I love the minus tides that happen every year in May and June. If I am lucky, they will happen on a day when I am off work and the weather is good. You never know – especially this year. But everything aligned and this week was warm and sunny. And it was minus tide time.

I happened to have to work late on Thursday. Part of my job is to cover Asia-Pacific. So when my co-worker in Sydney takes a day off, I work a late shift – 3:30pm to 12:00am. It can be tough especially switching between my normal 10-6pm shift and the late shift. I had to cover for him on Thursday so I decided to make the most of it.

First I headed to the Edmonds Marina to have lunch at Anthony’s . I has seating outside along my walk path. I got there about 11:45 and got a nice table overlooking the Marina. It was a little cool but not bad. I had the Blue Plate special which was scampi and a nice cold Weise beer from Pike Brewery.

I decided to walk a bit after lunch and headed towards Marina Park. The Olympic Mountains were visible in the distance and still dappled in snow. As I crossed over the bridge to the park, I saw how far out the tide was and remembered it was Minus tide week. WooHooo.

I headed out to the tide flats. There is a dog off-leash area next to the park and all the dog owners were taking advantage of the extra beach area. The dogs were having so much fun running, splashing, sniffing and digging in the sand. There were also several groups of young children – probably part of a pre-school splashing through the tide pools in brightly covered rubber boots.

I walked and walked – slipping and sliding over the eel grass and ribbon seaweek. The sun was warm, the air salty – the day perfect! I still had to go to work but it was so much easier after having spent the day at the beach.