Since the news has been slow over the holidays and I was out of town for four days I’m going to skip the normal news this week and focus on some of the stuff I saw during my weekend with family at Ocean Shores, WA.

On Saturday we went to the interpretive center where they had a very helpful and informative staffer working. When we were talking about the whales they have in the area after he was able to discern that we were all pro-science and told us about a complaint he received a while back when he was talking about the evolution of ears and teeth in whales he got in some trouble for using that nasty “e” word, since the interpretive center is owned by the city he had to modify his language to the less “offensive” term “adaptation.” That’s just ridiculous. If you find talk of evolution or long ages offensive then stay away from places that talk about nature.

One exhibit they had which definitely picked up on my incredulity was about Sasquatch. A few years back somebody found this foot print and the picture is of the actual police cast.

They also had a map of the number of big foot “sightings” from around North America and it’s interesting to note that the highest numbers are in places like British Columbia, California, Washington, Oregon, and Florida all know for high rates of the usage of various recreational drugs, including ones that can have hallucinogenic effects, as well as various pictures.

Our trip happened to be timed perfectly to see snowy owls. They migrate down from the arctic every 5-7 years when the supply of their main food source, lemmings, is too low to support them. The picture is of a male and a female from about 20 meters. Seeing them in Washington was well worth the mile hike each direction with the cold weather and very strong wind.

Ocean Shores is on a small peninsula that helps form Grey’s Harbor, here’s part of the north jetty that helps protect the harbor entrance.

Of course no trip to the beach is complete without a sunset, fortunately the weather was perfect on Sunday to catch one. Although, even during the middle of the day the clouds were right and the angle of the sun this close to the solstice was perfect for creating some cool colors.

Aside from all of that, it was a wonderful trip and I had a great time hanging out from family. I also got a lot of good ideas for future blog posts.