Raise your hand if a body of water somewhere was your parent's favorite baby-sitter in the summers. ✋
During the summers, either my mom dropped us at the American River, Folsom Lake, or one of the two swimming pools on McClellan Air Force Base (Rafferty and...Splinter's Point? I think?). And if she couldn't drop us off for some reason, we rode our bikes or the bus (times have definitely changed!).
I think this is why I love and even crave water! To drink, certainly, but just to be near a lake, river, or the ocean just is really calming and energizing for me.
So when Verna asked if I wanted to go to the river to collect some rocks for their amazing community project - Gray's Harbor Rocks - I was more than happy to tag along!
Gray's Harbor Rocks is a really cool community thing where people in the Gray's Harbor area paint rocks, seashells, and other items and then hide them for people to find. Sometimes people and businesses will add a special prize with the rock, which makes it extra cool!
My amazing great-niece Trinity gave me some cool sand dollars that she had painted and my lovely sister IL Verna let me choose one of her painted rocks. They are both sooooo artistic!
While at the river, I helped by getting the rocks that were out in the water since I had my water shoes on. And I wanted to get in the water! I'm going to kind of just let this be a photo essay for the most part so you can enjoy the beautiful environment in gorgeous Southwest Washington.
I made a friend. He's from California too!! (Actually, I'm not sure if this is a California Toad or Rocky Mountain Toad.)
Toad footprints
Stealth photo of Verna looking for the perfect rocks.
This is me in the middle of the river! Yay! I actually found myself about halfway out when taking this photo, so I decided to see if I could walk all the way across. And I did! It was fun. I only almost fell holding my Nikon like, twice.
It doesn't look like it's that deep or swift, but looks are deceiving. It was mostly just above my knees, but at a couple places it was almost up to my hips. And on the far side, the current was very fast and the rocks were much more slippery.
This is a photo of Angela (on the left side) and Verna (on the right) from the opposite bank. Just to prove I really did it! And that my camera was still working! It did get a little splash once. But it's fine.
When I was walking back, I noticed a ton of little river snails. So cute!
I kind of really flove this weird but beautiful photo.
The next photo is not pretty. It's actually pretty gross. But, in another show of stupid humans, we found about 25 fish by the boat ramp that had been caught and filleted. But only on one side.
If you look closely, you will see a huge snail on this carcass. It was the biggest one I saw all day.
One to more pleasant subjects. The bridges of Gray's Harbor County.
This last picture is not from the river...it's my sister's squash (pumpkin?) blossoms.
They are as beautiful as she is.
xoxo
