{He said} Clammin'

After living in Maine I learned how to properly pronounce words that I had unknowingly been pronouncing wrong my entire life.  For those of you who may not understand a picture is worth a thousand words.

If you need further instruction in the Maine-iac (or Maine-ard when being mean) dialect the concept is this, if there is an "a" sound at the end of the word you change it to "er".  When there is an "er" sound you change it to "ah" and you can do whatever you want in the middle.

Besides learning the dialect I also learned about clam chowdah, the canned stuff has never been good enough since.  In fact I have never had better since then.

Until now.

Katie learned about the event of Razor clams and decided that before we leave Oregon we needed to experience it.  We booked a hotel and went out to Long Beach, Washington for the weekend.

We stopped by the local hardware store for our "Clam Gun"

This sounds big and bad but it is also more work than I thought it would be.  With these PVC tubes you scoop sand up that hopefully has a clam it.

We were not having much luck until Katie hit up the locals for tips.  After that we struck pay dirt.

We also found some crustaceans that we were not expecting.  My favorite part of the adventure may or may not have been when Katie jumped and squealed at this "clam".

Along with the local wildlife we experienced an unbelievable sunset.

I did my civic duty and returned the crab to the ocean so the sea gulls didn't get her.

I also learned that fresh clams (and my wife) make the best chowdah evah.