The Scotch Broom Is In Bloom

Yellow blooms are everywhere, along the highways, fields, woods, you name it. Scotch Broom came from Europe and was introduced to the Pacific Northwest by Captain Colquhoun Grant of Sooke, Vancouver Island, around 1850. Since then it can only be described as an invasion as the plant has spread throughout the area and in many areas has choked out native plants. Some varieties have been intentionally planted along freeways because it is pretty and can exist in hostile environments, poor soil and hot weather conditions. Why it is named for the Scots is a mystery. The blossoms are certainly brilliant and beautiful. The blooms have a distinct aroma and certainly must trigger some folks allergies. It can grow in nitrogen poor soil as it makes its own nitrogen. Even though many consider it a pest it does enrich the soil.

We have been in Washington since May 20th. We spent a week at Gig Harbor RV Park, they had one open space. Lucky us! We have been in Belfair for the past week at Belfair State Park. The park is located on the Hood Canal. Hood Canal was named by Royal Navy Captain George Vancouver for Admiral Lord Samuel Hood in 1792. What one won't do to please the boss! The experts say that the canal is not a canal but a fjord. Who knew? Hood Canal stretches about 50 miles from its mouth where it takes a sharp turn at the The Great Bend and doubles back about 15 miles, ending in shallow tide flats in Lynch Cove. Belfair State Park is situated very close to the end on Lynch Cove and has great beaches and tide flats. Hood Canal is renowned for its oysters and the tide flats adjacent to the Park are teeming with them. There have been a number of minus tides since we have been here and we have been out gathering oysters several times. The limit is 18 oysters over 2-1/2" long, per person. There are thousands of oysters and the flats exposed at minus tides are so rife with them that it is difficult to walk on the beds. We found the tastiest ones to be 3-4" in length and it usually takes about an hour to walk down to the end of the beach, gather a limit, shuck them and return to the motor home. On public beaches the shells have to be left on the beach because smaller oysters are often growing on them. It is easy to find find clusters of 5-6 large oysters growing in a clump with many smaller ones also attached. Taking the shells off the beach can result in a $200 fine, no excuses accepted! Clams can be found here also but are not as plentiful. We dug them once and found them hard to find but delicious!

Our summers seem to find excitement and this one has been no exception. On several occasions we have had a motor home dash warning light illuminate showing a problem with the ABS system and the message "brake failure"! That will get your attention! We didn't see any degradation of our braking ability but still, it made us nervous. Then we received a recall in the mail on our brake system so off we went to the nearest dealer. We're getting the brakes repaired on Wednesday!

We barbecued on Memorial Day. We had a nice roast on the grill and Suzy and Hal, Anne's daughter and son-in-law came over from Kirkland to spend the day with us. We saw a little smoke from the grill but grease fires are common and we didn't pay much attention. Shortly there were flames all over the back of the grill so we quickly doused the flames with a water hose. Hot, flaming grease had dripped into the grease pan (plastic) below the unit. The plastic ignited and the flames spread to the plastic end tables which is when we noticed the problem. I think a plastic drip pan in a metal grill is a design flaw! We have repair parts now but the grill will forever have its scars to remind of what happened.

We have determined that there are no geeks in the squad. We expect that you are familiar with the Geek Squad from Best Buy. Computer experts that buzz around in little cars to solve your technical problems. Just before Memorial Day Don's computer crashed. Dead, no life, no boot, no options, just dead! Finding Best Buy open on a holiday seemed like a blessing but an ill wind was blowing. A very patient and courteous clerk (they have no technicians) took my laptop and over $200 and promised that they would check all the hardware and then identify and fix the problem. Be patient, we'll call you. Almost a week later they called and told me that the hardware was fine but that they could not repair the Operating System so it would have to be completely rewritten, completely destroying everything else on the disk. They gave me several options on backing up my data before they completely restored my computer to its state when purchased. I was assured that I could retrieve the data off the "defective" drive once it was out of the PC and so I chose to have a new hard drive installed because that option didn't cost much more than the other options given me for backup to DVDs. Several days later I got my "new" computer back with about a $300 charge for parts and labor and headed home, only to find that my old drive was unreadable. I quickly returned to Best Buy to be told that it would cost another $500-700 to send the drive out to recover the data. They assured me that they could not read the disk. I declined and left in extreme frustration, now having spent close to $500 and NOT having any of my data. The moral here is make backups NOW! On the way back to the park I stopped at a local computer repair hole-in-the-wall shop in Gorst. This was about 5:00 PM. The PC guru was on a house call but I was promised he would look at my disk drive as soon as he returned. In less than two hours I received a call and was told that my disk had a couple of file errors but they were easily repaired and that they were able to read the disk, my data was still intact and recoverable. Come pick it up in the morning after 10! I was told that in addition to fixing the file errors, all it would have needed was a Windows repair and I would have been back in business! BTW, these folks that truly fixed my PC charged me nada, zip, zilch, nothing, zero! They told me they had lots of Best Buy stories, none of them good.

There are lots of birds on the beach and every time we walk along the beach path one bird in particular gets a little frantic. We think she is a sandpiper and her behavior alerted us that she probably had a nest nearby. We found it, three spotted eggs, really out in the open, but well camouflaged. Whenever we approach mom makes lots of noise and flutters away acting injured so that we will chase her and move away from her nest. We hope the eggs hatch.