I saw an abundance of crows; not sure why, but quite a few of them joined me today.
Hello, friend!
This sign was posted a few blocks away; not a very nice person! I hope she’s caught and the dog is found unharmed.
Poor grammar; incorrect use of “they’re”…should have been “their”, but I’ll allow it this time.
When I got to the beach, I was astonished to observe how many people were walking so close to each other in public and absolutely defied the “Wear a Mask” order.
I encountered no one during my walk but I wore a mask when I crossed the street to stop at the restroom. I observed many non-compliant people huddled together on the seawall and sidewalk, pretty much 90% were NOT wearing masks, so I turned right around and went home. My own mask didn’t seem like enough protection and I didn’t feel like yelling at them.
They are not being good neighbors or visitors to our city.
The County of San Diego requires face coverings to be worn anywhere in public where you could come within 6 feet of someone you don’t live with. Face coverings should be worn in addition to, not instead of, all of the other health precautions.
At last, a couple photos of early morning surf before I walked back.
UPDATE: OK, I have been corrected by a very dear blogger friend of mine who has vast amounts of maritime knowledge and I’ll promote her blog at the same time: “Your treasure is classic for when a tree trunk with a branch sticking out of it rots in the ocean. Seen it many times walking the coast of Maine as a kid.” https://mariner2mother.wordpress.com/ (However, I might still pretend it came from the ship, but that’s in my own mind.) ______________________________________________________________________________
This is another beach treasure I found at low tide on Shilshole Bay in Ballard, outside of Seattle. I didn’t know what it might be until my son sent me an article about the location of our favorite “secret” beach.
(I used to call it SHIThole Bay cos I have the humor IQ of an overgrown teenager until Angel Boy 2.0 repeated what I said, so I had to stop acting like I’m in junior high.)
The derelict steamship SS Bering, also known as “the reindeer ship” on Shilshole Bay, Seattle, January, 1957
A piece of the hull can still be seen at extreme low tides and that’s what I think I found. (I’m not at all happy that the ship was used to transport murdered reindeer.) These are the pilings we see at low tide.
Photo property of Enchanted Seashells.
This is the article my son shared about the history of the SS Bering. Seattle is a fascinating city.
Derelict “Reindeer Ship” SS Bering burns on shore of Seattle’s Shilshole Bay on January 23, 1964.
On January 23, 1964, firefighters from the Ballard fire station in Seattle set ablaze the beached hulk of the former SS Bering steamship. After sitting for two decades on the shores of Puget Sound just north of the entrance to the Lake Washington Ship Canal, the engulfing flames herald an end to a vessel with a long history of service. Among its maritime roles, the ship served the Lomen Brothers reindeer herd business in the far north, for which it earned the nickname the “Reindeer Ship.”
Ship of Several Names
The origins of the “Reindeer Ship” trace to its launching under another name, the Annette Rolph, on July 4, 1918, in Fairhaven, California. The ship was a wooden-hulled “tramp” steamship built for the trans-Pacific trade, under the Rolph Navigation and Coal Company. In her later career for Rolph business interests, she worked the coastal trade and mail line between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Callao, Peru.
The Lomen Brothers purchased the vessel in 1930 and renamed her the Arthur J. Baldwin. It underwent a conversion into a refrigerated ship, for service with the Arctic Transport Co. of Nome, Alaska. For the next six years, it earned the nickname the “Reindeer Ship” for its role in bringing supplies such as lumber and gas to northern ports, and shipments of reindeer meat from the Lomen reindeer fields on return southern voyages to Seattle.
The vessel was next called Bering, starting in March 1936 under the Alaska Steamship Co. The ship was put into general service, which included special runs between salmon cannery ports and longer-range voyages through the Arctic Ocean to resupply Point Barrow, Alaska.
The ship’s final period of active service began in 1942, when it was briefly designated USS Bering by the War Shipping Administration as part of the maritime supply line to Alaska during World War II. Its service was cut short prematurely, when on its maiden voyage to the North it went aground on a reef near Cape Spencer on December 17, 1943. It was refloated by the crew and returned to Seattle, with the owners reimbursed $100,000 by the federal government for the loss.
In 1944, Tregonning Boat Co. purchased the condemned vessel for $1 and beached her at Shilshole Bay as a breakwater, just north of the entrance to the Lake Washington Ship Canal. The breakwater was envisioned as part of the plan for a new pleasure craft marina. However, funding for the new moorage never materialized and the Bering became irrelevant. To the north of the vessel, a new breakwater was later built by the federal government for protection of the new Shilshole Bay Marina. Meanwhile, the Bering remained a fixture on the shoreline for the next two decades.
A newspaper story about the construction of the Shilshole Bay Marina in 1962 described the Bering and its legacy as a local landmark:
“South of the marina, a gray weathered hulk of a freighter seems to have been beached on the shore. You’ll wonder about it. Every sightseer does. You may want to strike off across the mounds of grass and sands to inspect it at close range. At low tide, one can walk all around the ship” (Krenmayr).
In 1964, public debate continued to focus on the ship and its continued presence on the waterfront. Some saw it as an eyesore, while others viewed it as a tangible relic of Seattle’s maritime history and connection to the World War I era.
Fate of Vessel Determined
The arrival of the new Shilshole Bay Marina in the early 1960s was one factor in the public discourse about what to do with the derelict ship. Another was the question about public safety. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that access to the vessel was unrestricted and a liability if left unchecked: “The old ship was an ‘attractive nuisance’ for boys in search of adventure … nine years ago a boy was saved from drowning in a rainwater pool in the hold” (Page).
The final straw came when the Ballard Order of Elks purchased the shoreline on which the beached ship was situated. In the first week of January 1964, the City Council Public Safety Committee recommended that the ship be burned in place. The Elks soon coordinated the planned burning event with the city’s fire department in Ballard. On Thursday, January 23, 1964, firefighters set fire to the hull of the ship, with curious onlookers watching from the beach. Three days later, the fires were still smoldering among the timbers of the hull’s remains, which had burned to the waterline.
Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction.
The eagle was sitting on that branch waiting for everyone to stop pointing at him so he could swoop down and take a better look at a huge dead fish that washed up on the shoreline.
My neck hurt because I couldn’t believe that I was actually in the presence of an eagle, my very first ever sighting, and I wouldn’t look away until he was gone.
Now I can cross that off my mental list….I’ve seen wolves and mountain lions and bears and of course, my favorite: coyotes.
Not all at the same time, but these are the special pearls in my necklace of life experiences, memories strung together since most of them happened so fast and were such brief encounters that I didn’t have time to take photos.
I wish I had brought my big lens in addition to my iPhone, but it’s good enough as it captured the special moment.
These are admittedly crappy photos, but it’s most definitely a Bald Eagle. I know they’re considered a nuisance in parts of Alaska, but this wasn’t a common occurrence at this location. I didn’t even try to look for an eagle feather because I’m aware that under the current language of the Eagle Feather Law, “unauthorized persons found with an eagle or its parts in their possession can be fined up to $250,000.”
“There’s a raccoon. Look at that!”
I thought he was joking because it was the middle of the day and we were on a sandy beach so I continued to keep my head down to look for seashells.
I got up early, made my French roast coffee (black), observed from the video in the outdoor camera that my coyote came to visit last night around 3:30 a.m., got dressed and walked to the beach while it was still overcast and relatively cool.
It’s a hilly walk and I was already sore from a hard workout yesterday, but I kept going. I wanted to avoid the crowds that were sure to descend as soon as the sun came out.
Here’s a couple pics of a very flat Pacific Ocean, although it’s so crowded, I don’t think epic surf was anyone’s goal.
And then I saw this gem of sage advice on the sidewalk in front of the house where a couple of feral children reside. I know they’re little assholes because at one time I saw them throw rocks at their cat and I told their dad, who turned out to be a bigger asshole. Apple def didn’t fall far from the tree in their genetic pool. He didn’t respond in a kind manner when I told him he was successfully breeding future sociopaths.
It’s Easter Sunday and that always meant a traditional day hike or walk to the beach or a camping trip to the desert.
This year was a bit different because of the pandemic, isolating to protect ourselves and others from Covid-19.
But the beach always beckons. Well, not exactly the beach because it’s now closed, but non one can deprive me of a view of the magnificent Pacific Ocean.
My round-trip walk is about 6.5 miles, maybe a bit longer because I took a detour to include pics of Agua Hedionda Lagoon.
For those of you that didn’t get out for a walk today, here ya go!
It looks like an advert for a hallucinogenic (LSD) but that’s an ALTERED PERCEPTION haha. That’s just the way the light hit it. The sign really said “Beach closed.”
And just in case you didn’t take the hint, this signage made it extremely clear…
And if anyone is STILL clueless, this sign and caution tape is even more specific…
But here she is. Mother Nature. The Pacific Ocean. No waves. I bet a million dollars if there was a solid 4-6 swell, those waves would be packed. No one can keep a surfer from the water. That’s essential to life.
I took the long way home around our Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Pretty daisies, the lagoon, and the power plant off in the distance.
One of my favorite views; the lagoon and the ocean.
All the rain created a mudslide on Adams, the street around the lagoon.I’ve never before seen Adams closed at Park due to a landslide! Crazy times we’re in.
And finally back home. There’s really no place like home. Dorothy was right.
I walked to the beach and back, about a six-mile round trip, and captured this quirky pic with my phone of the almost Supermoon over Agua Hedionda Lagoon.
Photo by Enchanted Seashells
Sunday’s full moon will bring the biggest and brightest of the year so far. December 3rd’s Full Cold Moon is the only supermoon of 2017.
A supermoon occurs when a full moon coincides with the perigee of the moon’s orbital cycle. A perigee is the point at which the moon moves closest to Earth during orbit. Because the orbit is not a perfect circle, this means the moon typically sits anywhere between 252,000 and 226,000 miles from Earth. That’s a difference of 26,000 miles—longer than the entire circumference of the Earth. (newsweek.com/supermoon-2017-full-cold-moon-728118)
Look, a BEACH BUNNY! I saw this adorable creature today at Tamarack Beach in Carlsbad.
There are normally a billion ground squirrels that live on the bluffs, but I rarely see a rabbit, so this was a special event for sure.
Last week the temperature here was 105 degrees; today it was drizzly and in the low 60s, so I decided to take a little walk to the beach. I went the long way ’round and ended up walking about nine miles.
It’s pretty much downhill to the ocean-super easy- but that means it’s all uphill on the way home, so I’m pleasantly tired.
When I got home, I checked for mail and looky here what I found!!! A sample of Chanel’s new fragrance, Garbrielle, accompanied by the most amazing affirmation…just what I needed right about now.
“I decided who I wanted to be, and that is who I am.”
DAMN RIGHT, COCO. You got that right, GURRL.
After enduring the shittiest of all shitshows of shitty years, swimming my way up and out and slowly being pieced back together, reforming and rising from the ashes of despair and pain, THIS IS A SIGN.
As I tapped out the letters that spell “despair”, I wanted to make sure it conveyed exactly how I felt so looked up the definition and nodded my head in silent agreement, “the complete loss or absence of hope”. YUP. Nuff said.
The little perfumed card is propped up on my bedside table, and wonder of all wonders, there are two owls hooting to each other in my backyard.
The eagle was sitting on that branch waiting for everyone to stop pointing at him so he could swoop down and take a better look at a huge dead fish that washed up on the shoreline.
I’ve never before seen Adams closed at Park due to a landslide! Crazy times we’re in.
#wordlesswednesday #curlyhair #santaanawinds #beach #SoCal #windy
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 