Clams

Last weekend I went on a new adventure, clam digging. My friend Jeff has been telling forever that I should go, and I would always tell him I didn't think I would enjoy it. I have no desire to be cold, wet, and dirty, plus clams are gross. Well, Saturday morning I was laying in bed when he sent me a text saying I should come with him that afternoon. I had no plans, so I figured why not? We drove out to Copalis (near Ocean Shores) and met up with some friends before we headed out to the beach. Luckily, the weather was fairly nice, it wasn't very cold and not really windy either.

We drove down the beach to Jeff's favorite spot, a giant rock, and parked by this orange sign "so we won't lose the truck." I put on these rubber boots that went all the way up to my thighs, and a pair of gloves and off we went to go dig our clams. Jeff has these neat neat clam guns, you just push them down in the sand over the clam hole and then pull up. More often than not, the clam is right there in the sand you pull out which was good for me because I have no desire to stick my hand in a hole and dig around for them.. It may sound easy, but it's ALOT of work. We were in a hot spot though, we had our limit in less than a half hour. I was proud of myself, I dug all my own except for one. After we were done, we headed home to get cleaned up and have dinner.

The next day we had to clean them, which I was not looking forward to. We had 60 clams, and I was expecting them to be all gross and slimy, but it turns out they aren't so bad. My job was to drop them into boiling water until the shells popped open, and then peel off the shells. Jeff did the rest of the cleaning, cutting off the necks and diggers and what not. I'm not really sure what that part entails, because I didn't want to watch. we had a good little system going and it only took about an hour to get them all clean.

My body was soooo sore the next couple days. I used muscles I didn't even know a had. What a work out! I did have a really good time though, and am lookimg forward to trying it again next month. Hopefully we'll have good weather again.