Clam Digging In Washington!!

So yeah. I went a little overboard with the pictures on this one, but hey - it tells a story! haha We had such a great time on this day. Let me tell you what happened...

My mom told my dad to go this first location because her friend would go everyday before work, dig up her maximum allowed number of clams (40) and then go to work. It was going to be simple. There were eight of us including the kids and so we thought we'd go get our 320 clams and go home. haha. Well, we found plenty of cool stuff - but only 1 large clam and a few good sized cockels. Yeah... guess what? We were in the wrong place! I am glad that we made the mistake though because it was an amazing experience for the kids...well, for all of us really. The first picture is a Sunflower sea star.

Marco found this sea star that was re-growing one of it's missing limbs. You can see the little limb growing back in the picture below.

Here's my dad looking for some. You walk along the shore (when the tide is out) and you look for little holes in the ground and just start raking. It could be clams, but it could also be sea worms, gooey duks, etc. We were only interested in clams or cockels.

Here's Taryn with another sea star.

Little Marco found another sunflower seastar. Look at all the limbs on that one!

Okay - now this thing that Taryn is holding is called a moon snail. They were huge! They are also edible. We were going to keep some but then saw them on the "do not harvest" list so we put them back.

I could not believe how many different sea stars we found. There were also tiny crab and tons and tons of sand dollars.

The scenery was just so beautiful!!

This starfish was very active and nobody was going to pick him up. haha!

I could not believe how many sand dollars were around. Reminded me of Panama City Beach, Florida.

After having a good time of exploring the sea life, but a not-so goodtime of digging in vain, my mother called her friend to find out what was up and we realised we were in the wrong place. So we got back into the car. We get to the new location and it's all rocky on the shore. We go ahead and dig and BINGO! We were in business. =)

You barely had to scratch the surface and you could pull up several clams in one spot. There is a size minimum. I believe it had to be at least an inch and a half in diameter to keep. There were so many that it wasn't a problem at all. If they were questionable in size at all, we just moved on. There were plenty of larger ones.

My dad did so much digging at the last place that he was greatly relieved to finally find something. I'm not gonna lie - my arms were killing me the next day!!

So here is our bucket full of clams. Yes, there is over 300 in there. We soaked them overnight so that they would open up, move around and expel most (and hopefully all) of the sand in them.

The next day, my mom rinsed them several times and then finally put a third of them in the pot to cook. She seasoned it with garlic, green onions and a few other spices. They open up as they cook. If you get one that will not opened, you should cook it longer or discard it.

You can have them so many different ways, but we just ladeled it out into our own bowls and then had them with hot butter. SO good.

Little Marco wasn't so sure about eating "God's creation" as he called it. Hmmm...should I tell him where hamburgers come from?? haha