Category Archives: Mud Bay & Rocky Point

King Tide on Mud Bay

Cat patrol at high tide


Posting a King Tide photo is becoming an annual event for the Mud Bay blog. This is my third. The picture was taken at the north end of Mud Bay a few minutes before this morning’s official high tide (7:45 AM, 13.6 feet). I don’t have a GPS so I can’t be more specific on location. The small bulkhead provides a rough yardstick for measuring the water’s height. It’s rare to see water on its land side.

To avoid any hint of plagiarism, I revised my original photo caption, which quite accurately said “It was a dark and stormy morning.” That’s the Mud Cat in the photo. Normally he likes to patrol on the top of the bulkhead but not this morning. For the record it was a dark and stormy morning.

King Tides are higher-than-normal tides that occur once or twice a year in the winter when the moon is at its closest point to the earth and the gravitational pulls of the sun and moon are acting together.

Riding in the Rain

I was going to call this “The Art of Riding in the Rain,” but the title is already taken. Perhaps that’s just as well because unlike the informative post in The Bike Whisperer’s blog, I don’t have any useful tips for cycling in cold wet weather. Basically I ride without raingear and get wet. If that makes other riders want to stay indoors, I don’t blame you for skipping this miserable ride.
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No on Sewers

They came, they listened, they said no. If the informal vote taken at Bremerton Councilman Will Maupin’s district meeting Tuesday night on going ahead with sewer planning is representative of what Rocky Point and Marine Drive residents think, area homes will remain on septic tanks for the next few years.
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Mud Bay Lighthouse

A tiny beacon


Just catching up on posts I missed this summer when I was away from my computer. While Mud Bay, or Dyes Inlet for that matter, doesn’t need a lighthouse, it has one now (see photo). I got it at the Allyn Days festival in July. I had some birthday money to spend and bought it on a whim. The lighthouse was made by a woodworker named Mike who runs a small business called Laughing Dolphin Keepsakes. The little light at the top is solar powered. The lighthouse doesn’t emit enough light to warn any kayakers who might get too close, but it does lend a nautical look to my deck.

Do Mud Bay Tidelands Qualify?

A wildlife habitat home on Rocky Point


Is your property a certified wildlife habitat? A home on Rocky Point that I pass by on walks and bike rides proudly displays a sign that it qualifies (see photo). Their sign made me wonder how many of the basic habitat elements (food, water, cover, and places to raise young) my property provides. Also whether owning the Mud Cat, a stealthy but rarely successful stalker of songbirds and rodents, is a no-no.
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Sign Down

Giving its life for traffic safety


The stop sign at the south end of Rocky Point Road takes a beating. As vulnerable as unspent revenue during a session of the state legislature, it is planted in the asphalt at the Y-shaped intersection with Marine Drive. Most drivers stay well to the right of the sign as they pull forward for a clear look at cross traffic. However, last night or this morning it got nailed—again (see photo). There’s no word whether a motorist was cited for the knockout blow. By early this afternoon, a temporary sign, anchored with sandbags and flanked by orange traffic cones, took its place.

Mud Bays: No Big Three

The best known “Big Three” comes from the automobile industry and refers to the three largest car makers in the United States: General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. There are also Big Threes in sports (LeBron James, Duane Wade, and Chris Bosh of the Miami Heat) and in World War II history (Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Yalta Conference). But there is no Big Three when the category is Mud Bays in Washington.
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Holding out for Mud Bay Way

A couple of years ago I posted an entry about Rocky Point’s private roads. According to a recent article in the Kitsap Sun, I might have been on to something. While they won’t be private, attempts to standardize Kitsap County addresses may lead to more short roads in areas like Rocky Point.
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Rocky Point Pond—Take Two

Larger than last time


In a January 2010 entry about Rocky Point Pond, I said it was as large as I had ever seen it. After a rainy first fortnight in March, the pond (see photo) now appears to be about 50 percent larger and several inches deeper than the old record. Given normal average monthly precipitation for Bremerton in the winter, it’s crazy to think the pond would be bigger in March than January, but it is. That’s what 7 inches of rain (the official measurement so far this month) will do.

Of course it’s not really a pond, just a low spot that fills with water after several days of heavy rain. In so doing, it makes a handy neighborhood rain gauge. How big and deep will it get? The forecast calls for rain for the next few days, and the ground is so soggy the pond is draining very slowly during our rare rain breaks. So it should continue to grow, although I doubt if the driveway on the right is in jeopardy.

Mud Bay Rainbow

Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Indigo-Violet


Marine Drive and Rocky Point were briefly bridged about noon today by a gorgeous rainbow (see photo). The multicolored arc was encouraging—you don’t see one unless the sun is shining—but short-lived. As I write this the weather is back to showers followed by rain followed by showers. If there is a pot of gold where the rainbow’s west end touched down at the tip of Marine Drive, it looks like an easy dig at low tide. Does anyone have a clam rake?