Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Dungeness Spit


Had a great trip to the Dungeness Spit, a 5 mile long 'spit' of land that protrudes into the Straits of Juan De Fuca. At the end of the 5 miles is a lighthouse, but we didn't venture that far out, actually we didn't venture out at all since we only had a hour to explore.
Dungeness is off Kitchen-Dick road which is off Hwy 101. Roy kept calling it Chicken Dick road, but its not, its Kitchen Dick and don't you forget that.
Remember the woodpecker at our last stop, rat-ta-tat-tating, well this time far in the distance we heard some geese honking and the sound got closer and closer until finally we saw them coming in right over our heads. It was a pair, and they honked until they finally landed about 100 yards from us.
My birding friends probably expect some name for these geese, but all I can tell them is they were dark in color. I wouldn't call them Canadian, but then what do I know. They honked, they were geese and thats all I know. There are tons of birds in the area, and we saw a sign about Black Brants which are numerous in the area. Brants belong to the goose family I think, so maybe that is what I saw. On the drive in, I noticed there were ducks in the pond, again, what kinda duck, Im clueless.
Walking thru the woods was nice also. The berrys are all in flower, and the new ferns are starting to curl up into new leaves and there are lots of windfalls from our long winter. A little chipmuck came and said hello and a deer stood about 10 yards from us, looked at us and chose to ignore us. They can take horses down to the spit so we met a couple of riders coming up. They stopped to chat a minute. I wish they had offered me a lift up the steep hill. LOL

FINALLY got to stop at the Museum in Sequim and it was worth the wait. In 1977 a farmer was digging a pond and found a bone, which was so large, he knew that it had to be something bigger than todays animals. It turned out to be a Mastadon and that is the prime exhibit at the museum. They found the tusks, a piece of jawbone with tooth which identified it and they also found a rib bone that had a rock point in it from some ancient mans spear. Very cool.

Tomorrow we head west.

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