Admiralty Head Lighthouse, Coupeville Whidbey Island
Whidbey Island along the Puget Sound, north of Seattle, WA is along rugged terrain, surrounded by water. In Coupeville, one of the oldest towns in the State of Washington in Ebey’s Landing Natural Historic Reserve, one can find Fort Casey Historical State Park with historic military batteries and a lighthouse built in 1903.
Fort Casey Historical State Park
We enjoyed wandering the charming towns, taking hikes along seemingly gorgeous views, and indulging in the plump tasty Penn Cove mussels plucked out of adjoining Penn Cove. To our surprise, though, was the terrific Sculpture Forest hidden in the woods within Coupeville.
The 15-acre parcel was donated to the city by resident Scott Price who built in the area, but decided against building on this particular land he had purchased. Of hearing that the forest would be demolished and replaced with residential developments, he opted to find a way to preserve the natural habitat of the environment.
Price Sculpture Forest
Price worked with the adjoining US Navy and the city to develop a Conservation Easement, that preserves and protects the landscape.
He then worked with the community to blaze trails through the dense forest and locals to affix sculpture and artwork along the path.
We found ourselves alone in this free installation, wandering amongst the birds and animals in their natural habitat, enjoying the incredible creativity of artists in a foggy, eerie environment. We absolutely loved it – and the fantastic charitable story of generosity and determination that went with it.
California’s coastline is full of gorgeous scenic views as the ocean comes up to meet a mountainous, rocky, sometimes forested landscape.
One of the places we like to frequent along the Central Coast is Morro Bay. Morro Bay’s distinguishing landmark is Morro Rock, as it juts out from the seabed as a beacon to fishermen, boatsmen, and tourists.
Morro Bay has a lot to offer to for the visitor, including activities like fishing, surfing, kayaking, or hiking. At low tide, one can walk around Morro Rock, or meander through the many shops or restaurants along the main drag, or gawk at the serenity of this beautiful spot where picturesque sailboats abound.
I wanted to choose a variety of different techniques and grizzly behaivor in my Best of:
Demonstrating ACTION
BEARSCAPE
ATMOSPHERE
and CUTE BABIES
I had a hard time deciding. Given the same task to 10 people, I would probably get 10 different answers. As it is, my husband and I don’t even agree on the best. You decide your favorite.
We just returned from an amazing adventure north of Vancouver, where we spent a week among grizzly bears. It was great fun to observe their behaviors and personalities.
We saw WALKING BEARS
WADING BEARS
BOBBING BEARS
BABY BEARS
even DANCING BEARS
and BEACHED BEAR
and FISHING BEARS
The Chinook salmon that are born in the freshwater Chilko Lake, leave when they are small fry, not much more than 6″ long for broader horizons, as they swim downstream and into the ocean. They travel as far as Alaska over the next 2 years before making a loop and heading back to Chilko Lake where they spawn, laying their eggs.
The grizzlies come down off the mountain and fill up for the winter prior to hibernation, while the salmon come to lay their eggs and die. Many of the salmon are already dead and the bear walk around the lake on two feet to feel around for fish and spend the day getting their fill.
Mom teaches her COY (Cubs Of the Year) to fish and swim across the lake.
We got to know some of their habits, and had fun just watching their individual characteristics. After fishing for salmon their would shake their head and and rip off the salmon skin like it was a delicacy.
We enjoy the Grand Canyon- North Rim. In particular we love the Rainbow Trail and it’s many gorgeous viewpoints and vistas. Sublime Point and Toroweap are other personal favorites, but are along long, rough dirt roads, and require reservations & permits in advance.
We enjoy the secluded dispersed camping, which unfortunately, has gotten harder to find with the Forest Service closing roads and commandeering many coveted spots and most lakes around AZ. The back roads of the North Rim, outside the National Park are exceptional areas that one can still dispersed camp.
We decided to explore the area behind DeMotte Campground in the Saddle Mountain Wilderness. The views along FR610 & 611 are vast and stunning, with views of the East Rim, Marble Viewpoint, and Saddle Mountain overlook. Definitely an area worth further exploration and future camping adventures.
We are always thrilled to see any animals. Our Arizona monsoon season has brought some rain making the grass grow lush green and weeds stretch for the sky.
What do they say, ‘sometimes it’s hard to see the forest through the trees’? In this case you can barely see the animals through the overachieving grass.
I have become pretty attuned to animals, having observed their habits and behaviors. Despite how amazingly quiet they trudge through the crackle of the forest undergrowth, we have been able to spot and find animals throughout our travels.
Moreover, I am always happy when I can capture a decent shot in that often fleeting moment that presents itself when they wander cross our path, or is it when we cross their path.
Nonetheless, maybe the saying is right in it’s meaning – am I too focused on the animals in getting a full frame shot that I have forgotten the bigger picture of the environment in which they live.
It’s funny. I’ve become an advocate for cloudy skies as they yield great sunrises and sunsets, rather than the blue blue skies I used to covet. (See my recent post here… https://kritterspix.com/2024/07/03/whitehorse-lake/ ).
We recently scheduled a trip on a pre-defined time we put on our calendar. The date came, and we went camping.
We got nothing but blue sky and no sunrise or sunset to speak of. But the osprey didn’t seem to mind, and we enjoyed watching them fish.
Sometimes when things don’t work out as planned, find the good in what you are given. We felt privileged to witness these magnificent osprey fishing for breakfast.
You may have heard of nastursiums. I just love this plant, as it’s not only colorful and beautiful to look at, both the leaves and flowers are edible. It adds great color and taste to salads and dishes that we really enjoy. I couldn’t say how many seeds we have planted. Suffice it to say – a lot! Apparently, the bunnies find them tasty as well, as we have caught bunnies on several occasions munching away and then hopping off.
If you read my post about our sundial (https://kritterspaw.com/2023/10/15/dont-do-this-at-home/), we recently built a retaining wall that included two paver stone pads we built. Our intent was to build some interesting art for the two pads. The sundial being the first, most straight forward project.
For the second pad art, we decided to make a ‘bunny pad’ with nastursiums. Since we couldn’t grow nastursiums, why not build them. And to complete the scene we purchased an outdoor bunny to leap through the nastursium patch.
I must admit this is one of our more creative projects and required a lot of visualization. We started by making prototype nastursium leaves. We tested metal blades fitted to our scroll saw. After breaking a number of blades we scrapped the idea and tried a nibbler attachment mounted to our power drill.
Once we had a number of cardboard patterns drawn up we laid them out on sheet metal to build our mock-ups. With the flat metal irregular disks cut, we had to figure out how to make them look like leaves, so we began cutting individual wires and spot welding them onto the disks. This proved to be a very tedious task, so we abandoned it in favor of a chisel and hammer.
We painted a few to see how them might look and once we found the method viable we began production and built a hundred leaves.
Now that we had plenty of leaves built we had to ponder the base.
We bent rebar around the ID of the paver ‘bunny’ pad, and began bending and welding spiral ‘stems’ around it.
Now that we had the base built, it’s time to figure out how to attach the leaves. We used wire to coil the stems around the base ‘vines’, making sure the leaves could be detachable so that the base and leaves could be separately painted.
We mig welded the coiled stem to the base to permanently attach.
We moved on to the flowers, and built several metal flowers that didn’t come out well. So we sought the internet and found some stamped flowers we thought would work. We bought two different flowers in hopes that one would do the job. Once we had them in hand, we found neither to be sufficient by itself, so we opted to build an assembly of the two flowers, and some custom bent wires for stamin.
We began the tedious task of punching and grinding holes in each flower to accept a screw to assemble them.
Next we bent the stamin to build each individual flower. We figure for the 100 flowers we built, 5 stamin each, we made 500 individual stamins for each flower. A time consuming task to be sure.
Finally with a hundred flowers built, we could move on to meticuously attaching them to our base, intermixed with our nastursium leaves.
Once we had finally completed the manufacture and assembly of all the flowers and leaves, we had to take it back apart to paint each. The base would be a dark green, while the leaves a lighter leafy green.
The flowers were to be painted 4 different colors and then individually detailed.
With all the painting completed, we could re-assemble all the leaves and flowers n the base, hoping to get them all in the ‘right’ pleasing location.
By now, you’re thinking, holy crap, why bother to go to so much work. Admittedly, sometimes we ask ourselves the same thing! But it’s art, a concept not shared by all. Something that resonates with the eye of the beholder for it’s beauty and the emotion it evokes.
The Oxford dictionary defines art as ‘the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power’. For us, it’s a creative outlet and challenging endeavor that allows us to solve problems while creating something interesting, unique, and fun. This particular project has been a test of our power of visualization, ingenuity, and innovation…. and it is definitely, one of a kind.
Indeed, people have all kinds of hobbies. Some are content to sit back and watch tv. I always lament, ‘it keeps us out of the bars’. More than that, our projects give us a creative, thoughtful outlet, keep us busy, engaged, and add an attractive decoration. If we’re lucky, it’s thought-provoking and intriguing.
It’s not like we go out looking for projects. I swear they just come to us.
We have a chain we put across our driveway when we are off the mountain, but as we have aged I think it has gotten heavier. So we decided we should replace it with a gate – a 16 foot long gate. Of course, we couldn’t just buy it – we’d design and build it.
We drafted up a design, bought metal, and began the process. We ground the ‘frame’ and welded it together.
With the frame built, we ground the weld joints and began to cut, bend, and weld the struts in place.
Our design included a sun & sun rays, which we decided to differentiate using re-bar. To bend the 20″ diameter sun circle we sought out something 20″ in diameter and sturdy enough to bend around – a tree!
With it cut and welded in place, we began measuring, cutting, grinding, and welding the sun rays in place.
We put supports in the corners, and began the long arduous process of grinding and polishing the joints, and welds.
We added a turnbuckle to bolster the heavy 16′ gate as needed once in place, for which we bent a hook, and threaded the bar stock such that we could tighten it.
We fit the gate so that we could tack weld the hinges, final weld, and grind.
The final steps were to manufacture and weld mounting brackets on the gate for the bear we purchased online. Then we cut and welded our previous chain as a closure mechanism.
We’re pleased with the result, as it makes for a one-of-a-kind custom entrance.
kritterspaw 