Twelve Bucks into the Wilderness - with Chocolates

Busing with Wildlife

With the gas crunch, a lot of people in Seattle are staying home and grilling on the condo deck. If you can't stand being forced to stay in-city one more weekend, you can get to the far ends of the Olympic Peninsula for around $12.00, even as far as Clallam Bay.

We live in Clallam Bay, down on Slip Point, next to the tidepools with the fresh mouth-wide scallops and the little purple sea urchins the native Makah call sea eggs; they're not big enough to be commercially harvested, but fresh out of of an icy tidepool, their eggs taste like fresh cream with a hint of salt and garlic. The beach is crowded when there are more than ten people and/or dogs or kids on the strip of pebbles and sand between Clallam Bay and the Clallam River.

The young hen eagles have usually finished river-mouth nest battles by April. Female raptors are bigger than males because they're the ones fight for the nests. They scream - eagles usually chirp - knock feathers out of wings and tails, and try to snatch each other bald-headed. For a couple of weeks, there are eagle feathers all over the beach. Not native? Don't touch; you don't want to pay that fine.

A couple summers ago, a young eagle we'd watched grow up and named Mike went crazy when he caught a silver salmon; people had to duck when he circled overhead, screaming like the teenage kid he was, proud to be feeding his younger siblings against the day he found a firey nest-fightin' girl of his own. If you're basking on a blanket and the younger eagles are fledging, they're liable to cruise shakily overhead, wondering if you're food.

But how to get here when filling up the tank can cost $120.00 and the trip is over 150 miles? One way.

You have to start Friday and come back on Monday, or not all the buses will link up on the weekends; once you get where you're going out here, the transit minds figure you're going to stay put, fishing, agate-hunting or berry-picking for the whole day before boarding the evening bus with your haul and your scratches and sunburn.