New fruits!

I've been browsing on raspberries near the visitor center - there are at least a couple of ripe ones every day. I've also tried a few gooseberries growing on a bush near the upper overlook - they went from yellow-green to a sort of greenish-purple, and when I ate them they were sweet and a little tart.

Now the chokecherries are starting to turn red.

They're growing all along the fence at the edge of the cliff. They are apparently the dark variety, rather than the red variety, because these are NOT ripe! I bit into one, just to see, and let me tell you, if you really need to make your mouth pucker up... it's not just sour, it's a physical reaction. The berry book calls it astringent. It's not quite as bad as an unripe persimmon, but it's in the same family!

Chokecherries do get somewhat sweeter when ripe, but because they have a really big seed in each one they're hard to eat raw. They're often used for jelly.

The colors of the water today were just spectacular. I tried tweaking this photo just a little to try and bring that across.

I still haven't quite got it.

After work today I drove out to the picnic area at Twelvemile Beach, where Amber was hosting a cookout for all the interpretive rangers. I was pleased to spot another fruit tree at the parking lot - and I recognized it from the berry book at the visitor center, which I keep flipping through during slow periods. I recognized it as being not only "edible", but "delicious" - but I could not remember what it was called! I just could not bring up the name! The fruit was very tasty, though - sweet without any particular strong flavor, with seeds that were soft enough to just eat with the rest. This is about the right size - the darker one here would have been ripe enough to eat, but they got a bit darker than that as well.

Dinner was good, and so was dessert. Someone had brought blueberry cobbler, and I brought raspberry bars that I made last night. They got a little soft sitting in my car all day - I prefer them to be more crumbly on top, but they still tasted great!

Before I left I walked over to the stairs to the beach, but didn't go down. The sun on the water was beautiful - and here's where my camera failed me again. It was still bright daylight when I took this photo!

I was trying to get the silver and gold of the clouds by blocking out part of the sun, but it wasn't enough, and my camera is trying to compensate for the full force of the sun's glow...

I did a little better with this one of ferns growing out of a bank of nothing but pure sand:

It looks like a tiny tropical scene with palm trees!

When I went back to the car I picked another handful of that delicious fruit, and pointed it out to a woman who was parked nearby. She showed her kid, and he told us they were serviceberries. THAT'S IT!!! I knew I knew it! I've seen serviceberries in bloom before, but this was the first time I've had the fruit. It was quite a treat!