A couple of weekends ago, fellow adventurer Sarah Cass and I went thrift shopping in Aberdeen and then deciding to go beach combing at Westport. Aberdeen, home of both Kurt Cobain and one of my favorite professional wrestlers, Bryan Danielson (AKA Daniel Bryan), is a depressed yet beautiful old (as the west coast goes) logging town. The thrift shops are plenty but their contents are quite hit or miss. I found a few items that really broke my heart– a poorly made Mama’s ” Angels” mug and a plethora of abandoned kitty pictures being sold for their frames. I can’t help but imagine the tragic circumstances that lead to the arrival of those personal, once treasured items onto the shelves of dumpy Salvation Army’s and Thrift Villages. Perhaps I am overly sentimental, but I would hope that if some tragedy befalls me, my family, friends or at the very least, the caretakers of my paltry estate, would have the decency to empty any picture frames of personal photos before schlepping them off to Goodwill. (However, please leave all art framed as is for future ironic student art intervention assignments!)

We then made our way to the beach. The surf was rough, the wind was frigid but the sun was shining and that is reason enough to stroll happily along any Washington Beach in the springtime.

Sarah and I found dozens and dozens of sand dollars along the high tide line. If you’d like your own personal piece of the Pacific, send me your address and I’ll send you your very own, hand-picked sand dollar!

Condos on the beach. Ewww… but, also eerily beautiful against the subdued landscape.

On our way home, we stopped at one more second hand store and found this little guy wandering around the neighboring (no pun intended) lot. It was an odd, lonely spot to keep a pony, and my girlhood heart ached for him as I imagined trying to fit him inside my Hyundai to bring home.