Shi Shi Beach

Happy Thanksgiving!! I hope everybody had a wonderful time with family and friends and stuffed their faces full of food, I know I did. However, this was my first Thanksgiving sans family, but I still had a great time at Kylan's place. They were so nice to invite me, and I surely got my share of the feast. Fitting for a farm experience they put me right to work peeling apples and making the cranberry sauce.

I also brought along some homemade Bailey's Irish Cream, and it was a big hit. All night people were asking me how I made it, so I'll extend the recipe here:

1 3/4 c. Irish whiskey
1 can Eagle condensed milk
1 c. whipping cream
4 beaten eggs
2 tbsp. chocolate syrup
2 tbsp. instant coffee
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract

And of course, you have to double everything to make twice as much!! You get the satisfaction of making it yourself and save about 30 bucks in the process (assuming you already have the almond and vanilla extract because holy crap those cost a lot).

Anyway, I'll have some pictures of that up next week... I'm still waiting on the pics that Kylan's mom took.

In the meantime, I went on a day hike with my buddy Luke this weekend to Shi Shi Beach, a true wilderness coast.

Shi Shi was one of the last additions to Olympic National Park, being annexed in 1976. Up until the late 90s the trail granting access to the coast was closed because of land disputes with developers and abutting land owners. Finally a settlement was reached and things got spruced up a bit.

Just north of the park is the Makah reservation, on which the natives (in a very loose sense) developed a very well constructed trail that includes cedar-planked boardwalks and bridges that lead to the coast.

Along the way is a forest of Sitka spruces that are constantly nurtured by the dampness of rain and fog. The day we went there was a light drizzle and a temp hovering around 45... not too shabby for a walk to the beach around here.

Somebody is very excited about the new law that takes effect in February of 2010. It repeals the Reagan-era restrictions of firearms in national parks. You still can't hunt, though.

Stumbling down the steep path to the coast you come upon this incredible seaside campground, complete with firepit.

Ah the salty air! Right as we hit the sand the rain let up and it just hit low tide.

There are kelp forests just off the coast that lie in the depths of the cold, nutrient-rich water. Sea otters lover to play around in them... this isn't the season for seeing them, though, I don't think.

Water runs from up in the forest down to little estuaries entering the Pacific. It looks really neat because the water erodes the wet sand and forms a miniature river gully.

Our destination was 2 miles down, the Point of Arches... a mile-long cavalcade of sea stacks and natural arches. You really wouldn't want to get stuck out here during high tide, unless you enjoy huddling in a cave with freezing sea waves beating into you.

I caught this thing scurrying around... have no idea what it is.

Me...

...and Luke.

And this is what I have to come back to...

Off to the Sol Duc

This week my crew and I are off to the Sol Duc river valley. The Sol Duc River is one of the few in the area that isn't dammed. For any type of environmentalist that's a plus, and for salmon it's a lifeline. We're renovating a "comfort station" at the campground all the way up the road in to the park, something like 12 miles deep.

Halfway up we decided to stop and wonder at the Salmon Cascades, a series of small waterfalls where the quintessential salmon pose takes place... of a fish jumping out of the water with all its might in order to spawn in the quiet pools miles above where it was born, and where it will die.

The pictures don't really do it justice, considering that spawning is over and there aren't any fish to see, not to mention I couldn't get a decent wide angle shot of the water body's entirety. In the same vein, the rapids don't look all that peculiar. But when seen in contrast to the stately evergreens sitting ashore, its a remarkable atmosphere.

Even still, I tried to capture the force, relentlessness, and length of the rapids, as well as some of the lush corridor that surrounds them. At least it sounds good, right? I'm still an amateur you know...

We've had a couple intense wind storms during the last week that wreaked havoc in the interior of the park. The shell of a once dominating tree reveals the brutality of it all.

Often the entire tree is uprooted, leaving what's called a "rootwad". Ya see, there is so much precipitation around here, especially on the west side of the park, that the ground becomes incredibly saturated. The trees, under their own weight, begin to sway back and forth in the mushy ground, and its only a matter of time before they're headed for the dirt.

It's something like... say... when at the beach, near the shore, you dig your legs into some damp sand... try as you may to completely surround them with sand (because we all enjoy the snugness), each slight back and forth motion creates the tiniest of crevices on each side, that grow bigger the more you move. That's kind of what its like for the tree and the base of its trunk... it craves the hug of the soil, but that sucker's comin' down.

Another blurry shot, agck! Anyway, I was trying to give you an idea of just how full of plant life the forest is. There is moss or lichens or ferns covering everything. An ecologist might say that the biomass is extremely great. Eh? Eh?

So here's something else that an ecologist might say about this place by just looking at the picture above: the biodiversity in this river would probably be very high. The reason? It is a commonly accepted ecological theory that there is a positive, and significant, relationship between environmental complexity and species diversity.

Examining the picture above, there is an incredible amount of complexity: the log sticking out into the current... the rapids... the rocks along the shore... the boulder sitting smack dab in the middle of the stream... the carpet of moss to the right...

Every one of these unique situations creates a specific biological niche that could be the bee's knees to one species, but slummin' it for others.

These are pictures of the campground we are working at. It's very nice, and situates you right next to the river.

On a side note, I'll be spending Thanksgiving with my friend Kylan's family. They live on a farm about 20 minutes outside of PA. I'll crash at his place, and we plan on waking up the next morning to go fishing... apparently there are straggler salmon runs afoot!!

Confused?...

...as to why this post is going to be so boring? Well, let me break it down for you sports fans: until December 11th I'm without a car. Without a car I can't drive to any place picture worthy.

Why don't you ask your friends to take trips in their cars, you might ask. Unfortunately, I hate being "that guy". The guy who asks for rides, I mean. Nobody likes that guy. So until somebody comes up to me and says, "hey, Colin, wanna go somewhere fun so you can take pictures for your blog?", I'll have to wait until the 11th.

With some motivation I might hoof it somewhere around here... but the closest trail is something like 2-3 miles away along a major road, so it would take a real kick in the pants... but we'll see.

I was given some suggestions by family and friends as to what I could write in the meantime. Ideas included:

** Character profiles of fellow co-workers (how creepy is that?)

** Restaurant reviews (when I told my mom that I wouldn't want to eat alone (my other crew members like to save money), she said to bring my laptop.......... right...)

** A highlight of Port Angeles' primary crop (seriously?)

So with nothing else in mind, I thought I'd update you on my daily life!

The seafood in Port Angeles is stellar, especially the salmon... so sometimes I like to pick up a fillet at the grocery store and grill it up with some wild rice.

At the grocery store I found these lovely miniature pumpkins and gourds... so I bought them to spice up the place. They go well with my La-Z-Boy, lawn chair, non-existent kitchen table, and bare walls.

With so much free time (4 day work weeks), I've tried my hand at baking. I decided my first attempt would be with an apple pie... and I wasn't about to cheap out on the crust, so I made it myself.

And I'm not sure why the pictures are so blurry, so don't ask.

This particular recipe called for a crumbly top.

(courtesy of Fox Network)

At work, I won a rock-paper-scissors tournament to be with one other person to help out one of the park electricians to wire the new shop they just constructed by Lake Crescent. Below is a picture of an identical looking setup as the ones we are fitting...

(courtesy of ask-the-electrician.com)

The cool part about the whole thing is that the electrician, Robert, tells us what to do, and then just let's us (my buddy, John, and I) loose. He comes in and out, checking to make sure that we don't really screw things up, but he has let us do all the work. As he explained to us, he could have done the job in a day, and if he were on a bid, he would have. But we can take our time, because the park is paying him (and us) the same, no matter how long the job takes.

So we drilled holes through all the studs with a massive and über-powerful drill, and then ran the wire to the outlets back to the circuit breaker. Robert also explained to us all about how it worked, and said that if we show that we understand the system, than he'll give us more responsibility.

What I've learned is that the power company sends 120 volts (measure of electromagnetic force) to your house. Each circuit you install can carry an individual current of 120 volts, at a strength of a certain number of amperes, depending on the wire. Typical home-wires are either 12-2 or 14-2 gauge, with a capacity for 20 and 15 amps, respectively.

To figure out the maximum wattage that produces, you multiply volts times amps. So, for a 120 volt circuit using a 12 gauge wire, the maximum load is 2,400 watts (120 volts times 20 amps).

So you might ask, would one outlet in a bathroom be enough to provide power for a hair press and a pair of hair clippers without overloading the circuit? Well... if your hair press uses 1000 watts, and your clippers use 500 watts, you would be using 1,500 watts if you used them at the same time -- well under the power capacity for that circuit.

Larger appliances use a lot more power, and so you might use a 12-3 gauge wire... one that carries one additional hot wire hauling 2,400 additional watts, resulting in a 4,800 watt circuit capacity.

Bored yet?