Tag Archives: Lopez Island

Road Trip XII, Days 35-42: Bringin’ it Home

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Before spending the penultimate night of my 6-week circuit of this immense nation of ours in Seattle, I encountered this show-stopping rainbow over Lake Washington.

Who knew the I-90 bridge could look so magical?

I also encountered a woman taking the same photo. We smiled at each other, and she said, “You know, you really remind me of my sister in Michigan.”

My response: “This is going to sound funny, but I just arrived here…with MY sister…from Michigan.” We both smiled and shook our heads. Whoa.

That’s how this final week of Road Trip XII has gone–the Seester Week. (See previous post for explanation.) Full of kismet, full of symmetry. For example, our 7 nights together went like this: Stay with friend; camp; camp; motel; camp; camp; stay with friend.

But let me break it down a little. We left “Michigan in the rear view” a week ago, with one final walk in a park with these amazing black squirrels who refused to hold still for their photo.

I really need to get a zoom lens for my phone.

Night #1 we spent with a friend of mine from college, in Evanston, IL (pretty much Chicago). He & his family showed us wonderful hospitality, complete with chicken pie from a local bakery.

Yes, I know Hoosiers are from Indiana, not Illinois. Still a great pun.

It snowed a little that night, but Vanna shrugged it off.

Note the open compartment near the rear: one bad curb and the locker door was hanging by a hinge. But that happened before Illinois.

We headed out into the Iowa landscape. Iowa does NOT deserve its reputation for flatness. I found its curves especially beautiful in snow.

taken from Vanna in passing

We hoped to camp at this park outside of Des Moines, but the campground wasn’t yet open. We settled for a walk…of which the most memorable part was the MUD.

like cement + glue, but slick as ice

Night #2: the campground we settled into didn’t merit a photo. At least the snow melted!

Next day, we hit the jackpot with a lovely park outside of Lincoln, Nebraska.

Never did catch the name of this creek.

During our walk, snow fell, turning everything miraculous.

“Oh, man…snowflakes for dinner, AGAIN?”

But the biggest miracle of the day came later, approaching the center of the state (along I-80): we met the migrating Sandhill Cranes.

This is only a TEENY FRACTION of all we saw–so hard to capture as we whizzed by! But imagine each bird standing 4 feet tall. That’s what you’re looking at here. I tried capturing them in flight…

Again, may I remind you: each of those specks is a 4-foot-tall bird!

Night #3, we bedded Vanna down at a nearly-deserted campground by the North Platte River…

“What does she mean, she bedded ME down? I’m the one with the bed!”

Before darkness fell, though, I spent most of my time nervously pacing by the river as I listened to the Tarheels successfully grit their way back into the Sweet 16.

Does this mean I have to come back to the North Platte for every game now?

On into Wyoming! We made a walk-stop at Laramie…

Cactus? Yep–we’re in the WEST now, baby!

…but the weather was becoming worrisome.

Hmmm…

Knowing we might well have to delay our start next morning for snow & ice, we opted to spend Night #4 in a motel in Rock Springs.

“Sure, and just leave us out here to freeze our seats off!”

But Wyoming was good to us. Snow & ice, yes–but nothing that didn’t melt away by the time we got to the steep parts of the highway. So we were relaxed enough to enjoy gorgeous Bear River State Park, just before crossing into Utah.

Bear River

The park has its own wee herd of bison, including some albinos.

They look so cuddly! Except for the horns. And, y’know, the thousand-pound bodies.

We hated to leave that park. But most of the trail was snowed over, and Seester didn’t bring boots.

So we just watched the magpies a bit, and went on our way.

‘Bye, Wyoming–ya done right by us.

Not saying I want to LIVE there…but it is beautiful.

Along our route, Utah plays the tiniest part:

Taken from the car. Next time for you, Wasatch Range! We’re kind of done with snow for now, thanks.

Night #5: Twin Falls, Idaho. Not pictured: the actual falls. It was terribly windy & late when we arrived, so we just glimpsed the Snake River Canyon in passing and called it good.

But the moon was pretty wowza that night, rising over the campground.

Next day we stopped for our walk in Boise, along the Boise River. I’m used to riding a bike there, so it was nice to go slow and appreciate the greenbelt.

Good job, Boise.

Crossing into Oregon, I celebrated: finally, back on Pacific Time!

hills of eastern OR

Night #6, our campground view, in Pendleton, OR, looked much the same…

…with the additional reminder that SOMEbody’s still getting snowed on!

The last full day of driving, through Oregon and back into my dear Washington, I took zero pictures, mostly because it was RAINING the whole time. These song lyrics kept running through my head:

“I’m going back to the land of wet/ No winter wonderland regret/ They don’t sell postcards of the rain/ But what you see is what you get.”

(Not pictured: rain. But check out that rainbow at the top of the page!)

That symmetry I mentioned? Night #7 we spent with an old friend of my Seester’s, just as #1 was with an old friend of mine. A lovely palindrome of evenings: friend-van-van-motel-van-van-friend. And to top it all off, while I was gone, lo these many weeks…spring arrived!

I am feeling so FULL of gratitude for this almost-safely-concluded trip. It was so good to travel with my Sees! And now? I get a couple more days before she flies back to Michigan. I get to reunite with The Mate on Lopez Island, and we get to cheer the Tarheels as they try to move on in the tournament.

And Vanna gets some well-earned rest. Because, you know what? I think we’re going to stay home for a bit now. I may check in later about What I Learned On My First Van-cation. But for now…thanks for riding along with us!

Road Trip XII, Days 11-13: Shameless Self-Promotion–and Albuquerque Too

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It was hard to leave the Chiricahuas on Monday morning, and they didn’t make it any easier.

Love you too!

But we knew we were headed to a sweet spot on Road Trip XII: Albuquerque, home of my Adventure Buddy Beth (a former Lopezian & very gifted musician). It, and she, did not disappoint…and I’ll get to that in a moment.

Before that, though, social media has reminded me that this month marks the 10-year anniversary of my publication of The Flying Burgowski. Social media also reminds me (like a pushy theater mom) to make a little something of this fact. So here goes.

Who hasn’t yearned to fly?

Need a good, edgy, but heartwarming story to distract you from the headlines? Have a young person in your life (age 11 & up) who loves both fantasy AND real life? Click here to get your copy now…or, even better, ask your local bookstore to order it for you!

Shameless self-promotion: check. Now, back to Albuquerque.

The Mate and I love the place. Twenty years ago we spent 5 months in Santa Fe as part of his sabbatical, but realized later that its big, gritty cousin down I-25 was a better fit for us: less touristy, less expensive, and much better for athletic endeavors. Plus, ABQ has plenty of artsiness of its own.

Like this installation near Beth’s house, set up after the 2011 tsunami in Japan: it’s a “phone booth” for “calling” and connecting with faraway and/or lost loved ones around the world.
…or this bridge over one of the old local irrigation ditches (not yet open, but still in use)

Though not as ancient as Santa Fe, ABQ still oozes that wonderfully understated adobe style:

It’s not just a wall. It’s a culture.

Most houses, modest or not, fall in with the local groove (though it’s not mandated, as in SF):

just some random house on my walk–but notice the basic materials.

Then there are the local flora and fauna, like this cottonwood…

My buddy Beth’s not a large person, but this tree makes her look like a Hobbit!

…and these Sandhill Cranes, stopping on their northerly migration to glean a field in the middle of the neighborhood:

Come here often?

Probably my favorite piece of Albu-quirkiness on this trip, though, was this vending machine installed outside a 50 year-old bakery…

Bakery’s closed? No worries, we got your treats right here!

…whose 86 year-old owner was still hard at work inside making empanadas, and New Mexico’s “state cookie”, the biscochito:

Not pictured: 86 year-old baker!

Despite greeting us with two days of HORRIBLE wind and blowing dust, Albuquerque redeemed itself today with perfect, still sunshine. It’s going to be hard to leave this place too.

Especially since the Texas Panhandle, and a good portion of Oklahoma, seem to be on fire. Not sure Vanna wants to go there! See you along the way…wherever that turns out to be.

Road Trip XII: Chasing Sun, from WA to OR to CA (good choice)

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Note/warning: my WordPress stats inform me that this post I’m writing will be # 666. Here’s hoping nothing dire happens when I hit publish. Or maybe you should just stop reading now.

Still here? High-5! (and thank you, SF’s Golden Gate Park)

Road Trip XII got off to a rocky start. How rocky? Try broken emergency brake release lever…in the ferry line…in the dark…in the rain. That’s all you need to know. That, and the fact that wonderful Lopez supplied enough community magic to get Vanna Grey unstuck and off the island, eventually.

And we were off. Thanks to an appointment with our Darling Dentist of 30+ years, Dr. Norooz in Tacoma, we didn’t aim ourselves further than southern WA for our very first night of RV camping. Specifically: Paradise Point State Park.

A tad hyperbolic, the name, but the E. Fork of the Lewis River was pretty.

Because it was our First Meal in Vanna…

The stuff in the ziplock? Homemade bacon from Lopez piggies!

…I had to capture it for posterity:

Could I have cooked this outside? Yes I could. But not comfortably.

I won’t go into much detail about our RV learning curve: it exists! But I think talking about it might be pretty boring, except maybe to other RVers. Suffice to say I’m already surfing the blogosphere of other Roadtrek owners to answer my gazillions of questions, trying not to overburden our kind sellers by asking THEM. But this is a travel blog, so I prefer to focus on the places, not the transport. I covered that topic last post!

Next day it RAINED. ALL DAY. We took it slow, not expecting to get further than Crescent City, and we didn’t. The federal/state Redwood Park campsites were either closed or full, so I had reserved us a site at my very first KOA.

I call this “KOA Sunrise.” Because that’s what it is.

So far, so good. Vanna’s doing fine; we’re learning the art of downshifting on steeper hills without causing terrible grinding sounds. But really, all we’re longing for is…

…this.

Redwoods are why we road-trip. Also waterfalls, cliffs, crags, hoodoos, flowers…you get the idea. But just stepping into the forest at Prairie Creek (between Crescent City and Eureka, CA) is–well, it’s all we need.

They don’t even have to be fully alive redwoods! Except they all are.

In that place, even the non-redwoods assume some extra glory:

To be fair: you don’t need to go to CA to see maples like these; WA & OR have their share.

Fully soaked with beauty, we persevered on through several hours of truly HORRENDOUS rain and wind, including a scary crossing of the Golden Gate Bridge, to San Francisco and the current home of Son Two.

Amazingly, Son Two found us parking on his street along the Panhandle of GG Park…just three spaces up from our old baby, Red Rover the Subaru! Awww…

Immediately, it was damn the raindrops, full speed ahead! to get a speedwalk in Golden Gate Park, shedding the tension of all those driving hours.

Nothing like a little Street Whale to reduce tension! (Or Street Narwhal maybe?)

That park is such a blessing. I didn’t photograph the Great Blue Heron I took for a statue before it flew, but I did capture this guy trotting across the street:

No roadrunner. Just coyote!

This being San Francisco, I had to take a picture of a driverless car, because, really, can you think of an easier, flatter, more open city than SF to experiment with one of these?

Waymo stupid than it looks, even

This morning we left SF (once more in driving rain) for points south, and as I’m writing this (Post #666) I can affirm that the sun DID come out, and we DID receive its rainbow promise. But it was a pale version of this Tree of Light in the park near Son Two’s house:

a video does it more justice–google it and see!

Tomorrow we hope to meet the desert, with some REAL sun. But for now, on behalf of California, I’d just like to say: you know what? THANK YOU for all that rain. It was awful to drive through. But knowing what it means, we’ll take it any day.

See you in the desert!

Road Trip XII: Introducing…Vanna Grey

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When it comes to vehicles–hell, when it comes to MOST things except politics–The Mate and I are pretty conservative. Comfy with routine. Change-averse. Sure, we have our “ooh, shiny!” moments…but they’re mostly about stuff like new rain gear or boots. Maybe lawn mowers and nice casserole dishes.

But not cars.

“Who, me? Your devoted Red Rover who just got passed from Son One to Son Two?”

We’ve owned a good number in our nearly 45 years as a couple, and we’ve usually hated every minute of buying them. Our favorite moments come when our car hits that comfy-old-shoe phase. That’s our sweet spot.

Pictured: a sweet spot (Road Trip VIII, Great Basin NP, Nevada)

Since 2011, when we began our annual Road Trips from Lopez Island, WA to Durham/Chapel Hill, N.C. (where I grew up and where The Mate and I met), any car we buy becomes our official Road Trip vehicle. Starting with our then-car, Kiwi the Ford Escape hybrid:

R.T. I, hangin’ out at Jumbo Rocks in Joshua Tree NP…

She served us well.

It was cold enough in Zion NP, back in 2012, we considered sleeping inside Kiwi!

At the end of 2012, Son One’s hand-me-down car broke down once too often, so he inherited Kiwi, and we treated ourselves to the first-model Subaru Crosstrek. Who knew what trendsetters we were! You’ve already met Red Rover, but here’s one more look at her doing her Road Trip thing:

“Road-tripping to Vermont in March, REALLY? Who ARE these people?”

Lil’ Red drove us faithfully every year from 2013 to 2020–the year we headed home super-quick, in the middle of the first wave of COVID lockdowns, fearing our island might be quarantined by the time we got home. Later that year, Son One had to leave Costa Rica and refugeed on Lopez near us, so we used him as an excuse to hand-me-down Red Rover to him…and told ourselves we were doing our part to boost the economy by buying a Toyota RAV4 hybrid.

In 2021, of course, RAVie didn’t get out much. Vaccinations were just beginning. Her first road trip had to wait till 2022. But she got there!

RAVie in the Badlands: “So THAT’s what this road-trip gig is all about. I’m in!”

Today, RAVie is a sprightly four years old, roomy, running great–the perfect road-trip car. What’s NOT perfect: my back. Even after surgery, sitting hour after hour has proven to be…a challenge. Add to that the fact that, road-tripping in February and March, our camping gear only gets used a handful of days despite being lugged around the country for 6-7 weeks, and you get…

...the great Camper Search. Yes. Once The Mate and I decided a campervan would be the best solution to keeping cross-country road trips in our life, and once we’d gotten over our sticker shock of even USED vans (forget new ones!), I started looking at vans. So many vans. Van porn, it felt like. Facebook Marketplace and TheVanCamper.com never had such a faithful viewer.

And that’s how we met Vanna Grey. But! Before I introduce you, I just want to underscore how incredibly off-brand she is for The Mate and me. I don’t mean brand as in Chevy Roadtrek–which she is. I mean “brand” as in habit.

Example. Here’s the pair of new slippers The Mate got me for my birthday, because I specifically asked for them:

They’re Tevas, and they’re amazing.

But now go ahead and ask me: “Gretchen, for WHICH birthday did you receive those slippers?” I will tell you: “2021.” And if you follow up with, “So WHY haven’t you worn them yet???” I’ll respond:

“Because my old ones haven’t actually worn out yet.” Yep–over 2 years after I thought I’d need new ones, these are still going strong.

NOW you’re ready to meet Vanna Grey. NOW you’ll understand just what a momentous life change this is for me & The Mate.

Vanna Grey: more than a new car. SO much more.

To say we are a little intimidated is putting it mildly. We’ve never been RVers; our learning curve is STEEP. Bring on that comfy-shoe feeling!

“Just remember, if Vanna’s too much for you…you can always come back to me! Unless one of the Sons gets there first…”

But we’re also conscious of our incredible good fortune to be taking this step, and so very grateful to all the help we’ve had along the way. See you on the road!

DogBlog: Hair Today, and…Hair Tomorrow

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Maya here.

To quote my hooman, Gretchen: shed happens.

What? Shag carpeting could be coming back. You never know.

Now, Gretchen seems a little frustrated with me these days…keeps muttering stuff like, “Omigod, MORE fur?!!” and “Why NOW? You’re just gonna grow this fluff right back next month!”

Whatever. As long as I get to lick something while she’s torturing me like this.

But I think the real reason she’s so uptight is, she NEVER sheds. That hooman of mine has had exactly TWO “haircuts” (what hoomans call shedding) in her entire life. She told me that herself.

She got her first one when she was 15 (that’s 2 in dog years).

Yep, just a pup

She kept the same “look” for the next ten years, slowly letting her fur–I mean hair–grow long again.

No more shedding, but sometimes she wore things on her head. Hoomans are weird.

Then, ten years after her first shed, she shed just the top–I mean, got it cut. She calls this her “bangs.”

I don’t get why she calls ’em that. They don’t seem very loud to me.

For the next 35 years, Gretchen only shed the teensiest bits of fur. Like this:

Seriously?!

But NOW, 35 years (that’s 5, in dog!) after shedding cutting her “bangs,” Gretchen’s decided to stop even THAT amount of shedding. She’s letting her top fur grow out.

It ain’t pretty.

Yeah, good luck with that.

What I want to know is, why’s she all hot and bothered about MY fur when it takes her 35 years to make up her mind to deal with her own?

Hmph.

When it comes to fur–how can she possibly compete with me?

I guess she’s just jealous. Yep–that must be it. Poor thing.

Wishing I Were Mo’ Pro-Promo

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This coming weekend, I’ll be playing in a music festival. Yay for music festivals! Yay for anything that combines outdoorsiness, tunes, and safe togetherness. Also tacos, I hear.

Which means it’s time for me to do my part and help drum up community support for this all-day affair, tirelessly put together by some very dedicated folks. Which means…promo.

My friends are probably sick of this photo. I have so few I use the same ones over and over.

I know of zero writers and only a tiny handful of musicians who enjoy promoting their own work. Taking part in an interview, sure, or maybe designing a poster if your artistic chops extend to the visual arts, but otherwise? Meh.

Case in point: yes, this blog contains clickable images of the books I’ve written, but when was the last time I actually tried to sell you one? Exactly.

But! This music festival is not about me; my set is 30 minutes out of a full day. It’s about COMMUNITY MUSIC! So with that in mind…ahem…may I present:

There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

If you live on Lopez, I very much hope you can make it. If not, I hope you can make some event to support the arts in your community! I’m guessing probably no one where you live wants to self-promote either. So make it easy on ’em and just show up!

And thank you, thank you for supporting your local artists. Isn’t it wonderful we get to do this again?

Road Trip XI: Aaaaand….We’re Back. On the Road.

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For Christmas 2020, in a fit of stubborn hope, I bought this for The Mate:

Oh, the places you’ll (probably not) go!

It never made it off the shelf.

But this month, February 2022, thanks to vaccines and good practices and wonderful people, we are heading back onto the road for Road Trip XI. The apex is, as always, my childhood home of North Carolina, a.k.a. Home of the Tarheels, Place Where The Mate & I Met & Became Mates.

This year, making up for 2021 (as well as 2020, when we came rushing home at the start of the pandemic), we’re giving ourselves a full TWO MONTHS. Red Rover is officially retired (she’s Son One’s island vehicle now), so this is our new ride:

Meet RAVie! (Toyota RAV4 Hybrid)

Our route there is only semi-set; our route home is completely open. Our plan is, as usual, to include as much camping, hiking, biking, and exploration as time, weather and health allow.

So meet my OTHER new ride: Liza! (Specialized VADO E-bike) About to lose her new-bike shine.

Here is who is NOT coming along for the ride: Maya the ‘Mute (a.k.a. Beastie).

Shhh. I haven’t told her yet. She LOVES car rides. 😦

Meanwhile, Lopez (Our Fair Isle) is making it hard to leave, throwing out sunsets like this beauty the other night:

Why are we leaving again? Oh right…

So, as Wing’s World goes back into regular Travel Blog Mode, you’ll be hearing from me every few days as I let you know how much our “plans” stacked up to Road Trip Reality. Be well, everyone–see you out there!

Dogblog: Doggone Discipline

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Maya here again. Miss me?


The other day I heard someone howling, and…hey. Wait. It wasn’t me!

I hurried over to check and found my hooman giggling at ANOTHER DOG on her little tappity-tappity thing. “Hahaha,” she was saying, “can you believe this?”

Wait–some dogs can get away with this? And get something called 250,000 followers? Pretty sure “followers” are edible.

Well, that dog just crunches my kibble. When I make that noise, my hoomans yell “HUSH!” at me. They certainly don’t turn me into a picture on the tappity-tappity thing for thousands of other hoomans to laugh at. That Zeus dog is FAMOUS. And me? I’m just in the dog house.

Are you KIDDING me?!

I mean seriously. My hoomans make me “heel” and “come” and “sit” everywhere I go. We practice in the house…

Better be some treats at the end of this recall.

…out on walks…

Who’s a good girl? Yeah, yeah, yeah…

…even on the one “Staycation” they’ve taken me on! (This is a thing where hoomans leave their house and go stay in a different house. Lots of cool new stuff to sniff. But I still had to heel and come and sit.)

OK, OK! I’m sitting.

No way would I EVER get away with the stuff that Zeus dog pulls. Every now and then my main-walky hooman lets the leash loose to take my picture, ’cause I’m so pretty…

Even prettier with flowers, am I right?

…or because the trail is too rocky for us to go side-by-side…

But I get to go first!

…but once we’re past that part, it’s back to heel and come and…

You know the drill by now.

I don’t even get to chase whatever little yummy crawly diggy thing made that hole! Bet Zeus would get to eat it for breakfast.

I’m telling you…it’s just NOT FAIR.

So I’d just like to say to Zeus’s hoomans–Can I come live with you? I wanna howl and dig and be a doggy diva too, and my hoomans just don’t UNDERSTAND.

My one consolation? That thing they call “college basketball season” is finally over, so I don’t have to wear this stoopid scarf every time their “Tarheels”–whatever they are, probably NOT edible–throw that round orange thing at each other.

Help me, Zeus!

‘Tis the Season of What, Exactly? On Spring, Food, Coronavirus and Quakers

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My local Friends Meeting has an expression for when we want to think about something before making a group decision: “Let’s season this for a month and come back to it.” I think it’s a modern term (don’t remember running into it during my Quaker upbringing), and right now it’s feeling extra appropriate.

Season: to sit with something and allow it to show itself more fully.

But also: Flu season. Which has since become pandemic season. How long will pandemic season be? As I write this, it feels like our country is beginning to split even on THAT question: whether or not we should all hunker down for a few more weeks to protect each other.

And literal seasoning? While I’m hunkering, I’ll be on furlough from my bakery job. I already miss the thought of mixing ginger into fruit for pies, or adding garlic to sautéed greens for strata.

On the other hand, while hunkering, I’m also cooking up a storm, like millions of people right now lucky enough to have food—and seasoning the heck out of things.

Like adding sriracha to fresh-picked, steamed nettles to blend with hummus!

Finally, since hunkering can also be done outdoors (at a safe distance), we have signs of the season—wildflowers, songbirds, lambs, daylight. That sense of “season” brings me comfort, as if the Earth is saying, “We got ya. It’s okay. Everything comes around.”

Right now the satin flowers are blooming. They bloom only for a week, only in this one tiny spot on our whole island. Satin flowers ALWAYS hunker in place.

I think I could handle that.

Can we stand to think of ourselves as satin flowers for a little while? Do we need to season that thought?

See Otter? No–SEA Otter! (So What?)

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You know those times when you get so ridiculously excited about something you just have to blurt to the first person you see?

(If no…I gotta say, congrats on your self-restraint, but really? Try it sometime.)

I had one of those the other day. Rushing back down the path from the gorgeous portion of National Monument that is my backyard, I met a stranger walking my way. “I saw a sea otter! Keep an eye out for it!” I blurted.

He gave me what felt like a patronizing look–and I should know, having given plenty of those myself. “Those are river otters,” he said, kindly enough. “They’ve taken over the marine habitat, but they–”

River Otter: cute! (photo by R.A.Killmer, courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

“No!” I interrupted. “I mean, yes, I know–you’re right, I’ve never seen a sea otter in these waters, but I just did!”

I went on to describe what I’d seen through my binocs (after zooming home and zooming back out again–don’t usually carry binocs on my walks): big creature, almost as long as a seal, floating on its back, flippery hind feet sticking straight out of the water, front paws on tummy, as though it were making itself into a floating tray. Silver face.

Sea otter: CUTER! (photo by Brian Wotherspoon, courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

The guy switched to Interest Mode and hastened down the path.

We don’t get many sea otters in the Salish Sea. In fact, in ten years of several-walks-per-week, I’ve NEVER seen one. Special as I felt, I wanted to find out exactly how rare they were. Here’s what I learned from an article posted July 2018 by Rob Ollikainen in the Peninsula Daily News:

Most sea otters are spotted off the Pacific Coast at places like Destruction Island and Cape Flattery, said Erin Gless, a naturalist with Island Adventures Whale Watching.

“A few individuals, however, seem to be exploring more inland waters,” Gless said in a Monday news release.

“While it’s too early to determine what’s bringing these sea otters in from the coast, their presence is encouraging.”

Turns out the otter I saw–all by its lonesome, and it probably was, ’cause sea otters are super-social creatures–has already been adopted by some who’ve spotted it. According to this article and a couple of others I read, this guy is either “Ollie the Otter,” first spotted near Victoria in 2015, or else “Odin,” a one-eyed male seen more recently off San Juan Island. Since that’s much closer to me, I’m guessing Odin’s more likely–but I couldn’t quite see its eyes through my glasses. As for a close-up shot?

Let’s just say I’m considering buying a zoom lens for my phone.

By the end of the article, though, my excitement got its comeuppance.

Anne Shaffer, executive director of the Coastal Watershed Institute, which studies the ecology of the nearshore near the mouth of the Elwha River, said the recent sea otter sighting was interesting but not unusual.

“There are otters that are off our shore, off the central Strait, one or two a year,” Shaffer said Friday.

A semi-resident sea otter was known to be living off the San Juan Islands for years. An adult male was living in the south Puget Sound, Shaffer said.

“There certainly transit our shoreline but they’re not abundant,” Shaffer said.

“It’s an interesting observation but not necessarily ecologically astounding. But they’re cool animals.”

Well, excuuuuse me for being astounded. Cool animals are welcome to do that to me any day. I’m also constantly on the lookout for ANY good ecological news, and I reserve the right to receive this otter as exactly that.

Anyone else got an astoundingly-cool-animal-in-your-backyard story to share????