Typical of Labor Day weekend here, Mother Nature dished out rain, some decent winds, dark gray clouds, and some tiny peeks of blue sky and sunshine for the holiday. Paul and I decided to take our boat out in the South Sound off Olympia and "boat camp" as some call it (we just call it hanging out and sleeping on the boat) off Hope Island Marine State Park.
Little did we know, Olympia hosts the Vintage Tug Boat Races over this weekend...this year was the 37th annual. (Where have we been?!) After mooring Saturday night in a guest slip at Swantown Marina so we could tend to some local business on Sunday morning, we shoved off and ended up right in the middle of the race course. Oops! We dodged out of the way and idled off to the side to watch three old tugs go blasting by, pushing amazing amounts of water out of their way. The grand 'Galene,' a 1942 (I think) tug we'd toured Saturday afternoon blew our socks off with an amazing race. She's huge and looks like she'd go zero to sixty in 11 minutes (as the bumper sticker on a VW Bus we saw said), but nope, after a seemingly slow start she absolutely creamed the competition. (Did they let her win out of respect? We'll never know.)
That over with, we motored across the bay and over to my mom and stepdad's cabin, where we anchored and rowed ashore for some appetizers. Then, it was off to find moorage for the night. Good timing, too, because the winds started howling. We ended up in a pretty good anchorage on the SE side of Hope Island with two sailboats and two other power boats, in it for a windy, bumpy night. We awoke to more gray and wet decks, so we knew it'd rained a little. Rather than brave the whitecaps and row ashore to walk the trails, we headed for home. It was a nice, albeit brief, boating excursion, likely our last for the year (unless Paul makes another fishing trip).
I'm home an extra day, on state mandated furlough, which is fine by me...more time to let the chickens out to range! I let Mama and the four chicks out, and to my surprise, she boogied right across the yard and hopped through the paddock fence to join the rest of the flock. She's hardly turned back. The four kiddos seem nonplussed, ranging around the relative protection of the yard, eating bugs and grass and seeds. I'm hoping they'll either find a way through the fence and join the others, or head back to their pen where I can move them to a cat carrier and transport them to their new home with the flock tonight at dark. The rest of the flock has seen them, I'm sure, but doesn't seem interested in the least! I hope it stays that way...or even better, I hope a couple of hens turn into chick protectors!
At any rate, this seems a nice way to button up the summer.
'Galene' showing the #2 boat how it's done!
Vintage charm during a sunbreak.
End of summer reality: Paul harvesting the last of the broccoli while the herd anticipates the removal of the garden fence...and weed eating galore!
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It's hard to believe that summer is over, isn't it? We are having cooler weather here in Virginia but not as cool as you all are getting!
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