This is my super late post on our family trip to Whidbey Island on Fourth of July.

Our little clan, my parents and my brother and sister in law all went to stay with some family friends, Chuck and Sue Todd up on Whidbey Island. Pete has a soft spot for Whidbey since he and his family had a cabin up there the whole time he was growing up. For those of you not from the Northwest, Whidbey Island is about an hour away from Seattle. Half driving, Half ferry boat.

This is what the beaches look like there.

You can fish, crab for Dungeness, scavenge for mussels and oysters, dig for clams and geoducks in low tide.

This was the best day of Mason’s young life. He was deathly afraid of the water, but really enjoying eating kelp, rotten crabs and crunching seashells like potato chips.

That’s my dad walking him on the beach, where he sniffed lots of other dogs. Obviously heaven for dogs.

Then he got to run off leash on the beach. Do you like how a mastiffs skin flies around when they run?

Coco fished with her dad.

Watch her fight this fish and reel it in. That fish may have been a heavy piece of kelp- but she didn’t mind.

Uncle Jonny (my little brother) spent 30 minutes patiently teaching Pia (and Mason) how to cast.

Then she promptly and wildly threw the pole around, narrowly missing hooking him in the lip.

Dungeness Crab season started last weekend, and our gracious hosts had been busy catching the critters. Sue Todd made an amazing Crab Louis Salad for lunch. We washed it down with lots of rose wine.

Pia learned to throw a Frisbee.

Pia fulfilled her lifelong dream of flying a kite really high.

We saw a female elephant seal that was molting right in front of their house. This is very, very rare. For the last three years, she sits out on this beach for 6 weeks, and loses several hundred pounds as she regrows her fur. Mostly she sleeps or watches the passerby’s. If you are a stranger she barks at you showing her enormous teeth. If you are a local that she is familiar with, she will let you get really close. The locals that live on this stretch of beach call her Sammy.

This is her doing her “spa treatment” of flipping sand on her back. Otherwise she just goes down to the beach for a bath a couple times of day and that’s it.

Coco and Pia went on a boat ride with Chuck and my dad that lasted about 2 minutes until the boat motor promptly died.

Coco spent most of the day walking around in this outfit throwing rocks. In case you don’t know her personally, this is her personality to a tee.

Part of the day I spent walking the beach with the kids.

The other half was spent hiding from the sun.

We had a wonderful dinner of roasted salmon and pasta and salad with Marionberry Pie for dessert. Then Pete and I messed up on the ferry line, so we wound up watching the fireworks from the back of the car where we crouched with freaked out Mason and watched some of the “home shows” that were on the beach.

It was a great, great day.