~1:30 p.m to ~4:30 p.m. (I think Don mentioned these times. Unlike Jeff, I wasn't thrown to the ground and handcuffed. I just don't have a watch. I rely on the kindness of strangers. BTW, I hope I never meet the guy who could slam Jeff to the ground and break his watch.)

General Comments and Prevarications

Friday afternoon's shoreline survey began about midway along the north shore of Livingstone Bay and arced to the west before dropping down the entire west shore of the Bay and ending at the Iverson Spit County Park parking area. The afternoon was cool and breezy but sunny with a lot of those billowy white things in the sky.

This consummate stretch of shoreline had collected the complete set of substrate: mud (a lot of mud) some sand, gravel and cobble, not too mention a vast set of tinker toy logs that perhaps rivals the Elger Bay collection in total numbers.

About half the survey involved log-walking to avoid the sucking black mud. The routine was only occasionally punctuated by the slipping off of said logs. The Trimble unit was uninjured as was the digital camera. GPS Man, the Island's newest superhero, and I shrugged off the spills in manly fashion and moved on smartly to avoid being trapped against the cliffs by an incoming Fundian tidal bore. (OK, so it wasn't really like the Bay of Fundy but the tide was coming in and who knows what the tide's like down there in this remote stretch of shoreline--probably a refugia of Pleistocene megafauna. Hey, we did see a lot of tracks.)

Rules for walking on muddy substrates.

1. Walk on the beach logs instead. Get a walking stick for balance.
2. If you can't walk on the logs, walk on the Spartina "mounds".
3. If you run out of Spartina mounds, walk on mud with nice visible cracks (probe with stick as you go).
4. If you run out of areas of cracked mud, retrace your steps and re-evaluate your chosen path.
5. If for some reason you ignored rules 1-4 and have become stuck without hope of extrication, remove your jacket and lay it on the mud. Abandon your footwear and step onto the jacket. It should support you while you remove another article of clothing and head toward safe footing. Hopefully you will get there before you run out of clothing. Remember the human body is beautiful. And there are already nude beaches in Washington. So now there's a new one, big deal.

Specific Items of Interest

There are rather extensive beds of Spartina at the north end of Livingstone Bay (hence Rule #2 above). The beds have raised the beach level by approximately 4-6". The substrate is mostly mud. In areas still uncolonized by the invasive weed, curious small depressions (commonly 2-3 feet in diameter) occur. They were frequently filled with small pieces of floating wood. (Could this be a similar phenomenon to Brittany's now-famous "clay tidepools"? ) A VERY cursory examination revealed no marine organisms in these the "pools". (Anybody know what causes these shallow pits?)

Heading south along the west side of Livingstone Bay we encountered less and less Spartina and more of the native(?) beach grasses and plants including pickleweed. I don't recall seeing eelgrass, but we were pretty much hugging the shore. We did see one nice patch of Fucus spp., the common brown seaweed. About mid-way down the Bay there was a beautiful colony of that very fine stemmed shore grass in the upper tidal area (photo taken).

The GPS guardian eagle flew over once. A lot of birds (swallows, several ducks and a heron) were seen behind an abandoned diked structure about two-thirds of the way down the west shore of the Bay. It is clearly visible in aerial photos on both Island County website and the Washington Shoreline aerial photo database website. It appears to have been breached at one point and it's filled with weathered logs and water...and birds. Curious.

Just south of the diked structure was what appeared to be an old road, cut down through the cliffs to the beach. It seems to have been long abandoned and we speculated that it may have provided access to the dike.

We legged it south and up onto the Iverson farm dike and continued on back to the Iverson Spit County Park where a drop-off vehicle awaited. We saw no one along the entire survey route. No shots were fired. It was a good day for a walk.