The change in seasons has brought ....

First, as is sooooo common among "bloggers", I must  apologize for the month that has passed with no comment. THANK YOU to those of you who commented and claimed you missed my material. As usual with me, the words will no doubt fall gracefully from my lips once I get started,  (yeach!!!) but please let me blame the passage of time on trying to cram some fun in the last of summer.

Now that I'm done writing this post and am trying to put photos in it, I find that the photos won't go in. So I'm going to do the only thing I can do, send it with no photos, and keep trying to add them. Maybe someday I'll figure out what I'm doing wrong.

So, as I said in the title of this piece, "The change in seasons has brought" .... lots of things to Port Gamble. Lets try a few.

RAIN!!!! Not torrential, not even steady, just often. If you've been to Lake Ozette on the other side of the Olympic Peninsula then you know about torrential. They have a rain gauge on the front of the Lake Ozette Lodge that has a measuring stick that goes to 12 and hits it just about every year. What's so special about that? The 12 is FEET. No, here we have the rain that truly keeps the  grass green, and (unfortunately for the grounds crew) growing.

But the pot holes come out too, as evidenced by this one at the 15 mph curve. Watch it!!!!

Tree peeps!!!! Whhhaaaaa??? "Tree peeps?" "What is a tree peep?"

OK,  in this day of text messaging I'm told by  anyone two generations younger than me that words usually get shortened when a person texts. So, for instance, "people" becomes "peeps". So your real question should be "what are tree people?" To answer that, let me back up a hundred and fifty years or so, when Port Gamble was just a wide spot in the road. All the founding paps (fathers) had come from New England where you have seen  or heard about the incredible fall colors. Blazing red, brilliant amber, juicy  orange (no wait, that was what they were eating), but in this neck of the woods they found green  spruce, green fir, green cedar. .. lots of color, just one of them.

So the founding fathers called back east and said "How about if your peeps call our peeps and we get some color out here." How do you get fall color out here? You get those maples that never fail you with their fall show. And who comes to see them? Those fall peeps that go running into the middle of the road to get  the world's best photo op (opportunity, but you knew that one) which is the old church, with a couple of houses, all hidden by the blazing maple show of the trees.

So what is wrong with that? Nothing if the tree peeps would follow the laws written by the highway peeps, laws which preclude any peeps from sauntering from between two parked cars onto the highway, without looking. A recent day left me shaking because I had missed one photographer by inches ... and believe me I saw the brand of camera he had and I would have been very sick if the camera had been hurt.

END OF THE YEAR COMPETITIONS
I'm sure it's the staff that puts these together. Now you know I only use first names lest someone might identify themselves and be upset with me, so I will only use the names Shanna and Tom, but I think those two have planned at least one competition (an apple pie bake-off) just to get another (free) piece of what must be described as the most delightfully flavorful piece of apple pie one can find this side of....  well I don't know where, but it's the best for a long way around. And modest though I am at times, I will admit that the pie in question is made by me. You would think that asking me for a piece of pie might be what most peeps, I mean people, would do to get one. But no, they have to make a competition out of it, claiming Shanna is going to enter a pie, forcing me to enter just to prove that while she is good at a lot of things, cooking is not her strong suit. Cooking isn't even a suit that shows up in her hand. Cooking isn't even a suit she has seen before.

So I'll enter the contest and see if she can take the loss.

OLD MILL DAYS
I should have written about this weeks ago, when I wasn't writing (duh). I'm writing this on Friday night when the carnival is set up and running, and it looks fun, skateboard competition was held tonight, and from overhearing some of the comments, it sounds like the old adage is still true "What do they call someone who finishes in second place? Loser."

 Tomorrow I am really looking forward to the logging competitions. It looks like they will have the old fashioned kind., like when two guys climb a standing log, cut a notch for the board they are going to stand on, then saw the top off the timber. And I heard they will have a log rolling contest with the loser ending up in Gamble Bay. Check their website www.oldmilldays.com for more detailed times and events.

Saturday, behind Quilted Strait (www.quiltedstrait.com) (sorry, Folks, but I get paid for these ads) will be the car show. I'm hoping this will be one of the better ones in the area, since Port Gamble lost out on their own show around the 4th of July. If you are reading this and have not been to the car show, but are planning to go, would you do me one whopping big flavor? Thank the guys who brought their cars for doing just that. For many of these owners coming to the show means early hours, having to pay to let people look at their cars, having to listen to the spectators tell about THEIR cars which were stock and not tricked out like these will be at the show. and a long drive home when it is over.

SHORTER BUSINESS HOURS

If ever I was going to say something that would get me in trouble with business owners in Port Gamble, this is the subject. Don't get me  wrong, I'm not a business owner. I  used to be when we lived in  Port Angeles, but now Kris owns the business and I help out now and then.

Some businesses plan to have shorter hours, or actually what is more common, be open fewer days during the winter. I don't get it. By closing Wednesday do they think those  Wednesday people will come on Thursday instead? It won't happen. Those Wednesday people will eat somewhere else, and that customer's visit will probably not happen.

So let me assure you that there are some stores  open 7 days a week year round. I'll tell you which they are, and I hope others will tell me if  I miss some. The ones I am sure of are:

(in alphabetical order)
GAMBLE BAY COFFEE
PORT GAMBLE GENERAL STORE
QUILTED STRAIT
TANGO ZULU IMPORTS
THE TEA ROOM