Cranberry Harvest Begins

It's that time of the year again. The cranberries are ripe and ready to be picked, so Kevin is now busy helping his dad pick cranberries in between his fishing trips. Since yesterday was our anniversary (seven years already!), I decided at the last minute to pack Abby up and head out to Grayland so I could at least see Kevin on our anniversary. Kevin was going to work on the bog all day and then head back out to sea in the evening. It ended up being a gorgeous day on the coast but unfortunately, and not surprisingly, we didn't even get to glance at the beach. =( Abby and I weren't a whole lot of help with the work, but Kevin had fun showing his little girl all about cranberry harvesting. I set Abby up with some toys, her sippy cup and cheerios on a towel on the warehouse floor where she could watch her Daddy hard at work.

Kevin taking a quick break to play with Abby.

Riding on the trailer out to the bog to pick up more sacks of berries to bring back to the warehouse.

Finally, we found a job for us: Abby helped me drive the four-wheeler! She enjoyed it a lot! But no fast driving here like my cousin does with his girls. We had to go slow so as not to hurt the cranberry vines when we were driving on the bog and also so we wouldn't dump our load of cranberries on the trailer!

As the sun began to set and the last of the sacks were stacked in the warehouse, Kevin and I decided to leave Abby with his parents and grab a quick bite out to celebrate our anniversary. Since I still had a long drive home with Abby back to Olympia, we opted for the closest restaurant: Bennett's (not that there's many options in a town of 500 people!). I hadn't been to the place in many years and it'd since changed ownership and looked fairly nice from the outside...but we soon found out it was closed on Mondays. So, we headed down the highway to the next closest restaurant: The Mutineer. The place was all-out 70s (complete with wood paneling and olive green vinyl booths) and reminded me of sitting in a big kitchen rather than a restaurant. Thankfully, the food was pretty good and we enjoyed our hurried meal together, but going to a 70s restaurant with a sign out front saying, "Pirate parking only - all others will be flogged!" was not my idea of a romantic, intimate anniversary dinner.

Anyway, I'm sure Abby and I will be out on the bog many more times during the next few weeks of harvest, so stay tuned for more cranberry pictures!