about.
This kite was probably 8 feet across and was beautiful. It was flown at the Mass Ascension that they have each day at 12:30. Anyone who signs up can participate. It's beautiful to see all the kites and colors, but I didn't get a very good picture this year as the wind died down before all the kites got up. :-(

Some of the festival color

From a beautiful Saturday we moved to a very foggy and rainy Sunday with no wind. No colorful flags out today and very few people in attendance. Only about 6 cars in the parking lot. The weather was predicted to clear with some sun by afternoon, so they were hopeful. However, by the time we left it still looked like this. I see one kite up, but it may not have stayed there for long.

We went to Keystone for the Kite Festival, but we had a pretty exciting surprise when the new ferry Chetzemoka pulled in. It was supposed to begin service at the end pf August, but it was having a vibration problem. They still are not sure when it's first trip will be. They were just doing some testing and training on this day. The ferry actually came in and went back out about 6 times, so we had a great time watching it.

The Chetzemoka is quite a bit bigger than the little Pierce County ferry they have been using for this run to Port Townsend.

Labor Day Weekend

We had another wonderful camping outing at Keystone on Whidbey Island. Jennie and Will were with us again, as well as Brad and Robin, and their grandson Nate. Emma and Adrian, Nate's parents, were also able to spend a couple nights in camp. The bad weather held off and we had some beautiful days to be outside.

We did some more Geocaching, which has proven to be quite fun. We have been camping on Whidbey Island for almost 40 years and are finding that there are many places we have not been. It's fun to explore and learn a little more about the history of the area.

This cache took us off the trail and winding through the woods. Definitely no "muggles" (non geocaching people) around this site.

The cache box was filled with goodies. We checked out what was there, but took nothing. We signed the log book and replaced the cache.

Look at this cute little slug. I won't tell you where he is, but he was well hidden as the rock was in front of him. It's once again pretty clever as "slug" was part of the cache name and so appropriate for it's location.Look how the capsule was tucked up inside the slug. It's another tiny little log book.It's always fun to look at the log and see who has been there before us. We began recognizing several names. It's almost as if we were following right behind them.
This is an "earth cache" called an "erratic", because the rock is different from others in the area. It is believed to have traveled here on glacial ice and is one of the more famous glacial field boulders on Whidbey Island. Now, there's a little geology lesson for you.This was a pretty easy cache to find as we could see it before we even got out of the car. Some are like that, which is good. Sometimes the caches require a long hike to find, or just lots of time to look, and we occasionally like an easy one to keep us motivated. It's also nice to have some of these easy ones for families with young children. They need to be able to find the cache quickly before the little ones loose interest.We discovered a new beach that we had never been to before. As you can see my "caching party" was down on their hands and knees looking for this one. We spent a great deal of time and never did find it. Later that night I was logging my finds and saw that this one had been crossed off the list. That told me there was something wrong with it. The next day as I was looking at the caches log I saw that the owner had posted that the cache had been taken. Evidently it happens every year about this time as the beach is being cleaned up. The owner said they will replace the cache ASAP.This cache took us for a walk along another beach we have never visited. Here we found a mailbox with boards attached that had been painted camouflage. It was a great find, well, almost a great find.We had a clue which was suppose to let us open the lock on the mailbox. However, we couldn't get it open. As we read the logs that others had written we found that we were not the only ones that could not open the lock. Maybe it just needs some WD 40. We could tell there was something in the box, but couldn't get to it. We weren't able to sign the log, so may have to visit this site again.Brad and Nate put a bird house together and Nate is giving it a coat of paint to make it beautiful for the birds.
We enjoy visiting the Farmer's Markets. This time we went to Coupeville, but were busy with other things, so didn't get to Langley or Greenbank.We always enjoy watching the cruise ships come by around dinner time. We usually see 3. When you consider these ships leave almost every day of the week, and how many people are on them, it's amazing how many people are leaving Seattle to go on a cruise.This is the Holland American ship Amsterdam. I have been on this ship when we went to see my cousin Karen in Vancouver, Canada. She was just beginning her 67 day cruise of the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand. The ship docked in Vancouver for a day and we were able to spend some time with her. That was pretty fun for us. I'm sure I blogged the adventure, so you may remember reading about it already.We brought back some of the HUGE marshmallows from Mexico. Some were pink and some were white. We haven't always had nice enough weather for a fire, but this time we did. Ah, somemores with lots of marshmallow! I'm sorry to tell you it didn't work out very well. The marshmallows didn't roast very well and they didn't even taste very good. Lots of disappointment, but we had a good laugh. They did roast "peeps" though they were pretty good. Guess we'll have to remember to buy some of those for another time. While sitting around the campfire we played the nail game. We use a small hammer and each person gets a turn to hit the nail just once as the hammer goes around the circle. The first person to get the nail pounded ALL the way in is the winner. Nate got to use the bigger hammer and occasionally took more than one hit, though he reminded the rest of us that we got "only one hit".A glass of wine before the game begins.

Hmmm, empty glasses and no nails. This must mean the game is over and the fun evening has come to an end.

Keystone

We spent several days at Keystone with Jennie and Will. We were busy the whole time either riding bikes, geocaching, riding the ferry to Port Townsend, or walking the beach.

We had beautiful weather for our walks on the beach while we looked for agates.Jennie and WillThe Keysone/Port Townsend ferry.

And here we are again with Jennie finding the most agates. She always comes back with a handful, while the rest of us have a couple or maybe even zero.

While at Keystone we decided to check out a few more Geocaches. There are many in this area and we seem to be discovering more all the time.

Hmmm, how many people does it take to find a cache? Apparently as many as possible. We all have a GPS and it's usually a group effort to find the exact location. I have found several on my own, but it's fun to make it a family event.

Here's a traditional cache. If I like one of the treasures I can take it as long as I leave something of equal or greater value. We usually don't take anything, but occasionally leave something.

We always sign the Log Book once we find a cache. It's fun to see how many people have been there or if someone was there just before us.

This one was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

I looked at each cork very carefully and finally found it. This is a micro cache. The little lid unscrews and there is a very tiny roll of paper inside to log our visit on.

Some caches are in the strangest spots. I could never have reached this one, which is a little odd.

Ron looks like he is about done looking for this cache. We knew our coordinates were right, but we just couldn't find it. Finally Will got down on his knees and looked under the bridge...

and this is what he found. The name of this cache is "A Decent Proposal" and there is lots of bling attached to it. Some people are so clever.

One of the great things about searching for caches is that you get to learn a little about local history. This was one such cache. If you are not a geocacher, you would have no idea that there is something hiding inside this log house.

This was our most adventuresome hunt. We are parked way down by the water, so it was quite a hike to our destination. We actually found 2 caches on this trail.Jennie is looking at the first cache we found. It had lots of treasures, but we did not take any. We did sign the log book.We had to follow this trail to the next cache which was about a mile along the bluff. I did not like it very much. You had to be part mountain goat to walk this trail. However, I seemed to be the only one complaining and there were lots of people on the trail. Not to mention the person that put the cache at the end of the trail and who has to keep It maintained. I certainly don't want to go there again, but I am not real thrilled about heights either. These last few pictures are of the beautiful Coupeville area.

I better let you know that I borrowed this picture from Jennie. She is having fun taking pictures and learning how to use all the features on her new camera.