On Sunday, we attended the horse races at Emerald Downs and we were surprised to find that they were also having Weiner Dog races that day. Some of the dogs that raced were pros and they took off out of the starting gate and never looked back. I bet $50 and won back $ 47, so not too bad of a loss.
The next day I played a round of golf at Chambers Bay Golf Course, where Jordan Speith won the 2015 US Open. You can only walk this course and it is a six mile hike with 500 feet of elevation gain at various times throughout the round. I decided to get a caddie, for the first time ever. I was paired with Brandon and he was great. Besides saving me having to either carry my bag or hand cart it, he really helped me manage the course. It was a hard course and a long walk but I enjoyed it so much I would do it again. Later that evening Josie and I had a great dinner on the Olympia Waterfront.
Another day we drove to the town of Forks, Washington. We saw on Travel Advisor that there was a Beachcomber Museum and it sounded interesting. John the owner has turned his hobby into a passion and he has an unbelievable collection of flotsam and jetsam that he has collected for over 45 years. He has one section entirely devoted to the Japanese Tsunami of 2011. John was able to identify some of his findings and return them to their owners in Japan. He has a whole notebook of letters he has found in bottles. He has been able to contact all of them but two in his 45 years of beachcoming. Many of the items he has found come from cargo containers that were lost during heavy seas, like the Nike shoes and Raggedy Ann doll heads in the pictures below. He gave us a seed from the Seaheart plant that grows in the Amazon Rain Forest. The seed falls off the plant and into the water and it eventually makes its way to the beaches of the US Gulf Coast, where John finds them.
We had no idea that the "Twilight" series of books was based in the town of Forks. The town was able to procure many of the actual props and costumes from the movie. We may have to read the books or watch the movies to see what it's all about.