Once Again Maxine Has Made Me Homesick For Washington & Japanese Fishing Floats

Last Thursday, in a blogging titled A Hot July Day In Texas Thinking About Catching A Llama With Maxine I lamented about a Maxine salmon barbecue that had me thinking, yet again, about moving back to the Wonders of Washington.

Rarely a week goes by, of late, where someone from Washington does not send me something which makes me feel a bit homesick.

Yesterday it happened again, once again via Maxine.

Last Friday Maxine told me over the weekend she was floating the ferry to the Olympic Peninsula to drive to a knitter's convention in a cabin on the beach in Moclips.

Moclips?

The name was totally familiar, but my memory of place names and their location in Washington is fading as the years of exile pile up. I had to look up Moclips on my Street Finder program to restore my memory that Moclips is slightly north of Copalis, which had me further appalled at the sad state of my failing memory.

Copalis, as a kid, was just about my favorite place we would journey to for a weekend of camping, or a week of summer vacation. There was a store in Copalis which had all sorts of fun stuff.  Every trip to Copalis my brother and I would go to that store and spend a lot of time deciding what balsa wood rubber band propelled airplane we would buy and fly.

I was last in Copalis and Moclips the summer of 2004. I remember quite clearly that it was near Copalis I first saw the Tsunami Evacuation Route signs which had been added since the last time I visited Washington's Pacific coast.

With all the brouhaha of late regarding the impending 9.2 long overdue SUPER QUAKE off the Washington/Oregon coast, and its predicted 300 foot Tsunami, I wonder if those evacuation routes have been altered. Getting oneself to high ground above 300 feet would present a challenge along much of the coast.

In the picture above I am fairly certain we are looking at Maxine, standing on the Moclips beach, with the Pacific Ocean and a very bright sunset creating a Maxine halo, even though Maxine told me she took the photos she sent me. I think the above one may be an exception.

You looking at these photos, who have never been to the west coast, does it surprise you that a Pacific beach can be such a big flat space?

Above, that line you see across the horizon under the setting sun, that would be the line of waves crashing in from the Pacific Ocean.

Maxine told me she and her fellow knitters had fun finding sand dollars on the beach. Finding sand dollars constituted a really fine time when I was a kid.

Another big deal when I was a kid, on the beach at Copalis, and other Pacific beaches, was finding Japanese glass fishing floats. These were glass balls of various sizes, some quite large, which Japanese fishing boats used to float their nets.

The floating balls would break free and journey across the Pacific to wash ashore on Washington beaches. I do not know if this still happens. I suspect Japanese fishing fleets no longer use glass balls. I do know that Japanese glass fishing floats are currently valuable collector items.

I do not remember if me and my brother ever found a Japanese fishing float. I do remember we had ourselves a mighty fine time looking for one....