Photos are static and bicycle races are so fast. Here’s an attempt to capture the speed of the Tour de Dungeness racers last Saturday.
Category: Local Events
Here comes de Dung!
The annual “Tour de Dung” bicycle races were yesterday. It’s “Dung” as in “Dungeness,” the region in Sequim where the racers ride each year. If the weather could have been better I can’t imagine how; it was a cool, beautiful day.
I took fewer photos than in past years. Other projects called. I had fun with some shots; I’ll show those to you tomorrow.
Additional races are scheduled for next Saturday. I may check it out then, too. It’s one of my favorite local events and I love settling down for a front row seat.
Locals: Keep a lookout for riders next Saturday and drive with care.
Theme Day: Movement
The challenge for City Daily Photo’s participants today is “movement,” which immediately led me to a shot from a local bicycle race, the “Tour de Dung,” last spring. Click here to see other interpretations of today’s theme.
Wondering about the name “Tour de Dung?” It’s not about manure. The race takes place in the Dungeness region of Sequim, a beautiful spot for bicycling at any speed.
Farewell performance
The final edition of Arts in Action was staged last weekend by the Nor’wester Rotary in Port Angeles. This was the 35th year the event was organized and offered to the community and has been the site of sand sculpture contests that many of us have enjoyed for the past 13 years. There was no competition this year, just three works of sand art offered by sculptors who chose their own themes.
Sue McGrew, left, and another worker here put the final touches on this piece. McGrew and sculptor Sandis Kondrats designed this gorgeous Poseidon tribute.
A team from Merrill & Ring created this piece. The salmon at the end of the fishing line is being grabbed by a seal which is being grabbed by an Orca whale.
I love the look on the boy’s face.
Members of the Phoenix Dragon Martial Arts School produced this sculpture of the Seahawks stadium.
A member of the Sequim Noon Rotary expressed interest in possibly keeping the event alive. The group as a whole has not discussed this.For now, the event has ended. Fingers crossed that it may yet continue.
Return of a river
Our walk through the former Lake Aldwell last month ended in a grove of tree trunks that had been harvested for timber before the valley was flooded behind the Elwah Dam in 1912. The huge trunks were impressive; they’ve been tagged for further study. Other relics have been found in the former lake bed. We were shown the partial carcass of a truck and heard about a wooden wagon wheel that was found, stolen, and then recovered. But much of the area’s history is told in a landscape of tree trunks and huge tangles of downed trees lost for untold years at the bottom of the lake.
The river now flows freely. Time and currents are moving and depositing silt that built up behind the dams, altering the mouth of the Elwah River at the Strait of Juan de Fuca. As trees and shrubs return, wildlife is finding its way back. In addition to the fishery restoration I wrote about yesterday, returning birds are the most easily noted, but rangers have seen otters, bears, and elk as well. The changes can be subtle. As the fishery returns, minerals from seagoing fish carcasses are reintroduced to the region after over 100 years, adding new nutrients to the environment. It will be interesting to see how the ecosystem reestablishes in years to come.
In addition to the links I posted yesterday, you can click here for more information, including photos and videos of the final blasts of the Glines Dam.
A walk across a lakebed
Before we left town last month we went on a ranger-led walk to view the effects of a vast restoration project, the removal of two dams on the Elwah River, west of Port Angeles. Our walk was through the former Lake Aldwell which was created 102 years ago with the building of the Elwah Dam. Seven miles upstream of the Elwah Dam, the Glines Canyon Dam was built in 1927. The Elwah Dam was built by Thomas Aldwell who had quietly bought land throughout the region and was built without permit.Together the dams, which provided electric power, blocked the migration of 10 stocks of anadramous salmon and trout which at one time had been one of the most prolific fisheries on the Olympic Peninsula. The life cycle of an anadromous fish includes migrations from salt water bodies through freshwater rivers where they spawn. Damming the Elwah limited salmon to slightly under five miles of river below the first dam, dramatically affecting the fishery. The removal of these dams is the largest such project in history and the final pieces of the Glines Canyon Dam were taken down last week. In the photo above you can see the former lake level etched in a horizontal line in the distance. Click here and here for more details about the project.
To me the most amazing aspect of this project is how quickly the fish have begun to repopulate the newly opened reaches of the upper Elwah River. Salmon were found above the Elwah Dam not long after its removal and biologists found two radio-tagged trout that had migrated more than 15 miles from the mouth of the river, well past the former Glines Dam, within days of its removal.
The Lower Elwah Klallam tribe of Native Americans, who had traditionally relied on the fishery, had protested the Elwah damming from its inception and have been active participants in lobbying for the dam removals and in the current river restoration. Because parts of the river flow through Olympic National Park, the Park Service has also participated in the project.
As the lakes behind the dams were drained re-vegetation of the newly exposed lands was a priority, including elimination of opportunistic noxious and non-native species. The willows above are about four years old and have quickly taken hold. Throughout the area other natives have been planted. Tomorrow I’ll show you more of the project.
Until next year
One last view of the Clallam County Fair…