Padilla Bay

This past week my crew, along with around 10 others from Washington, met up in Padilla Bay to learn a little bit more about the Americorps program and receive extremely basic wilderness first aid training. We left on Sunday evening, and arrived at a luxurious Holiday Inn Express a couple hours and short ferry ride later. Sleeping 2 in a room, I was lucky not to get stuck with a snorer.

See how far we traveled?

Early the next morning we rode to some conference center to meet up with everybody else. Both Monday and Tuesday were long days of sitting and listening, but all in all I left with some solid information. From my page of doodles and notes...

** A piece of legislation signed in by Comrade Obama will expand the Americorps program from 75,000 annual volunteers to around 350,000 in the coming years

** The general life cycle of the Pacific Northwest salmon is as follows: they are born in freshwater (river or lake) and feed off of insect larvae and the like... then they migrate to the ocean where they just eat and eat and eat (all the different types of salmon are silver at this point, so they are very hard to distinguish)... after a couple of years, give or take depending on the type, they return to the fresh water body they were born in to start spawning... at this point the males grow a hump on their back, somehow wind up with a hooked nose, and both genders take on their better known and much more fashionable hue and pattern... finally, the salmon bite the dust and decompose, giving off their vital nutrients, most importantly nitrogen.

** If you come up on somebody who looks hurt, make sure the scene is safe to approach, get their permission to help out, and then start with the ABCs. Airway. Breathing. Circulation. You now know about as much as I do about wilderness first aid.

** Don't conventionally or sexually harass anybody, or you will be fired.

A tsunami of incredible but non-fatal force crashed just outside this building. Crazy enough, all the untrained people who just happened to learn a little something about crisis management and checking/maintaining lifelines were safe inside, and sprang in to action to help care for the highly trained individuals rendered helpless and stuck outside.

Everybody is really in to Frisbee and hackey sack... but you already knew that, didn't you?

A look inside the classroom.

For food, we get 10 dollars each per meal to spend at Safeway. Everybody is really in to healthy, organic foods here... but you already knew that, didn't you?

I think, but am not positive, that those are the Cascades in the background. I dunno, the car was moving, I had to be quick with the camera... it all happened so fast.

This bridge that we're crossing is called Deception Pass.

Port Townsend. Apparently a very hip, artsy town with a younger crowd than Port Angeles. I'll be the judge of that.

Cheeky birds, aren't they?

After throwing my camera in to the sea and capturing this perfectly centered and focused shot, I retrieved it with a fishing line. A look at the mountains... nay, my mountains... the Olympic Range.