Rattlesnakes and Frogs

The first week in October, I went camping with friends from the hiking club in the Yakima River valley, east of the Cascades.  Rena, Dave and Emilia joined me for the hike up to the ridge.  On the way I got to see my first rattlesnake!  It was a young one and too cold to do much more than complain.  By the end of the hike, we had 7 reports of more sightings.  My real excitement was losing my footing on a steep gully and tumbling 2 revolutions before coming to a stop.  I was only scraped up.  When I opened my eyes, my first thought was "snakes?" Then I started the mental check of my limbs.

The next weekend I was joined by a new friend to walk on Dungeness Spit.  We had some good surf. One beached log had an interesting shape.  The end of the month was Halloween.  Emilia and I found the perfect frog costume at Goodwill, on a senior citizen Wednesday, of course.  Rena was smart and practiced her wearing it before the BIG DAY.  Rena took off work early and I went with them to enjoy the show!  We did a little visiting on BI, too. She figured out what was in the shiny wrappers on her way home from the West Seattle merchant trick or treat "parade".  After supper, Dave and Rena did the rounds of the friends in their neighborhood.  I am posting one photo here. The rest are on a link at the bottom of the page.