A beautiful sunset, a quiet moment, and they had the world to themselves.
Category: Dungeness
Theme Day: Landmark
Today’s City Daily Photo theme challenge is “landmark” and one of Sequim’s oldest and most distinctive is the New Dungeness Lighthouse. Opened in 1857 it guides maritime traffic away from the hazard of Dungeness Spit which juts into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The lighthouse is a five mile walk down the Dungeness Spit beach. Most people see it at a distance from land. But the New Dungeness Lighthouse Association, which maintains the station, supports a program that allows weeklong stays for volunteer lighthouse keepers (including transport in a four wheel vehicle). Volunteers stay in the Keeper’s Quarters, the building to the right, do light maintenance, and offer tours to visitors who’ve made the long walk to the lighthouse.
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Cattails in the sunset
The cattails at Dungeness Recreation Area grew taller this summer than any year since we’ve been here, helped, I think, by flooding from a nearby irrigation canal. The “dusk” setting on my new little (lightweight!) camera gave me the first passable silhouette in the past two months I’ve tried to photograph them.
Now you see it
It was clear when we started walking. Then the fog rolled in. See the sliver of sun above the tree? It was gone by the time I tried to snap a third shot.
You decide
This piece of driftwood almost looks as if it’s clawing its way out of the surf. Or is it my overactive imagination again?
Really? There??
Looking at my shot yesterday a couple of people noted that the ground under the bluff at Dungeness Recreation Area didn’t look all that solid. Too right! So you can imagine my surprise a day or two later when we noticed the people shown above staging an intimate little photo shoot below the bluff, not far from yesterday’s shot.
This is not an accessible area. You can rappel down the sandy cliff or walk back along the beach from Dungeness Spit. However it’s accessed this is not a good place to perch and I’m sure that the area manager would be plenty upset.
Here’s a longer perspective of this spot taken a couple of years ago. You may notice a speck of bird — that’s an eagle. This spot is favored by birds, mostly seagulls. So even if it were a sensible place for taking pictures it wouldn’t rank high in my book for somewhere to lie down. Notice all the white specks in the shot up above? They’re not feathers.
Spectator sport
We’ve had some spectacular sunsets lately with lots of people driving out to the Dungeness Recreation Area bluffs to take them in. Some pull up, hop out, take a picture or two, and drive off. Others linger. Part of this group even took a walk, something I heartily recommend.