Fourth of July Weekend

So I know that I'm a week late in posting about our fourth of July weekend...we spent our free time at home playing mah jongg with my parents (with my dad being the only winner out of the four of us).

On the 3rd, we met our friends at Woodland Park Zoo. Nick's never been there, and I seriously think the last time I visited was when Merak, Erin, Emily, Janet Miller, Katherine Nordell and I (actually, I'm not sure if that's right) had to do some tourism video for Australia as part of our 8th grade social studies class. Back then, we hit all of the animals that originated from Australia and made a short video of that animal with Emily providing narration. Unfortunately, what we didn't realize was that there was a lag between the time the 'record' button was pressed and the beginning of the actual recording. This resulted in nearly all of our video clips being very, very short, with almost no narration because Emily spoke before the camera started recording. The one moment that I remember quite vividly was the clip of the emu, which was really a split second of the emu, with Emily saying "mu." It was sad, but very amusing...I think we actually got an A for the video in the end.

Anyway, back to this year's visit...we started off seeing some of the farm animals. We got there before they opened, so we couldn't actually pet any of the animals, but we were able to see them. One of the chickens was very talkative and was striking up a conversation with anyone that walked passed (admittedly, it was a very one-sided conversation). The bunnies were cute too, but we found the choice of this rabbit's friend as being a bit strange:

We then went and saw cows, flamingos, and the new penguin exhibit. There were peacocks roaming the grounds, and Nick was able to catch this picture of one 'flying' down:


Later on, I got to feed some birds, which was really fun for me. The seeds were affixed to a popsicle stick, and if you just held it out, a bird (or two) would come down and start eating the seeds. I loved watching the birds up close. They were totally fixated on eating the seeds, and once the seeds were gone, they left (no love...). Seriously, I could have fed them for an hour. Merak, Nick, and Emily had to drag me out of the room 'cuz I was about to buy another feeding stick.

We then headed home for the day. Later that night Nick and I went to the Dahlia Lounge for dinner, mainly because I love their freshly made doughnuts. Their food is good too, but really, I go for the doughnuts. The come freshly fried and in a paper bag filled with sugar and cinnamon. The server shakes the bag, cuts it open, and then places it down on a plate with a side of homemade jam (it was apricot that night) and vanilla mascarpone. After I devoured them, I was contemplating ordering another one, but Nick convinced me that I would totally regret it afterward.

For the 4th, we drove up north with my parents to my aunt and uncle's home in Burlington. It's roughly a one hour drive up I-5, with great views of various mountain ranges that surround Western Washington. Our day's activity was going out on their 20' boat to catch some crabs. It was just the guys on the boat 'cuz that's all the boat could really fit, my mom and aunt stayed home to prep the kitchen for crab cooking.

We untied the boat from the dock and made the long, slow drive out of the 'no wake' zone. I think it was 20 minutes of us going like 3 miles an hour...but if we went the other way to get out of the marina, it would have been 30 minutes. After we cleared the protected marina, we quickly zoomed to the crab trap location, loaded three crab pots with bait (apparently, crabs like turkey legs and chicken), and dropped them in the water. We had to wait an hour, so my uncle took us through Deception Pass to a location with seaweed, which we were going to harvest (yes, my family harvests seaweed from the sea...). Did you know that even though seaweed is very plentiful in the waters, you're only allowed to take home 10 lbs. per trip?

After that excursion, we returned to pick up the crab pots only to find that all of the ones that we caught we too small (in WA, I think the minimum size is 6 1/4 inches). We released them back into the water, loaded the traps and dropped them in again and waited. Our second attempt was more successful in that we caught three large Red Rock crabs, but that was it...and Red Rocks aren't very tasty, so we weren't going to eat them later that night. My parents took them home to make soup.

So in the end, our crab excursion was a failure. For dinner, we ate Dungeness crabs that my aunt and uncle caught earlier in the week (Nick had pot roast since he's allergic to shellfish). And then we went back home and played mah jongg.

If you want to see pictures, you can find them here. I hope all of you had a great fourth of July as well.