We awoke to a beautiful day with wall-to-wall blue skies. I was out paddling early, eager to see what I could find with this super-low tide. I scoured the shoreline, looking for critters. I wasn’t having much luck, until I ran across this giant sea star. It was so big I thought it might be some albino octopus. It’s legs looked to be at least 12 inches long.

Then, I spotted a Loon in the distance. I paddled, and paddled, and paddled some more, trying to get between him and the sun, and close enough to get a shot. Each time I thought I had him, he’d dive, and then I’d paddle some more. He finally wore me out. I took this one poor shot and headed back for the boat.

On my way I spotted a bear on the beach, too far away to get a shot, of course.  Oh, well.

Al decided he wanted to take a look at the lagoon, which we’ve never been able to get into before, because of the nasty rapids and rocks that block the entrance.  Since there is a Spring Tide today, he thought we might have a chance with the higher tide. So, we hopped in the dinghy an hour before high tide, hoping to wait around until the tide turned, and then float on in to the lagoon. It was a beautiful day, and the view of the mountains behind the lagoon was gorgeous.

 

Unfortunately, there were a million “Little Biters”, as I call them. They are sneaky little buggers and their bite itches for at least 10 days. They like to bite me on my hands when I’m taking pictures.

After an hour of waiting and swatting, the water was still pouring into the lagoon, creating very nasty rips and an overfall at the narrows. This lagoon is obviously bigger than we thought, which means it takes longer to fill up. So, we waited some more.

While we were waiting, I spotted this cute Sandpiper bobbing along the shore.

After waiting another 30 minutes there were still rapids in the narrows, even though the tide was starting to drop.

There were some nasty boulders starting to surface behind us. If we waited too long, we’d be trapped. We decided it wasn’t worth the risk of ruining our prop, so we headed back to the boat. Oh, well. We probably just missed seeing more water, trees, and rocks.