I just couldn't believe how much open empty beach there was. The tide was out a good 50-60 feet. That’s a lot of extra beach to play on! We let all the dogs off leash right away and set off on our last day at the best beach we’ve ever been on.
Mike and I both love tide-pooling and were having a great time looking at all the various sea life that is usually far hidden from view. We saw hundreds of anemone (three various varieties) beautiful snails, barnacles, and many starfish. We’ve only been tide-pooling with the dogs one other time and they were very curious then. I thought it was a fluke but not so as they were extremely interested in tide-pooling as well. It was very cute.
The other day I shared a picture with you of a starfish that was just lying on the sand far from the water. I mentioned that it must have gotten swept off its rock. I thought it was so interesting to see how tight this one was holding one.
We looked at these exact rocks on all our previous rocks never imagining what was really below the waterline.
Look how many starfish are on this one rock!
I don't know if the dogs could smell this new sea life but they were facing the water with their twitching noses up in the air.
It was really interesting to get to see such different sea life all on one rock - there were barnacles, starfish, anemone, seaweed, snails, etc.
Sorry this picture is blurry but I couldn't get a good picture of this for some reason. But I thought it was so interesting as most snail types don't have this colorful of shell.
Sparkie cracked us up today - like she often does. Here is what Sparkie usually looks like on the beach.....she just runs through the water seemingly enjoying the splashing.
Then at one point the water went way out. While the water was out, Sparkie got on top of a rock and was looking at the sea life.
While she was looking at the interesting sight the water came in (tide was coming in during our time at the beach today) and surrounded the rock.
For some reason she was scared to get off the rock. She walked all around it and leaned down and then would cry and go to the other side of the rock.
It took a couple minutes to convince her to jump off the rock and come back to shore. What a silly girl.
Wazzu was especially happy today as well. Seems like she was smiling and have a great time the entire outing.
Slugger was enjoying his freedom from the leash and was having a great time chasing sticks. He concentrates so hard when you are getting ready to throw the stick. We always enjoy it when Slugger gets the rare opportunity to be off leash doing his most favorite activity.
Boogie seems to have found a great beach activity. Clam digging, mussel digging....okay any kind of digging!
On to more tide-pooling for me! I came across what looked like a carpet of green anemone - it went on for much longer than is shown in this picture.
As always, I want to get just a little closer. So I saw this rock that was out in the water just a little bit. This rock was in a spot such that the water would come around it from all directions when waves would come in. I figured it I timed it just right I could get on the rock. Sure enough I timed it just right – and Boogie followed me. What I hadn’t taken notice of was that when the waves came around the rock they also crashed over it. So now Boogie and I were stuck out on this rock with waves crashing over my feet and all over poor little Boogie. The rock was small but steep and so was difficult to stand on. So here I was trying to hold two cameras, not fall off the rock (into about a foot of water), and try to bend over and stabilize Boogie so he wouldn’t get swept away. We got hit by seven or eight waves before the water moved in just the right formation that we could leap off the rock and run toward dry land. To top it all off, on the rock we were just high enough that we couldn’t even see the starfish as they were under a ledge that was now blocked from our view. I tried not to listen but I think I heard something like “I told you so!” Teehee.
From then on I stayed on land and let the others do the rock climbing. Even so I managed to see a lot of really interesting stuff.
Here is an anemone that was fully open and beautiful with the sun shining on it.
It was so fun to get to walk to places we couldn’t begin to get to the other days. Remember the very long rock that I told you stuck out so we couldn’t get to the other beach except by going through the small holes between some rocks further back on the beach? Well today we could walk out to the end of that long wall of rock. If the water had been out just another foot or two we would have been able to walk around the rock to the other beach. This is really hard to explain but it was so cool.
We went to the second beach via the regular way then walked around the other side of the wall of rock. It was really amazing. I took this picture not because it is all that pretty but to try and show you how much lower the tide was than the previous days. See where they line is on the rocks. That’s probably a good 12-15’ – which makes for a LOT more beach.
I didn't capture a very large wave but it was fun watching the waves crash through this little channel.
The rock where you see Wazzu (barely) has always been totally under water. We could almost get to the second beach by going across here instead of going all the way around. We still went all the way around of course - except for Wazzu - she just waded across.
When we got to the second beach we could go to places we didn't even know existed before. Can you imagine the size waves it must have taken to moved this HUGE log in between these rocks?
This picture doesn't really have any special meaning to it other than to show how peaceful the ocean can be at times too.
The dogs were all in such great moods today. Even though Sparkie very rarely got the stick she had fun running out and back.
I enjoyed watching the amazing force of the ocean as the waves crashed into the rocks.
But even more than that I really enjoyed seeing Mike and the dogs having a quiet moment to just take in the beauty around them.
Slugger especially loves just standing and looking around and smelling the air. I was happy to capture one of these beautiful moments.
Boogie was in a pretty spot too.....but he was a busy boy.....he was climbing and running the entire time.
We had a good hour and a half before other people started showing up on “our” beach. It was so nice to be able to have all four dogs off leash and not worry one bit about other people or dogs – and we didn’t have to worry about them running off as they were all very interested in what we were doing. It was a perfect ending to a perfect week.
Good-bye Bandon. Thanks for a perfect setting for our little vacation!
Debbie
8/10/07
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