No Annual Eagles Salmon BBQ This Year – :( – Anacortes, Washington

Mary is no longer available for RV traveling, but we remain good friends.
Because we have 4,000+ postings, I’ve invited her to continue posting entries on this blog.

I’m currently in my 21st year of full-time RVing and my lifestyle is changing, For more info click Here

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The motorhome is parked at Thousand Trails RV Resort in La Connor, Washington. I’ll depart here August 30th. I’ve been here a number of times in past years.

 

I’ll be hanging out in this general area until about the beginning of October, taking maximum advantage of my Thousand Trails membership and very agreeable weather.

 

(Note: I’m currently a little discombobulated right now. My normal mode is to blog what I experienced yesterday. Right now, I’m a number of blogs behind my experiences. I expect to be back in my normal mode in about a month.)

 

 

Today’s subject…

 

It’s the third weekend of August and USUALLY that means it’s time for the annual Eagles Salmon BBQ in Anacortes, Washington. But, not this year!  😦

 

I’ve attended this event a number of times in past years and every year look forward to this wonderful culinary treat! Sadly, this year a sign on the wall is indicating due to the unusual high price of salmon this year, the event was cancelled. Locals tell me this year has been a very poor salmon season. So, instead of enjoying the delicious salmon BBQ this year, I can only fondly remember last year and hope it will return next year.

 

To read last year’s posting of this event, click this link…

http://wp.me/pDCku-cr6

 

If you didn’t bother to click the link to see last year’s event, the below two photos show what I’m missing this weekend…

 

 

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed the photos!

Yesterday was sunny and 88 degrees. Forecast for today is sunny and 86 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of Washington. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

My current travel rig is a 2006 Fleetwood 26′ Class A Motorhome and a towed 1986 Ford Bronco II, Eddie Bauer Model. This photo was taken in the desert at Slab City near Niland, California…

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

There are more than 700 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://get.google.com/albumarchive/110455945462646142273?source=pwa

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

All original works copyrighted – Jim Jaillet 2016

Swinomish Indian Tribe Salmon Harvest – La Conner, Washington

The motorhome is parked the Thousand Trails RV Resort located in La Conner, Washington. I’ve been here several times in past years. My membership allows a maximum of a three-week stay, out for one-week and then you can return to the first park. My departure date is September 2nd.

I’m just hanging out taking maximum advantage of my Thousand Trails membership and very agreeable weather.

Mary’s personal to-do list plate, which can only be handled by herself, continues to over-flow. Recently we acknowledged that her meeting up with me in September, just is not going to happen.   😦

I’ll next likely see her when I arrive at her home in November. A friend recently expressed a concern about the status of our relationship. Not to worry…it continues to function per our original agreement when we met in October, 2008. That is…I remain on the road and she will join me when her other life allows. We talk every day on the phone…sometimes more than once. It’s just the way life is!

In my 16 years acquaintance with this Thousand Trails RV Resort…I’ve managed to see the Swinomish Indian salmon harvest about five times. It does not occur every year. The resort is located on leased land from the Swinomish Indian Tribe. So far not his year.

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

 

 

This Google Earth image shows the area location…X marking the resort location…

 

 

In this image TT marks my camping site, 2 is the harvest location and 1 where I stood taking the below video. The large raft looking thing on the upper left is the salmon farm…

 

 

This is the view of the area about 50 feet from my motorhome. The harvest happens on the beach just to the right of the shack…

 

 

This the view from atop a small knoll on the beach. My campsite is in the trees, at this angle right behind the small shack in the center…

 

 

I took the following photos in 2011 when Mary was here with me…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the net is in on the shore..they throw the salmon into big bins to be hauled away by a truck. Here’s a short video showing the flying fish…watch the person on the far left taking pictures…that’s Mary getting in close to the action…

 

If the video does not work…click this link..

http://youtu.be/GO6SMVZl-Mk

 

While this is a one day event, not every year activity…it is a full day activity and they had four large bins on a truck ready to be hauled away.

In past years for $5, I went back to the motorhome with a live salmon that made a fine evening meal!

This photo is from the top of Mount Erie on Fidalgo Island, five miles to the northwest. At 1,273 feet it’s the highest elevation in the area…

 

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE PHOTOS AND VIDEO.

Yesterday was a mostly sunny and 69 degrees. Forecast for today is mostly sunny and 78 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of Washington. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

There are more than 600 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://picasaweb.google.com/jimjrver

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2015

Eagles Club BBQ Fundraiser – Anacortes, Washington

The motorhome is parked the Thousand Trails RV Resort located in La Conner, Washington. I’ve been here several times in past years. My membership allows a maximum of a three-week stay, out for one-week and then you can return to the first park. My departure date is September 2nd.

I’m just hanging out taking maximum advantage of my Thousand Trails membership and very agreeable weather.

Mary’s personal to-do list plate, which can only be handled by herself, continues to over-flow. Recently we acknowledged that her meeting up with me in September, just is not going to happen.   😦

I’ll next likely see her when I arrive at her home in November. A friend recently expressed a concern about the status of our relationship. Not to worry…it continues to function per our original agreement when we met in October, 2008. That is…I remain on the road and she will join me when her other life allows. We talk every day on the phone…sometimes more than once. It’s just the way life is!

It’s the third weekend in August and that means it’s time for the annual BBQ fundraiser in Anacortes, Washington…only 12 miles from the campground. Here are some photos I took in 2014 when Mary was with me. Yesterday I went alone, but the salmon was just as good as the several times that I’ve attended this function in past years…

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were substantially more folks yesterday than shown in lats year’s photos.

The Eagles Club has been there since 1923. The people here are very friendly. This is my favorite hangout place when in this area.

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE PHOTOS.

Yesterday was a mostly sunny and 68 degrees. Forecast for today is mostly sunny and 74 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of Washington. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

 

 

 

 

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

 

 

 

 

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

There are more than 600 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://picasaweb.google.com/jimjrver

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2015

WESTPORT HARBOR, PART ONE.

Westport Harbor has a marine Museum located in the former Coast Guard Station, an appropriate transition.

It is on a board, how can you get a notion of the size of a 126.5 lb salmon. Having just carved up a 5.25 lb salmon that has thus far provided Jim and I with three meals and three left to go in the freezer, I had to think seriously about this big fellow. It was 53 inches long and had a waist line of 42 inches. Now that puts it as tall as a 10 year old boy with the stomach of a pregnant woman. Yup! On a board. There is pictures of other giants on the wall at 57 pounds and down. I now look at them as food. No wonder the Indians of the Northwest were so healthy and prolific.

I try to find something that I’ve never seen before in a museum. Certainly the salmon qualifies and so does this dairy. Instead of a milk delivery from door to door, the milk was delivered to a tree. Now that is novel.

One building on the Coast Guard complex was devoted to the fresnel lens from Destruction Island Light House. Ive seen many lenses but never so beautifully displayed. The docent imparted a bit of trivia, telling me that the state with the most lighthouses is Michigan. Since I lived there for 13 years, why did I not know this?

This building held skeletons of whales, the Minke, and other whales are endangered because Japanese hunters refuse to obey the hunting ban.  The length of the building, the long part of the L shape, is 100 feet. A blue whale, the largest living mammal on earth,  would take up the entire building. What interested me about this exhibit is signs on the building, Clam Chowder, $5 a bowl. A hotdog and a soda, $4. It went on to compare fish foods to junk foods and gave me another perspective on the relatively cheap food we have in America, healthy as opposed to unhealthy.

It was about lunch time and we zapped over to Bennett’s Fish Shack, which came highly recommended and we weren’t disappointed.

Clam chowder and crab cakes. The docent at the museum told us Dungeness crab tastes better than king crab. I have to agree.

On the street we met little dog, Mikey. Who could resist a pose like that. I know he was just begging me to take him home. If I ever get another dog, I’ll chose a little one.

After lunch, we walked in one of Washington State’s “heavy mists” along the harbor. It turns out that Westport is the most western point in the U.S. mainland coast. It also has the highest lighthouse on the West Coast, now open to tourists. We didn’t get there. But we had a great time photographing the largest Marina on the outer coast of the Pacific Northwest.  I stopped and gabbed with this fisherman and a couple of others. No luck. They all complained they’d seen few salmon in the water but this guy said, in a couple of weeks, there will be thousands of them in the harbor. People here love to fish.

Suddenly, on float #8 (I think it was 8) we saw some excited activity, a plastic bag full of red meat salmon on the float. (Click to enlarge this photo, then back arrow to the blog.)

A fishing boat had come in and this dude on the right was filleting them for the guys to take home.

I asked him how many fish he’s cleaned and whether the people on the boat had any fun, like a little wine, some music, maybe a dance or…? He looked at me and said, …”fishing is fun, that’s what we do.” He said he’d probably cleaned a million fish.

These two silvers were on the boat walk and the fisherman was waiting in line to have them fileted.

He was only too glad to hoist them up for us to take a picture. He got the pin for the  day’s catch, “I caught the big ‘un on the Tequila. ” He hadn’t had them weighed yet. All hands estimated the big one to be 14 pounds. The captains know where the fish are and everyone got their limit which is two salmon, plus whatever else they are allowed.

This guy was tagging heads. He knows how many boats go out each day. They are all licensed. They told him they had to throw back a silver which he records on his chart. He tells what boat these fish came from, the total catch, and a number of other statistics. He knows where they were raised, from what hatchery and the statistics give him an idea how many are still out there and when to close the season to allow for spawning. Fishing is tightly controlled to make sure enough survive and keep the fish numbers sustainable.

We walked the floats and took pictures around the harbor. This is Jim’s favorite nickname for me.

The marina is a fascinating place with small, individual boats like this one.

To huge net trawlers like this one.

We see very little color in this gray atmosphere.

As we drew nearer the commercial floats, pens of fingerlings have been planted here. This gull somehow got under the net and then could not get out. We watched her try and try to get out. I know some birds mate for life, maybe gulls do to because the brownish gull kept returning to her and watching helplessly by while she struggled. It was sad to watch.

A heron stayed hopefully by the fingerling beds for a long time.

In two weeks, maybe the whole fishing fleet will be after the salmon. A poor fish doesn’t have a chance. I think there were 15 floats with boats tied to each side.

We found fresh air, wonderful people, fish and beauty. But, I’m not finished. More tomorrow. We move 100 miles south today to Seaside.

A RAINY DAY AT FORT WORDEN STATE PARK

Fort Worden has two campgrounds and we chose the beach area. These trees were silhouetted against a cloudy sky.

It is easy to see which way the wind blows. Rain was in the forecast. We set up camp and decided to walk to the two science museums on the grounds.

On the way, we stopped at this little free library.  We just turned in bags of books at our last campground, so I had none to trade. We continued to the science museums and both were closed. They begin their winter hours after Labor Day. We got caught in the rain and had to run for the motorhome. Our wet clothes were set to dry while we had dinner.

The storm lasted about an hour and we took the opportunity to walk the beach. A distant light house beckoned. In places we had to climb over rocks to escape the incoming tide.

We talked to two women from Pullman, WA. who were gathering beach shells and glass in the surf. We peeked into their buckets and admired their pretties.  They wore simple sweatshirts during weather I found brutally cold with wind enough to knock you over.  I met a fellow from my part of Michigan who wore a simple long-sleeved shirt and remarked at how nice the weather is here. I told him I’d never leave California for Michigan despite my roots.

After we’d passed them, one woman came back and offered to share some of her beach glass with me. Wasn’t that sweet? I declined since we have jars of beach stones and glass from other beaches we’ve visited, particularly the Glass Beach in California that was once a dump.

Besides, the beach was strewn with rocks and and shells at the tide line.

Close to the lighthouse, someone spent time balancing rocks called cairns. Most make it five stones high. Some go six and seven.

I put together a seven, then the rock toppled and I couldn’t retrieve it, so I settled for a six.

The lighthouse was built in 1913, one hundred one years old. So important in their time. No visitors.

Past the lighthouse, we got up on the breakwater and walked.

Driftwood, sometimes whole trees, enough to build a house

It ages so beautifully.

We watched six fishermen with fly rods where the breakwater began to peter out.

We met an honest fisherman. He said he is going for fish and chips at a local restaurant.

Wives waiting on the beach with their blue-eyed Australian Shepherd. They said the salmon season is just starting and only a certain kind of salmon can be taken. They were unsure, but think that if it is a king salmon, they have to throw it back. They can take silvers.

We returned to the motor home just before the second storm hit. It rocked the motorhome, threatened to tear off the vents and our closed awning, and blew and rattled everything that moved along with heavy rains. I stowed our ground rug under the motorhome because the wind was folding it and moving it from its appointed spot. We have yet to check and see if we still have a rug.

 

 

Not This Year…

The motorhome is parked at Thousand Trails RV Resort at La Conner, Washington where I recently spent three weeks. We’ll depart from here later this morning.

I’ve been coming here for 15 years and in the past have enjoyed two things that I didn’t get to see this year. There’s a tall lone tree at the end of the point. In 2009 I got to see an eagle perched atop of it…

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

Not this year…

Every 2-3 years the Swinomish Indian Tribe harvest the salmon from Skagit Bay. Not this year. To see a video I took of the harvest in 2009, click this link…
http://youtu.be/GO6SMVZl-Mk?list=UUbRtWVpQqT4m5_D2vdgCj_Q

Other items as we depart La Conner…

The other evening I looked out from my seat at the dinette and saw the sun setting through the tree leaves. Here are the photos…

Last Sunday Mary and I walked around La Conner. Here are three photos…

I’m already looking forward to our return to this area next year. In the meantime there are lots of other things to see and do!

Recently I had a telephone conversation with the VA Hospital at Palo Alto California regarding my cataract surgery. Pre-operation examination and consultation is set for September 29th…surgery on October 9th.

Yesterday was a sunny at 70 degrees. Forecast for today is sunny and 77 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows our approximate location in the State of Washington. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

There are more than 500 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://picasaweb.google.com/jimjrver

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2014