Easter Sunday on Whidbey Island

Easter weekend found us visiting our great friends, Leslie and Duri, on Whidbey Island. They moved to the "rain shadow" a couple of years ago from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and Greenville, South Carolina. As far as I can tell, they love it and are still recovering from years of suppressive heat. The weather over the weekend started with a dramatic touch--wind, rain, rain, wind, wind, canceled ferry, rain, wind, and some wind-blown rain. But the weather cleared and the Olympics put on a show.


They have a great place on a number of acres, not far from Coupeville. It's in the woods and the birds were showing the bees what life is all about. Spring was in the air, if you get my drift. The place was buzzing with hummingbirds and humming with bees.












Easter Sunday dawned clear and beautiful, although still a bit windy and not hot. But, what better to do on a cool, beautiful Easter Sunday than go for a walk on the beach? Beaches up there have lots of rocks, which set a certain member of our group to collecting, and collecting to the point that we could have used some helper springs in the rear end of the car.

There's not a lot of public beach up there, so we headed for a few parks. I liked this scene--sort of like walking towards the beginning of civilization, or at least occupancy...





People on Whidbey seem to be into building little forts or huts on the beach using driftwood along with flotsam and jetsam that washes up. There were some pretty cool huts, bordering on art installations, I thought.














Whidbey also has, in my opinion, a lot of washed-up trees with root wads attached. Some are pretty new, while it's clear that some have been there for a long time. I guess they are a result of some very active erosion that is trying to move one side of the island to the other. The side on the Strait of Ιωάννης Φωκάς (that was translated to Juan de Fuca, who was actually a Greek navigator working for the Spanish, but the Strait was named by some British fur trader a couple centuries later. Go figure.) seems windier and less protected, so the soil, preferring to be lapped at gently instead of being pummeled by waves, is trying to get alee, as Rex Parker would say. Duri says Fuca means "blows." I might believe him, but then how would a Slovak know what the Spanish translation of Greek means in English? Anyway, we found this root wad which worked as a fine picture frame!


We headed back to the hacienda (or αγρόκτημα, keeping with the whole Spanish and Greek thing) for a traditional Veľkonočné večera, or Slovakian Easter dinner of ham, beets and horseradish, a custard-sort-of-cheese, and hard-boiled eggs. Duri had to call his mom back in the old country to get the recipe for the custard-sort-of-cheese. The call was worth it. Leslie cooked up some asparagus which Duri allowed on the table, but not without a certain disdain. "Slovaks run from anything green," was his pronouncement.