A couple of days ago my husband and I decided to visit an institution of Americana–Cabela’s.

Cabela’s is a hunting/fishing/sports emporium of renown here, and one of the shops just opened in the city of Lacey, Washington.  Cabela’s are known for the dioramas in each shop–the stores are huge–so I thought I should take advantage of the dioramas to get some photos of native animals which I otherwise would never get close enough to photograph.

First, this is such a big deal that the Lacey Police were called in to handle the hordes:

The Peacekeepers

This is the interior of the building–each Cabela’s has the same basic plan.  The center of the store has a ‘mountain’ with dioramas.  There’s usually a plane hanging from the ceiling.  There’s an aquarium with native fish species.  There’s a kennel in back for dogs.  There’s also a spot in the back where customers can keep their horses overnight!  There’s a restaurant.  It’s fun for the whole family!

A better view of the airplane, this is a plane typical of what is used in the state of Alaska, in the ‘bush’: 

 By the way, the elephant in the above photo is a real elephant.  It gives you a sense of the scale of the shop–it’s huge!

One of the enduring myths of the American wilderness, this is the ‘Jackalope’.

Am American Porcupine–you can own one of these in the UK and don’t even need a license for it! By the way, that cheeky creature at the bottom of the photo is of course the EGS…

This is a Bobcat. I have seen bobcats in the wild on a couple of occasions. They are common enough cats, but rarely seen even so. It is a real treat to see one.

This is a Lynx. I have never seen one of these in the wild. Rare and shy, they do exist in the state of Washington. At first glance they might be mistaken for a bobcat (especially in photos), but Lynx are much larger, and have huge furry feet.

This is the American version of the badger:

And this is a mustelid which does not occur in the UK–the Wolverine, or Glutton.

Wolverines do occur in Washington, and are even rarer than Lynx. I do not expect to see one of these in my lifetime, even though it would be nice!

Finally, these little guys are the equivalents of meerkats–the infamous Prairie Dog.

They are not actually found in Washington, but I have seen them on a trip to South Dakota.

It’s started getting quite cold here, finally.  So, most of my wildlife viewing has been done from the safety and warmth of my kitchen.  My kitchen has a nook, which is where my PC is.  It also has a deck off the nook.  I have my bird feeding stations up here, so I can sit and work at the PC but also keep an eye out on the birds.  The Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees have been coming with great regularity, there’s been visits by Northern Flickers, and even the Steller’s Jays have been showing up.  I can’t forget the Oregon Juncos and House Finches either.

The cats like to sit, lurking, at the edge of the sliding glass door.  Their tails twitch with excitement, and they make little chittering noises at the birds.  Every great once in a while one of the cats just can’t stand it any longer, and makes a mad dash at the window in the vain hope of catching one of those cheeky birds. 

I am still working on visiting the local pioneer cemetery to photograph and transcribe the graves.  Actually, the headstones have been transcribed, but not photographed…

It’s officially winter here!  This morning I went for a pre-Thanksgiving Day meal ride, and even at 10.00 am there was still enough frost on the ground that one would have thought it had snowed during the night.  There was also ice on the ponds.  But most importantly, I saw the first Bald Eagle fly over the meadow at Big Soos Creek.  Definitely winter…

Now, besides being interested in wildlife and bicycling, I am also interested in genealogy.  So, I have decided that I am going to go and see about transcribing and photographing the graves at the local pioneer cemetery.  Naturally, there’s a possibility of some wildlife viewing there as well…

I actually have two personal genealogy websites;

http://mylavertyandray.proboards104.com/index.cgi

And

http://myrayandlaverty.proboards107.com/index.cgi

They are mirror sites, with the emphasis on my father’s side for the one, and the emphasis on my mother’s side for the other.

Well, it seems that it is the end of the season for the mushrooms.  We went out yesterday and took a look, but the chanterelles seem to be gone, and only false morels are still out.  It is raining hard here at the moment, so I decided to do some bicycle repairs today.  I think I’ve managed to replace/repair five or six tyres and tubes and cleaned the house to boot.

 Boring…

Over the weekend we went looking for chanterelles, but we also ran across these interesting assorted fungi:

I think these are Jack ‘o Lanterns…NOT edible.

Some kind of Lepiota I suspect, which means that it probably is edible.

But now time for more ‘booking’ and also off to work on genealogy.

Today we decided to try our luck once more at chanterelle hunting.  We really did not expect to find any, as we thought it was too late in the season.

We were wrong!

We managed to find about two pounds of chanterelles, including in some places where we’d never looked before.  So now we’ve got about four spots that have produced around 10 pounds of chanterelles…

More booking today, with a bit of fixing of bicycles thrown in for good measure!  I replaced two tyres, did a bit of shining up of the chrome, added dabs of lubrication to the spots which needed it. 

 I’ve been looking over my bikes to determine which one I’m going to abuse this year during the winter.  We get enough snow that the snow plows [gritters] come out and leave grit all over the road surface.  It’s hard to get rid of it without taking everything off the bike and cleaning thoroughly.

After a lovely ride along my favourite trail, I decided today that I needed to do what I call ‘booking’.  I have enough books in my library that I have had to catalogue them all, or I just can’t find what I need when I want to.  I have been lazy about doing the cataloging for at least six months, so I decided I had better get and do it before I give it up as a hopeless task.

 Back to work!

Yesterday my husband and I headed out to the town of Rainier, to see if we could find some more chanterelles.  Not only did we find more chanterelles, we found quite an unexpected catch, and more to the point, if I had not just read about this last week, I would have not known how special it was!

First though, we headed up one of the roads on which motorised traffic is not allowed.  It’s impossible for anyone to actually go in there with a motor vehicle, so not many people walk there.  Well, how about that!  We finally managed to spot not one, not two, but THREE rough-skinned newts as we walked along.  First time I have ever seen any in there.  These are not the greatest photos, but they will have to do. 

Terribly out of focus, but clearly shows his bright orange underside. No, he’s not dead!

 As we continued walking, my husband spotted this little guy–it’s a Pacific Tree Frog, Pseudacris regilla.  It is preyed upon by Pacific Northwestern Garter Snakes.

We headed over to the spot where my husband had found chanterelles the other day.  Yes, there were still some fruiting bodies, so we collected about two pounds of them  Apparently chanterelles will fruit until a hard freeze occurs, so we may be able to get out there another couple of weekends before the end of the season.

We found a few other mushrooms we we have not identified fully, but which are suspected of being edible boletes.

The prize of the day, however, was this:  Sparassis crispa, the Cauliflower Mushroom.

This particular fungus, a member of the coral fungi, weighed about 6 pounds.  It’s much larger than one would think from the photo–about a regulation FIFA size football.  We are really looking forward to trying this one, but we are going to dry most of it and use it for soups later.

 We enjoyed the chanterelles today–tomorrow we will try the Sparassis.

Yes, the chanterelles were quite tasty.