Disappointment, Styrofoam and Solar

 Styrofoam, styrofoam, I must hold forth on styrofoam! Here in Washington the saga has continued. It's in all the floats, in the boat building, in the coolers and it is everywhere on the beaches breaking down. It is the home to muscles and works well as a Cheese Hat for my Wisconsin man. I harvest it large and small wherever I go and fret about the stomachs and health of the creatures who you can tell are eating it (from the tooth and nail scratches in the big blocks...)

h

 We came across to Washington and headed for Cape Disappointment, where Lewis and Clark saw the Pacific. At that time the mouth of the Columbia was five miles across with shallow bars at the entrance which caused hundreds of shipwrecks until jetties were built like the one you see behind Michael above. Lighthouses were built at both the river mouth (below) and on the Pacific side. As a result of the jetties the Columbia is now "just" two miles across and over a thousand acres of land has been added so the Cape looks little like it did when Clark and the Discovery team completed their mission.

 One of our missions was to complete getting the solar running on the V.V. We parked out on the beach at Grayland and Michael worked on it all day yesterday as I rode the flat beach on my bike. I have to tell you (again) again how amazing Michael is... he not only put up the panels shown here but connected and put together the shut off box, the solar controller, the AC invertor, the fusebox, the battery box and the monitor from all those hardware stores and in a really small space with a mind-boggling amount of trouble shooting. Already, even on a typical gray coastal day we are collecting and storing a great deal more energy than we did on the 2007-2008 Veggie Voyage with the addition of the extra panel. We've also picked up small amounts of veggie oil from restaurants along the way so we'll be able to make it to Port Angeles without any more diesel dependence.

We are in Aberdeen, Washington and now head toward the Olympic Penninsula with the mandate to eat up all our fresh fruits and vegetables in preparation for entering Canada.