8/23, Saturday. Made a lunch stop off Raymond by Willapa River. Saw one after another fishing boats leaving the pier. Must be good fishing. However, their gears are more serious. From Raymond, it's quite scenic all the way to the coast.
The town of Long Beach was bustling. The kite festival is a week long event.
Many teams were praticing their routines, carefully choreographed.
4 quadrons on the sand were fenced off for competition, demo and practice.
We, the tourists, walk along the edges. The organizer was smart enough to leave a gap between each quardrons.
Many more kites stay flying in the sky. We saw a few whales, one half guy only waist down, a large octopus, many butterflies and birds (including a large crane).
All very colorful.
The air is fresh, breezy and chill (not sure if it is even 70°F).
We saw 2 combats of box kites. The goal is to entangle others. Whoever remains in the sky is the winner. Maybe fun to do, not much fun to watch. The commentator is quite fun.
Then it's the demonstation. All the groups are fabulous.
I especially love those large groups, this one with 12 people.
I don't know how they avoid entangling their 12 kites.
The most impressive is this guy, one person flying 3 purple kites with long tails, all syncronized.
Last time, we saw a deaf guy flew 3 black kites (no tails). It was very impressive.
The most impressive group os TKL of 6 people. They did 2 demos. Both incredible. Won many applauses.
Other wonderful groups that I got the names are: Quantum (4 kites), Sky Sisters (4 kites).
This is really an exceptional show.
TKL finished the demo (or is this a competition?), at least for the day. Sunday is the last day of this festival.
At ~5pm, we left for Cape Disappointment state park.
First, we parked at the boat launch lot and tried fishing off the pier.
There's a fish cleaning sink and water hose. A lot of fish bones on the rocks below, attract a lot of sea birds.
This family in the photo came to clean their catch: a large salmon.
The dad told me where people are catching fish: over the jetty.
So we headed there next.
So many people were trying to fish here. They all had long thick rods.
The jetty is long, what this photo showed is only a small part.
It requires some scramble to get to the water side.
We tried our luck with fish and crab. Seems no one is catching anything now.
This is a good place to wait for sunset too. Good view.
Groups of pelicans flew west from time to time, no idea from where they emerged.
View of Oregon coastal mountains to the south.
Jellyfish in the water.
Headed back after sunset.
Willapa National Wildlife Refuge, which was just mud and marsh, now looked very pretty in the dying sunlight.
A very long drive home.