The hunt for the beautiful and delicious bivalve will resume this weekend on the Long Beach, Washington Peninsula. The digs are late afternoon/ early evening with low tide Saturday, Feb.18, is at 4:13 p.m. (0.0 feet), and on Sunday, Feb.19, at 5 p.m. (-0.2 feet). Plan on being on the beach one to two hours before evening low tide. You will truly feel you have earned your supper when you dig and clean your clams and then have the privilege of dining on the most gourmet clam of them all, the Siliqua Patula! Stay at beautiful Boreas Inn on the beach in Long Beach, Washington and we will loan you clam guns and Bill might even show you how to clean your clams and may, even, if you’re very lucky, show you how to cook and EAT them! The spring clam tides will be announced soon, so there will be many more weekends with a chance to dig those glorious bivalves!
The gray whale is a baleen whale that migrates between feeding and breeding grounds every year passing by the Long Beach, Washington Peninsula during the southern and northern migrations. Gray whales can reach a length of 52 ft and can weigh about 35 tons and live a very long time, 50–70 years! They are called “Gray” because they have gray patches and white mottling on dark skin and descend from filter-feeding whales that developed over 30 million years ago.
When the arctic ice starts to form, the grays whales start a two- to three-month trip south to the Baja Peninsula and Gulf of Mexico. Around 19,000 whales migrate by the Long Beach Peninsula on their way to warmer waters and then a couple of months later, they cruise by again heading back north. So they really don’t have a lot of vacation time for all that traveling, they say it’s the longest migration of any mammal up to .
The gray whale is a baleen whale that migrates between feeding and breeding grounds every year passing by the Long Beach, Washington Peninsula during the southern and northern migrations. Gray whales can reach a length of 52 ft and can weigh about 35 tons and live a very long time, 50–70 years! They are called “Gray” because they have gray patches and white mottling on dark skin and descend from filter-feeding whales that developed over 30 million years ago.
When the arctic ice starts to form, the grays whales start a two- to three-month trip south to the Baja Peninsula and Gulf of Mexico. Around 19,000 whales migrate by the Long Beach Peninsula on their way to warmer waters and then a couple of months later, they cruise by again heading back north. So they really don’t have a lot of vacation time for all that traveling.
This extensive gray whale migration all the way to Baja for such a brief stay reminds me of our several family trips during spring vacation when we would drive from Lake Oswego, near Portland all the way to Ensenada, in Baja California. It’s a long drive in a station wagon with parents and two domineering older brothers for a very brief stay in Baja. Of course, stopping at Disneyland and in San Diego were nice distractions away from the back seat of a Plymouth station wagon. We’d spend a few days in Baja and then turn around and drive back to Portland. Our family migration from Portland to Baja does have a vague but humorous similarity to the gray whales’. The gray whales tend to breed and nurse their youngsters while in the warmer waters which certainly was not our goal while in Baja.
Our favorite place to watch for the gray whales is in Cape Disappointment State Park at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and the North Head Lighthouse. From December until early February, we have seen the grays migrating south and then again in March, April and May when they return to the arctic. That being said, we have seen gray whales in September just off the surf line from the stunning turnout on the Loop 100 in Cape D State Park. There are some “permanent” gray whales living off the Washington Coast. Just over a month ago a half dozen gigantic blue whales were spotted not far off the Long Beach Peninsula, perhaps 30 miles. They were over 100 feet long! Fishermen report in one day of summer fishing, seeing three or four varieties of whales including sperm whales and humpbacks or “humpies” off our coast.
Grays feed mostly on crustaceans which it eats by turning on its side (usually the right, resulting in loss of eyesight in the right eye for many older animals) and it scoops up sediments from the sea floor. They eat by using their baleens which act like a sieve, to capture small sea animals, taken in along with sand, water and other materials they scoop up. They feed in arctic waters during the summer and sometimes feed during its migration but mostly, when heading south, they rely on their fat reserves. We have seen them seemingly rubbing themselves on the North Jetty near our favorite spot in the Cape D State Park. They were feeding by scraping the rocks on the jetty. So cool!
During migration, these giant cruisers average around 75 miles per day at an average speed of 5 mph. The round trip of 9,900–14,000 miles is supposedly the longest annual migration of any mammal. By late December to early January, they begin to arrive in the calving lagoons of Baja. Gestation for grays is 13.5 months so often mothers give birth in the safer waters of Baja and single females are seeking mates. By mid-February to mid-March the whales have arrived in the lagoons and are nursing, calving and mating.
Throughout February and March, the first to leave the lagoons are males and females without new calves. Pregnant females and nursing mothers with their newborns are the last to depart, leaving only when their calves are ready for the journey, which is usually from late March to mid-April. Sometimes the mothers with new calves linger in warm waters into May.
A population of about 200 gray whales stay along the eastern Pacific coast from Canada to California throughout the summer which is why we occasionally see them in non-migration months. They never leave to go to Alaskan waters. This summer resident group is known as the Pacific Coast Feeding Group.
Now that you know all about gray whales, drive to the Long Beach, Washington Peninsula to try to get a glimpse. Right now you might see a few stragglers heading south and in a month or so you will see the gray whales returning from their brief stay in the warmer waters off the Baja Peninsula. At Boreas Inn, we always have binoculars for you to borrow and helpful hints (Bill is great at spotting whales). During the busier times of migration, there are experts at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Cape D. State Park, just 10 minutes from Boreas Inn.
This is a perfect time of year to take your Valentine to the beach to watch for whales and sleep in the Boreas Inn’s lovely beds, dine by the fire on the best three-course B&B breakfast you’ve ever had, breathe the cool ocean breezes, be lulled by the gentle sound of the Pacific Ocean lapping on the beach and to relax. Let your innkeepers, Susie Goldsmith and Bill Verner design your time away with great dinners at The Depot, Pelicano, the 42nd Street Cafe, The Lost Roo and Shelburne’s dining room and maybe an in-room massage! Check our online specials or give us a call at 888-642-8069. We hope to see you soon!
Personally, New Years’ Eve isn’t my favorite holiday. I think of doing taxes, of what I haven’t accomplished this year, what I need to accomplish next year… but every year, our guests jolly me into appreciating the holiday more than I would were we not innkeepers. After all, 2012 sounds more well-rounded than 2011. I like even numbers. THERE WILL BE FIREWORKS at the beach, in view from Boreas, on New Years Eve!! I almost forgot!
The Christmas tree is still fresh and lovely for some reason (Bill takes good care of the tree!) and we haven’t tired of the decorations so prettily placed by our decorating crew the first weekend in December. We had a great time decorating this year. This year was extra special with a sweet blend of family and beloved guests who are now family too. We are hoping that we fill up for New Years’ weekend. We are always filled up after Christmas but not this year! Groupon and Living Social may be the reason—people shopping for bargains. Frankly, for what Boreas offers, we are a bargain! But we’re offering the Carpe Diem, Walk-in Special rate starting today. $150 for luxury and pampering! Even the cottage is open this weekend.
Our guest list so far is a fun one and Odell will be here to help us dismantle the decorations if we can work around our desire to watch football…at Mark and Helen’s Lost Roo, of course! Go DUCKS! Everyone is invited to take DOWN the decorations with us and go to The Roo!
Fresh Dungeness Crabcakes and Champagne on Sunday morning, New Years’ Day, sounds pretty perfect for one of our FOUR courses, and Bill will do beautiful work on the crab cakes as always and I will bake pastries, whip up sauces and make the fruit entrée glow so that consuming all that vitamin C seems very sexy. Well…it is! But I hope that if it’s going to be cloudy this week end, that it is also stormy so we can feel comforted by the fireplaces. But I also hope that there is a break in the weather so we can go for a fresh walk to start the New Year. We have been fortunate with fine weather this fall.
Come stay with us this weekend at the prettiest inn on the Long Beach Peninsula—featherbeds, down comforters, fireplaces, fine and fancy breakfast fare, freshly baked brownies, and the incredibly-wonderful-almost-brand-new hot tub for two with a little aromatherapy—mint and eucylptus, to soften your skin. Boreas Bed & Breakfast Inn is posh but hip, fun, but mellow and very food-crazy with a great location on the beach in Long Beach Washington. Relaxation is the best way to start the next banner year—2012! Happy New Year!
Boreas Inn is all yours, decorated with love for the 2011 Holiday Season! Utilize one room for the ultimate peaceful and romantic time or bring family and friends and fill all five rooms for a flat rate of $595 plus tax per night for two nights minimum. (Ten people maximum–kids over 8 are fine.) This is a $320 per night savings. Arrive on the 23rd, if you would like three nights at this great rate or stay a little later. This ready-made holiday removes the stress and lets you relax and enjoy the season. All you need to do is bring your own gifts for under the tree. The stockings are already hung by the chimney with care–but you can bring your own! Gather your friends and family and enjoy this unique opportunity to rent the entire inn, one room or all five of Boreas’ beautiful guest rooms for your Christmas Holiday. This once-a-year special even includes our signature breakfasts with a Champagne Brunch on Christmas Day! If you would like to arrive on December 23rd, you can extend your special deal to three nights. We will arrange your holiday dinners too! (The Inn is also available for Hannukah starting December 20th–complete with menorah and candles!) You can see lots of pics of our 2011 decorations on www.facebook.com/BoreasInn!
This magical star-lit view can be yours for Christmas!
SandSations, in Long Beach, Washington, was voted #1 Best Sand Castle contest in the USA by Coastal Living Magazine! The sand sculpture weekend is coming right up on July 20th-24th. Boreas still has rooms available if you would like to build castles and sculptures or if you simply enjoy marveling at the artistry of the masters, watching teams working together to achieve a goal and learn how the process works. I used to participate in the Cannon Beach competition for around 12 years and my team used to place #1 in our sand sculpting masters category. We sculpted completely by hand. We were consistently top prize winners–that is, until this group of architects from Seattle were added to our category and used sophisticated forms and packing devices…and we didn’t always place first after that. (Coincidentally, we had one of those Seattle architect/sand sculptors as a guest at the Inn!) But talking about immediate gratification–you take a plot of sand, dig up a pile, decide who on your team does what well (I’m good at packing, making hands and letters) then together, the team works magic and achieves a goal within hours. Nothing artificial…just sand and water. It is wonderful! We used to finish off our plots with perfectly smooth borders and beautifully worked lettering. I haven’t seen anything to match our fine finish work anywhere. We usually constructed the sculpture with a theme that was based upon a pun. We were so good and getting a blue ribbon was the icing on the cake. Our Captain’s mother, Betty Lou Tolan was the founder of the contest in Cannon Beach in the early 60′s. The party to celebrate our achievement afterward was always the best time of the year. Ah… those were the days.
This contest in Long Beach awards cash to the winners. We got only ribbons at Cannon Beach and maybe a printed certificate. It didn’t matter. The intensity of taking on a project with sand and sea water and coming up with a fine sculpture was reward enough. SandSations is a great event here in Long Beach, Washington and it’s growing every year. You can experience the great hospitality at Boreas Inn, dine on our feast at breakfast time, walk our trail to the beach and watch the SandSations competition! So come to the beach for a long weekend, July 21-24!
Boreas Inn still has a couple of really beautiful rooms open for the 4th of July holiday weekend! Since the 4th is on a Monday, a few of our guests coming for the weekend are actually leaving right on the 4th–so we have a couple rooms open on the 4th proper in addition to the 1st and 2nd of July. This is NEXT weekend–wow! We are asking for a three-night minimum over the weekend, but as we approach the holiday, we will compromise on two-night stays, if we must, but three nights is so relaxing at Boreas!
We love the 4th of July in Long Beach, Washington. Well–sort of. It is clearly the most exciting day of the year on the gorgeous Long Beach Peninsula. We would love it more if all the people packed out what they pack in. (Our Boreas guests are always perfect–it’s the other 20,0000 guests on the Peninsula who aren’t so perfect!) The Long Beach Peninsula is truly a place for amateur and professional pyromaniacs!
To address this post-explosive and partying beach clean-up problem on the 4th of July on the Long Beach Peninsula, there are now “Treasure Our Beach” volunteers at all the beach approaches, handing out trash bags and fliers encouraging everyone who comes to the beach to picnic and blow things up, to take their trash home with them! We treasure our Treasure our Beach volunteers. Thank you all! If any of our readers would like to help in this effort, please let us know. Shelly Pollock’s Grass Roots Garbage Gang will have hundreds of volunteers combing the beaches on July 5th to pick up after the 4th of July revelers and we are grateful to those volunteers also! This is a big beach clean-up and we always need more volunteers!
Well first of all, on Saturday, the 2nd of July, to lead off the pyrotechnic displays, there is a stunning and sparkly professional fireworks show on the Port of Ilwaco over the harbor. We like to reserve tables for our guests at Pelicano on Saturday at the Port of Ilwaco, before the 4th so that they have front row seats for the Ilwaco Fireworks display. So in addition to wine pairings at Pelicano that evening, there are fireworks pairings also! If you have dinner at Pelicano, you will also have a place to park right on the harbor for the fireworks. It is truly inspiring to see the glittering on the water and this display just whets the appetite for the total pyrotechnic craziness that is the true 4th of July in Long Beach, WA. We’ve never seen anything quite like Long Beach on the 4th. So there is a method to our madness–we like our guests to dine on the best for breakfast and dinner and watch the celebration of our nation’s independence!
We brag about our 28-mile long beach. Well just about every foot of our very long beach will be filled with cars, families, picnics and We’d estimate–millions of dollars of fireworks that will blow your socks off. This doesn’t include the very fine professional show that happens at dark on the ocean-end of the Bolstad Beach approach five blocks south of Boreas Inn. It’s all FREE and quite insane. Stay on the boardwalk or sit in the back yard of Boreas Inn, (the hot tub has a great view) and stay a safe distance from all the pyromaniacs and you will have a great time in Long Beach, Washington on the 4th of July, 2011. I found a video taken by visitors to the Peninsula last year and you can get a little idea of what it’s like in front of Boreas Inn on the 4th. Hang onto your sparklers, baby!
Grab our last rooms and watch the 2nd and 4th of July shows at Boreas Bed and Breakfast Inn on the lovely Long Beach Peninsula!
Odell Hathaway, our guest/friend/budding videographer likes to take pics and video of me doing the “Food Tour” at breakfast time. You might be able to focus on the food in the video while I am focusing on my ever-drooping face! Both are entertaining. In this video, I have prepared breakfast for a small group of returning guests a couple of weekends ago. Bill was in Eugene for the weekend and I had our guests/friends all to myself! The baked apple french toast I am describing is an adapted recipe originally from The Shelburne Inn, our dear friends, David and Laurie. I love making this dish–something you can put together the night before and bake in the morning. Thanks to Odell for posting this video to YouTube! Come to Boreas Inn–we have availability over Memorial Day weekend—which is NEXT weekend. We promise to make you very happy indeed at our Long Beach Washington Bed and Breakfast. Boreas inn is upscale, but never pretentious!
Come to Long Beach this weekend and get the best of both worlds–luxurious B&B, great food and razor clamming–which is getting right down to the real nitty gritty (to coin a phrase from the 70′s)! Crawl out of your beautiful, warm, cushy Boreas bed in the morning an hour or so before low tide on Sunday, then freeze your fannies off in the early morning digs and be back at the Inn with your limit of 15 razor clams, warming up by the fire with our great coffee by 9:30 am breakfast time! The first dig on Saturday is actually a late afternoon dig–so you can work up an appetite for dinner at one of our fine dinner houses! We will make all arrangements!
Long Beach, Washington will open for razor clam digging for FOUR days at noon March 19! Dan Ayres, WDFW coastal shellfish manager, advises prospective diggers to pay particular attention to the shift in digging times during this month’s razor-clam opening. “It gets a little tricky scheduling digs at this time of year, but the goal is to arrange openings during the best clam tides,” Ayres said. “The split schedule also provides an opportunity for back-to-back digs the evening of Saturday, March 19, and the morning of Sunday, March 20.”
Digging days and low tides for March are:
Saturday, March 19, 7:04 p.m. (-0.1 ft); Long Beach
Sunday, March 20, 7:36 a.m. (-0.5 ft); Long Beach
Monday, March 21, 8:23 a.m. (-0.9 ft); Long Beach
· Tuesday March 22, 9:12 a.m. (-1.0 ft); Long Beach So get your clam digging license, required if you are age 15 or older and come down and dig some razor clams. Ayres reminds diggers that WDFW is tentatively planning another razor-clam opening April 7-9 until noon each day at Long Beach and Twin Harbors if marine toxin tests show the clams are safe to eat. Licenses expire on March 31, so you need to make sure, for the April digs coming up, that you get a new license.
It was a beautiful, calm day of razor clamming at Beard's Hollow
We promise you a beautiful, lazy weekend at Boreas if you decide to visit us. We have room for you and would love to cook up a storm in the morning if it’s not stormy enough outside–and even if it is. Don’ t listen to the weather guys–they are usually wrong, unless they tell you it’s going to be wonderful–because sunshine, rain, wind…it’s always wonderful here. The fireplaces beckon and we’re offering our Walk-in Special at our romantic getaway by the sea. $150 a night including our “perfectly plated” 3 course or more breakfast (plus tax of course). We don’t want to be lonely–so come to Long Beach and we will fix you up with two fabulous dinners out at our fine dinner houses and promise you the most relaxing weekend with fireplaces blazing and our new hot tub beckoning. We hope to see you soon!
Not only will you be treated to sumptuous beds with the softest linens and feather beds placing goose down above and below your tired and deserving bods enticing you to sleep like babies, you will be treated to a weekend of culinary expertise starting with your daily candle light brunch feast by the fireplace! With only one guest room remaining, you can count on these “simple” pleasures continuing on for President’s Day weekend (February 18,19,20–we have rooms available!) and throughout the year. Boreas Inn specializes in romance, there’s no doubt about it! We consistently treat our guests like royalty, but with style and humor (at least we hope you will think we’re humorous!). Fine dining, whether at the breakfast table at Boreas Inn, partnering with our local restaurants, is of crucial importance to all of us on the beautiful Long Beach Peninsula in SW Washington State. We are in “foodie heaven”. That’s why we all have to work out at the gym a few times a week! (New Year’s Resolution #1!)
Valentine’s Weekend calls upon not just us, but also our restauranteurs, to “pony up” with the most wonderful special Valentine’s weekend menu’s. Sample the Shelburne Inn Restaurant’s menu–itself a beautiful piece, not to mention the cuisine that completes their package! Take a peek at the hotlink and then let us know if you would like us to book you a table at The Shelburne Inn Restaurant over Valentine’s or President’s Day weekend!
Valentine's Day at Boreas Inn will be the highlight of your February!
