Whilst sitting down to lunch with the fam on Sunday, a strange creature didst appear upon the deck. M yells "what the heck is that thing???" and we came over to the window to take a look. A strange and uncommonly unkempt creature, to be sure. "I have no idea" I said, reaching for the laptop to hit WikiPedia for assistance. We didn't grab the camera fast enough to take a picture, but it was pretty slow, so we got a good look at it. I searched the web for pictures of every kind of rodent I could think of, but nothing seemed to match. We called it the Mystery Rodent. Then, later, someone reminded me that perhaps it wasn't a rodent after all... And, voila - a marsupial it was actually. A largish, very ratty-looking opossum was the answer to this mystery. We don't see too many of them (alive anyway) but they're around. Add yet another animal to add to the pretty long list we have here at the zoo we like to call our home.

We arrived Friday at Larrabee State Park, on Chuckanut drive just south of Bellingham. We pulled in to T7, and levelled the trailer, put down the jacks and hooked it all up. Temperature was in the high 60s, and dry.

Saturday was work day... work to install the ham radio antenna and antenna wires. I had already installed the radio itself, just had the remaining work on the antenna connections. There's no better time to work on the trailer than when we're out someplace actually using it. Had to fix the awning support struts, as they are just a pressure type clamp and needed some extra support. Note the dual-band J-Pole antenna up at 12 feet... a beautiful sight for any Ham radio operator of course...


I managed to get the dual-band J-Pole antenna mounted on a $0.99 8' piece of wood that I was able to clamp on to the side of the trailer. At a buck a piece for the clamps, the entire mounting cost three bux. Cost effective for sure. The hardest part was mounting the SO-239 connector on the outside front of the trailer. Turns out that there is about 2" of insulation between the outer shell and the inner shell. Figuring out how to drill through it, and mount screws all the way from the outside to the inside, and then get the ground wire lug on a screw was a 2-hour entertainment in and of itself. But it did work, and the connector is now mounted and waterproofed.

There is a huge rock just across the street from the trailer, which makes it interesting to pull out of this spot...


but, it is a lot of fun for little boys to climb on of course.

We played in the playground...


Then we went down to the beach and had a good time in the sun (yes there was sun...)



There were beautiful views...







And a good time was had by all. By the way, all boys throw rocks into the water, now don't they?



It was a perfect 74 degrees Saturday, nice and warm. Sunday it cooled off a bit to 68, and Monday morning we got a fair amount of rain. We slept in Monday and by the time we got out to pack up the trailer, the rain had tapered off. We had only scattered drizzle for the way home fortunately.

We get 8 miles to the gallon on the beast, towing the enormous trailer. That's about 50c a mile for those of you doing the math... That's an effective range of exactly 200 miles on a $100 tank of gas... DANG.

Well, its expensive but a lot of fun to go camping... Next time it's off to Canada in June.

Today we visited Bainbridge Island and some relatives there. Fortunately they had a treehouse where my son and my wife were able to climb up...

Then, we had a nice dinner, and headed back to the mainland.

The foot bridge from land over to the ferry was an interesting mesh of wood and metal, in an interesting pattern.

The ferry we took from Bainbridge back to Seattle was the Tacoma. Here is a stately picture of her helm.

It was a long day for sure. We finally made it back home, tired but having had a good time.

Being silly... its all part of being a tyke. It's all good.

Our friend the Barred Owl returned this hot afternoon, to hunt for his dinner. He prefers the small maple tree in the corner of the yard, so that's a convenient place to take some good pictures. Today was kind of challenging for pictures because of the hour of the day and the bright sun-dappled leaves in the background behind him. It's nice for me because he doesn't seem to mind when I walk up very near to him with my camera. Here are a couple more shots I snapped today. Enjoy!

Today is the first time this year when I've left my coat at home. It was almost 60 degrees this morning, and supposed to be a hot afternoon. I didn't like the prospect of actually having to carry my jacket back with me as I hike up the hill this afternoon, so I left it home. It was a good thing the bus had the air conditioning running this morning though, so it was a comfortable 60 degrees inside... [sheesh]. Today is supposed to be a record-breaker, as Summer once again rears its ugly head.

It's wild kingdom here at the Boal residence. This doe and her fawn were spotted today wandering through the yard. M took this, as I was already on the bus by 7am. Didn't get a good shot of the fawn though, but I'm sure they'll be back.

I didn't get him on camera, but saw a big raccoon wander across the front yard the other day as well. He likes the cherries at the top of the tree, but they aren't quite out yet.