Friday, May 16, 2014

Golden Gardens Tour

BWA HA HA! The word of the week thing is dead, which means I am without a topic. Or boundaries. You know what that means??

PICTURES!

This is the beach at Golden Gardens - a city park directly north of the marina where we live. This is Seattle at 7:30 in the morning in May. The sun is coming up on the right hand side of the photo. Left is west. You're looking north. It's almost impossible to see in this little photo, but there's a guy swimming in that frigid water. Sure, he was wearing a wet suit, but daaaang. The water temps around here are between 50 and 55 degrees F. Also? May is jelly fish breeding season. Noooo, thank you.




Yeah, sure. Seagull. Great wildlife score there, Marcella. Mostly, I was just impressed with how sharp the image is when I've got the telephoto dialed way in on the bird. Kind of impressed, too, that he deigned to look at me just as I snapped a photo. See the point sticking out in the water in the photo above? That's where the seagulls were hanging out. It's true that we have more than our fair share of seagulls. They nest in the breakwater. (Huge sea wall of great big boulders that shelter boats from wave action, creating a sheltered moorage.) Every evening, the seagulls swarm, shrieking and alarm-calling because the bald eagles soar low over the rookery looking for seagull chicks to snack upon.

These pilings are all that are left from a couple of docks and boardwalks. The park had originally been developed in 1907 by a real estate speculator trying to lure people out of the city (and sell them a lot somewhere along the way...) The problem with docks in this location is that the sand spit juts way out into the water and the slope down is so gradual, that low tides dry the whole thing. Any boats tied up to this dock would have been aground for half the day. So when the city took over the park, the docks and boardwalks were removed. Walking paths have been established above the tide line, but the beach sand is always available for strolling. 







And even though Puget Sound is technically inland water, it still packs a powerful punch. Storm surge throws all kinds of stuff around. Including rocks into the hollows of beach logs.










This is probably plenty of graphics to ask your browser to load. So I'll leave you with one last shot from the morning of this photo expedition. 8:30. I came home to this:
 

2 comments:

  1. Great pictures! Thanks for sharing :-)

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  2. The picture of the rocks nestled into the log could be made into a nice print for my wall!

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