The dam removal blog hasn't been updated lately, but local newspapers are keeping us roughly current. From the Seattle Times, knockout photos of sediment coming down the Elwha River, released from the vanishing lakes behind the dams. From the Peninsula Daily News, a (de)construction update that finally addresses the question I've been obsessing on since day 1, how deep is the rubble pile growing upstream of Glines Canyon Dam, and what will they do when they reach it? Thanks to the project manager, Brian Krohmer, for telling us, "Currently, the rubble pile is about 35 feet under the current surface of the water... Once the water level and the rubble pile meet, the excavation of the rubble will begin." Keep watching the dam cams.
The cruise ship Oosterdam came into port for 12 hours. It's been two years since the last time one of the big liners stopped here; it only happens when Port Angeles is built into the special itinerary for repositioning cruise: Oosterdam spent the winter in the Caribbean, will spend the summer shuttling back and forth to Alaska every week. We librarians were all excited to see her cruise across our view, whipped out cameras and binoculars. The students were oblivious...
Sitting at the dock, she was bigger than all downtown put together— and the Holland-America ships aren't even among the big ones. For a while there were pedestrians all over the streets, but there is not much here from a tourist point of view. It rained. Even the passengers who'd signed up for a bus trip into the Park won't have seen anything up on Hurricane Ridge, nor gotten a hike to Marymere Falls. They won't have had rain gear with them, poor things, and we don't have anything like elegant shops...
The log yard has been filling up, and sure enough a logship appeared at the T-pier. She was not yet loading when I went to look at her yesterday morning. The trucks were all clumped up waiting for the longshoremen to be ready, the cranes all unshipped and the loader machines in position.
It's time for the Great Olympic Peninsula Duck Derby, the annual community fundraiser for the Olympic Medical Center Foundation. The Duck appeared in Swains' parking lot, then moved to the Safeway. The race will have to happen on a pond in Lincoln Park this year, because of construction on the biofuels plant at Nippon Paper down by the harbor, the venue for the past couple of decades. I'll have to stop by Safeway and buy a ticket. Not likely to win. That's ok. I don't want a fully loaded new pickup truck anyway.
Lots of ship action, when I was down at the harbor having breakfast with JL.
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