20250427 Price Marathons, We Head Out to Clam

 20250427 Price Marathons, We Head Out to Clam

Price ran in the Whidbey Marathon, his first full marathon. Ciara and Tom had flown in from Chicago to support Price. We cheered him on from several viewpoints, and he managed to finish 57th overall with a time of 4:04, which is remarkable for a route with nearly 2000’ of elevation gain.  

After recovering for a bit, we all had lunch  at Orlando’s BBQ. Ciara and Tom then headed to the airport. 

We weren’t sure if we needed to stay home for the night to support Price after his first marathon because he was pretty beat up after his first half marathon. However, he had trained properly for this race using his Garmin smart watch and marathon training software. He had also invested in proper marathon running gear, so he actually came out of this marathon in much better condition and didn’t need us to stick around. 

Our Senior Off Season camping pass expires April 30th, and there is a daylight razor clam opener this week, so we packed up the RV and headed off the island at 4 p.m. We made a refueling stop at Samcor and a second refueling stop at the Lacey Costco. 

We did run into heavy traffic starting in the Northgate area. It must have been Seattle residents returning home from seeing the tulips in Mt Vernon and other weekend outings. Fortunately, south of downtown, the traffic cleared, and it was clear sailing from there on. The weather was also fine for the most part with moderate clouds and only light rain as we got to the coast in Aberdeen. 

We arrived after dark at 9 p.m. It’s a good thing the campground was only lightly occupied, and our prior site #221 was available.  Ben had also installed area flood lights on the rear of the RV and puddle lamps below, so backing the RV wasn’t done entirely in the dark. 

As we got settled in, we realized that we had forgotten to grab our fishing licenses. Ben and Price had left them on the boat after fishing for halibut. Ben ran the Bronco into Westport, where he could get a cellular signal and was able to download images of our license document numbers from WDFW’s servers to show any wildlife agents who might happen to want to check us. 

The Lacey Costco warehouse was closed when we stopped to refuel. Fortunately, we arrived 10 minutes before they closed the gas pumps. But no Costco pizza for dinner. 

Ben just had a bowl of Costco instant ramen with some rotisserie chicken brought from home. 

Tomorrow, the low tide is -2.0’ at 7:30. If the weather cooperates, we hope to be able to find our clams pretty quickly.