Making Tracks

After several days in Seattle where we made many exceptions to our diet (pastries and lattes and burgers, oh my!), we decided to take advantage of the dry weather today to walk around Blake Island, literally.  It is 4 miles to walk the perimeter.

We had rather heavy rain for many hours yesterday, so the ground was pretty squishy.  We saw lots of deer tracks.

The beach revealed a variety of creatures passing by.....

Gulls?  Ducks?  Geese?

Ours were the only human tracks we saw.

Raccoon

We saw some other cool stuff too.  We walked for probably a couple of miles on the beach, nearly half way around the island...

Clam shells on waves of sand

beach grass

Al wondered why there were pine needles sticking up from the sand, but a closer look revealed they were rooted.  NOT pine needles, but we don't know what.

killdeer

Al dubbed this 'Barnacle Beach'

Just above the beach, there was a sedimentary stone shelf.  Here, a small  waterfall was trickling.

Aren't they cute?  I started picking them up, collecting 7 to send to the grandkids, when Al say's 'There's an animal in that one -- it's alive!'  Ha, I dropped it immediately.  Well, I couldn't bear to kill something, even for my grandkids, so I settled for a picture.  I thought they were periwinkles, but my book does not say periwinkles are orange.  We saw white ones and brown ones also.  Maybe dogwinkles?  But the book doesn't say they are orange either.