Crabbers, Trees and Mantle

Hello there!  Well, my husband Dayle, son Travis, grandson Caleb and my son's work friend Ernie had a successful crabbing trip on Friday and Saturday.  They drove over 2 hours to Garibaldi on the Oregon Coast, and launched our boat in Tillamook Bay.  Each of them were allowed 12 crabs and they got 25 "keepers" on that first day.  They actually caught several hundred but you have to measure them and can only keep ones that are 5 3/4s inches across, so they had to toss back most of them.  Here is one happy crabber with a big one.

7 year old Caleb is a natural at this!  Here he is measuring one and as you can see it is much bigger than the legal size!  Look at that face.  :-)

They filled our big cooler with sea water and put the keepers in there until they could clean and boil them.  The guys brought a large stock pot with them, and bought a propane burner there at the coast and cleaned and cooked all 25 of the crabs in the hotel parking lot that night.. LOL!!  They were the center of attention there, that's for sure.

The first day was fair and sunny and warm but they spent the night there and were back on the water early on Saturday - here is our little deck hand - he's all warm in a coat and waterproof slicker - his life jacket is under there too.  He kind of looks like an Eskimo, doesn't he?

I asked Dayle to have Travis drop him off at the dock and get some photos of the boat on the water.. which he did.  :-)

This was all of their first time of crabbing on our boat, I was very proud of our son Travis who got the crab pots and figured out how to do it all.  They used 6 crab pots (traps) and used them all to great advantage.

They caught 7 crabs on the second day - they tried a different spot - putting in at Netarts on the Nehalem Bay and found that it wasn't nearly as good a place for catching as Tillamook Bay.  Live and learn!

Our boy at the helm of Sea Wolf.

When it was time to wrap it up Caleb got to toss out the leftover bait which was chicken parts and the sea gulls were loving that!

I made some Continental Cocktail Sauce for the crab and it was tasty.  Here are the last 7 crabs after being cleaned and steamed.  Kristi fixed up a bowl of fresh salad greens and put out bowls of olives, mini corn, tomatoes and dressing for us to have crab salad.  My sweet husband picked (shelled) a few crabs for my salad for me.. and I had a perfectly ripe avocado on mine, too.  She also got some bake-and-serve scissor rolls which we had hot with the meal.  It was divine!

Yesterday my blog friend Kathy texted me to ask me if I wanted to drive over and pick up a couple green leaf Japanese Maples that she didn't want any longer -- so off we went.  She had this big huge Jade plant on her deck.. covered with flower buds!  

Her husband was in his airplane hangar working on his new plane.. a piper.  While we were visiting a couple small airplanes took off from the grass runway behind their house, very exciting for me.. I love planes.

Here is the large maple tree in her front yard, the mother of the small trees she gave us.  It was quite a feat to get those two trees in my Ford Flex.  And even harder to get them out.. lol.  

I put the one glass fishing float on the mantel so I thought I'd show you a photo.  I have 2 vintage brass ships lanterns there and a print of 2 tall ships in a race by Captain Lars.  I actually traded website work for this print and picked it up at Captain Lars house in California and had a nice chat with him and his wife.

Our living room doesn't have much natural light, that's why we "live" in the family room with a nice bay window at our backs.. :-)

I'm off to swim this afternoon.. you won't believe this.. I was informed when I swam there on Friday that the facility was closing for a month and a half for remodeling, not to open until after the first of the year.  Are you ready for that?  Now what?  Harumph.  We're having a sunny day today which is lovely.  

Tomorrow is election day.  I voted by mail.  I hope she wins.  :-)  Back on Wednesday with a report on that front.  ((hugs)), Teresa :-)