Oceanic Farce or: Walking the Dog

Took the dog on a walk to the "beach" yesterday. I woke up and it was beautiful and sunny. Packed my plastic bag and set out. Weather was beautiful on the drive to the beach. Got out with mutt.

Turns out that when they say 'high tide' they mean it here. It was so high there was no beach to walk on. No matter. We changed course to walk the highway (known to locals as a "trail" - wtf). Ten minutes into our skirting the one lane freeway: it starts to rain. Naturally, this happens what living in a rainforest and all. Eyeing the ominous clouds and recalling there's a huge storm warning I thought it smart to turn back to the car.

I walk back to the trusty ford Taurus sedan with the trick locks that I've been gratefully sporting (courtesy of the dog owners). I get in and all the sudden cars start pulling in beside me. I was the only car in the lot and now there are 5 cars. All parked facing the water. All cooing and looking intently at the waves.

Well crap! what am I missing? i thinks to myself... i know! i'll turn on the radio - maybe it's whales!

the following are all of the radio stations in range:
christian rock
christian bible reading
old timey vaudvillian stand up


the end.
and none of them told me there were whales.


so i sat, eyes open waiting to see what everyone else was looking at. and then they started to leave.

i've decided they were looking at the waves (waves are rare here given that it's blocked by a bunch of other islands). But i'll kick myself if i've missed a whale....

and three minutes after driving away the sun came out.

We are mountain women

our reward for hiking up a 45 degree hill to arrive at a trail head....

was pretty worth it. although my cellulite was on fire, there was a pretty pretty trail. glad we went when we did - on foggy days visibility can be five feet. many a hiker gets disoriented. on freezing days the half of the trail under water (seriously, it's walking through waterfalls!) would be uber treacherous. Pretty hike last week.

Currently we are holed up in our cabin/house watching the horizontal rain. The TV and radio just issued a warning to all ships saying they should all go the nearest harbor because a mega storm is a-comin. the wind is whipping. the rain is falling in sudden heavy downpour clumps ("rain dumps?" i forgot the term). They said the rain dumps could suddenly overturn boats. Whoa. The snow is capping the mountain behind our house. We live in mad nature.

Alaska women!!!!

ummm

Umm, also, it turns out we live in a rainforest....oops!

p.s. it's raining again