Month: July 2013

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WHIDBEY ISLAND RACE WEEK

It’s that time of year again for the sailboat races around the Whidbey Island area. The sail in Crescent Harbor, Saratoga Passage and Penn Cove. The races started today and will run through the week. Here’s a map of the race areas.

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It’s a beautiful day and just a perfect breeze out of the west, just what the sailors love. I live where the red X is and can see the races from there but walked down to the beach to get a better view. Unfortunately they were racing to the far side of the cove so I was shooting almost a half mile away. I hope you enjoy these photos and remember you can click on any one of them to see it a lot bigger.

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It got a little crowded rounding this mark. There were four boats going for it and it was some really close sailing. I have them here in sequence.

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I think the spinnaker on this boat says it all “Party”! They came in dead last.

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This boat wasn’t racing but I thought it was a nice shot of the wharf and boat.

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There was another race going on at the same time only further out toward the entrance of Penn Cove. They were small catamaran’s similar to a Hobie  Cat’s.

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What a picture perfect day on our wee little island. I hope you enjoyed the race.

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FOR THE BIRDS

This blog is “for the birds”. During this past week I seemed to noticed a lot of birds and I’ve been working on my skills to capture some of them. You have to understand that birds have a built in sense as to when you are putting the camera to your eye and zooming in preparing to take their picture. Just as you are squeezing the button they take flight. I have a rather large collection of blurred birds taking flight and blank sky with no visible birds.

Below are a collection of birds I did manage to capture this week during my daily walks. I’m not sure what they all are but will make some guesses. If you want a bigger look at these birds you can click on the image to make it larger.

Not sure what these are but I liked the silhouettes, great flappers.

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Osprey?

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Eagles

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Great Blue Heron

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Red Tail Hawk and ?

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So I guess I’m gaining on it. I think I’ll keep working at this and over time I’m sure I’ll have even more and better bird shots.

Thanks for flying with me and have a great weekend.

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“WHERE’S WALDO”, a.k.a. KennyB [ME]

I’ve been off line for a couple of days but this morning I’m back. I thought it would be fun to share where all I’ve been lately. First of all a small New England seaside village.

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Moving further west I get into the farmlands of Iowa.

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And Kansas

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Still continuing west I hit the Great Planes and the remnants of the life in the mid 1800’s.

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Traveling across the prairie I come to the Rocky Mountains and a beautiful ski lodge settle in the heavily wooded mountains.

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And finally I arrive at the Beautiful Pacific Ocean.

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The only thing that truly amazing about this trip is all these photos were take around Coupeville and the Ebey Reserve.

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Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I live in such a diverse area compacted into such a small space. I love it, I hope you do to.

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FLOWERS OF FRONT STREET

While walking along the historic Front Street in Coupeville I couldn’t help but notice all the beautiful flowers the different stores have out. Here is a smattering of those flowers.

First though, earlier on in my walk, I saw these beautiful baskets at the Prairie Center grocery store. This store is across the highway out toward Ebey Prairie.

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Back on Front Street I caught this picture of a city worker watering one of the many beautiful baskets that hang around town.

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Next is The Windjammer Gifts.

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The Seaside Spa.

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Knead and Feed Bakery.

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Aqua Gifts.

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McPherson and McPherson Law Offices.

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What a beautiful town I live in. You should come by and see it sometime.

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IT’S LEE FOR ME

This morning’s walk started in Coupeville on a beautiful clear sky sunny day. This is looking over town and across Penn Cove. The orange morning sun is bathing Mt. Baker in a nice golden glow.

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St. Mary’s Catholic Church was receiving the same warm glow from the sun.

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But I was surprised as I got closer to the other side of the island to see the “On shore push” the weather prognosticator had talked about in the evening news rolling the fog in from the southwest.

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While I often walk the same roads, there’s only so many places you can walk on a small island, I’m always surprised when I see something I’ve never seen before. I really like this chicken coupe that these people have made. It looks like the chickens have their own camper.

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I saw this Alfalfa sign which reminded me of the times my brother and I use to torment our mom and dad when we were on our summer vacations driving around the country. Every time we saw a field of alfalfa hay or even smell fresh cut alfalfa we would sing our song.

“Alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay, we feed our cows, alfalfa hay”

“Second  verse same as the first.”

“Alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay, we feed our cows, alfalfa hay”

“Third verse, a little bit worse”.

“Alfalfa hay, alfalfa hay, …” you get the idea. When we got somewhere between the twentieth verse and one hundredth verse mom would say “Shut Up” and mom would never say “shut up”. Then Pop would swing his non-driving arm around back in an attempt to smack us. It was great fun for us kids but it really got tiring for the folks.

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Here’s Ebey’s Landing looking very similar to how it looked the other day.

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All the cars, so early in the morning, were for fisherman trying their best to catch the illusive salmon. These two guys were doing a lot of fishing but no catching.

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So we now get to the subject of this post, “It’s Lee For Me”. As you saw the fog bank rolling in above it was on the “Windward” side of the island. These next two pictures are back on the “Leeward” side of the island. Because the prevailing winds are generally out of the southwest I live in the “Lee of the island”. Translate that means, sunshine 🙂

These are some boats tied to the dock at the wharf with Coupeville in the background.

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And finally I saw this huge Eagle standing on the beach near the wharf.

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What a fantastic way to end a beautiful walk around my wee island.