Goodbeach

We headed up to Whidbey Island for a few days, where Gail’s family has a beachfront house. Arlie, Gail’s grandmother who was actually born in nearby Coupeville, claimed that the Indians referred to this area on Penn Cove as Goodbeach – which describes it nicely. So besides playing on the ‘good’ beach, doing some gardening, we also did some hiking at Fort Ebey State Park and at Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve (which has an excellent map of the area). The kids did a better job of describing the trip than Mom or Dad could, so here is their input:

Here is Emma’s narrative
Here is Caleb’s sonnet
Here is Colin’s picture of one of the battlemounts at Fort Ebey (compare to the actual image here)

There are some more images of the trip at our Photobucket site.

Fort Ebey 4.27.07

Tulips

We did a speed run to Mount Vernon. Here is a snap of one of the fields:

Tulips 4.13.07

Easter 2007

Easter 4.8.07

FOTI & Hiking

I recently read, “The Flight of the Intruder” (FOTI) by Stephen Coonts. This was a great read and I look forward to Neflick’ng the movie (though it is currently #117 in our queue). It is always impacting when a book you are reading refers to places or things that you’re familiar with. In this case a paragraph on page 320 was a déjà vu of sorts.

“Back in the States, Jake Grafton had taken great pleasure in flights like this along training routes over stretches of wilderness where the legal altitude was a minimum of 500 feet above the ground. Being young and full of himself, he often flew as low as his nerves allowed just for the sheer hell of it. In those days, when military planes were still permitted to fly under visual flight rules, he would occasionally return to NAS Whidbey Island over the Cascade Range at 200 or 300 feet above the floor of the craggy valleys, shoot through the passes at full throttle and snake his way down between the cliffs, following the streams until they emptied into rivers that flowed into Puget Sound. He had wondered what the hikers had thought of the man-made eagle that split the solitude with a roar, then disappeared as quickly as it had come. Higher authority had finally stopped the illegal flights. Now he was glad he had had the experience.”

This actually happen to Gail and I. We were hiking with a friend in the Cascades Alpine Lakes area in the Summer of 1987 when a Navy jet came screaming up the valley. We had no idea what it was at first with just the roar of the engine. Since we were in an open area we then saw what we thought was a Navy jet from NAS Whidbey Island. Perhaps we were the hikers referred to here?

More Snow!

Yup, we actually had 1 to 2 inches this morning! And April Fool's day was supposed to be yesterday! Most of it melted before noon anyway.