11/01/23 - Halloween Report

It was a cold night, but we had a fair number of trick or treaters. There weren't as many as last year and no where near as many before COVID. Still, it was nice to see so many kids out in costumes eager for a good candy fix. We're still using our COVID era no-contact trick or treat candy web, and it's still great greeting everyone who comes to call.

Our candy web

Around the house

Our trick or treat tally since 2013

Keywords: halloween

Keywords: halloween

11/04/22 - Little River in the Rain

The Little River Trail is another great rainy trail. The Little River may be little, but it puts on a good show especially in the rain. We'll confess, we wore rain pants and rain coats and broad brimmed rain hats and waterproof boots. We were prepared. It rained the whole time, but we managed to stay comfy and dry.

The forest was surprisingly bright. Gray days mean fewer shadows, so one can see farther through the forest and in greater detail. It also helped that a lot of leaves had fallen, so we had a wonderful mysterious sense of being in an enchanted forest. Perhaps it was the proximity to Halloween. Perhaps it was the rain.

The trail starts on DNR land, but about 35-40 minutes in, it enters the national park. The trees get older and the forest gets wilder. Then the trail descends and follows the river more closely. We headed upstream pausing to admire the rapids and the full river lapping fallen logs. We made our way to what we call the Healing Pools. It's a good spot to settle with one's feet in the water after a hard week of hiking. We didn't do that this time, not on a cold day in the rain.


Crossing the Little River's other branch

Along the trail

A mushroom

More of the trail

More mushrooms

Descent to the river

A river view

Logs over the river

More river

Another look at the Little River

Another fallen log

Blue and gray water, green forest

Logs and rapids

A bit of snow on the trail

Another peek at the river

Fall foliage

No caption necessary - It should be obvious.

More snow

More trail

Another gateway

The footbridge

An old stump

A skull in the haunted forest

Keywords: halloween, little river, autumn

11/01/22 - Halloween

We take Halloween very seriously. The fall is when the trees lose their leaves and their needles thin revealing their skeletons, some in fantastic shapes. The colors change as the world readies for the quiet and retreat of winter. It's also the harvest with one last round of fresh local produce. All of that, and it's a great warmup for the holiday season.

Lenore in her web - We have no idea whose brain that is in the cauldron.

Halloween dinner

Pumpkin and oyster soup

Tomato eyeballs stuffed with bacon, arugula, tomato and mayonnaise

Bat burgers with melted gruyere and kimchi

Keywords: halloween, autumn, winter

06/14/22 - Little River to the Healing Pools

We weren't up to a longer walk, but we wanted to get back to the Little River Trail, so we only took the trail up for a ways. Most of the trilliums were gone, but the mock Solomon's seal was out and smelled wonderful. There was also tiarella and a surprise, Pacific dogwood, a whole patch of it along the trail.

Mock Solomon's seal

Tiarella

Mushrooms

A few trilliums still white

Some older trilliums turning pink

One of the passages

Pacific dogwood

More of the Pacific dogwood patch

A big trillium

A very lush trail now

The river

Another view of the river

The trail

Rushing waters

Fallen logs over the river

Early for Halloween

A warning?

Mock Solomon's seal

One of those pretty and probably toxic mushrooms

Keywords: halloween, little river, trillium

10/31/21 - Halloween

We had our usual Halloween festivities with lights, ghoulish decorations and our no-contact trick or treating. This year we had 68 trick or treaters. That's much better than last year's 36, but nowhere near 2019's 138 or 2016's 197. One thing we noticed was that there were fewer older kids, but we're glad we didn't disappoint those who did come.

We did up a Halloween mantel.

That's Lenore in her web with a glowing brain in a cauldron behind.

Our shaman with our glowing skull

Our web for contactless trick or treating - hey, whole candy bars

As evening fell

Keywords: halloween

Keywords: halloween

10/16/21 - Signs of Halloween

It's mid-October, so we've been watching for signs of Halloween.

Our mantel is getting spooky.

We bought this pepper at Chi's. It sure looks like one of those sugar pumpkin Halloween candies.

We aren't sure of what is going on here, but it has a definite Halloween feel to it.

Keywords: halloween

10/07/21 - Seen Around

This is just some stuff we've seen while driving around.

An ad for pet cremation, not a law firm that does wills for pets. It's right next to a veterinary clinic.

Secure Destruction - Is this for Halloween?

More destruction; the skeletons are back.

We always look forward to these guys around Halloween.

Happy Halloween

Keywords: halloween, sequim, port angeles

10/31/17 - Halloween

We have two new Halloween decorations for the house this year. There's the glowing skull, an Arduino based project that glows bright red, then dims to ashes, then glows fiery again. Every home needs one. We also put together a Jacob's ladder, the ultimate mad scientist accessory. This one uses electroluminescent wires. The photo doesn't do it justice. In life, the loops of electric arcs bursts upwards as it reanimates, well something.

Happy Halloween!


The glowing skull

Jacob's ladder

The skull dims

Keywords: halloween

10/24/17 - Along the Elwha

Olympic Hot Springs Road was closed for a day or two due to weather related damage, so we got to walk along the roadway south from the Madison Falls parking lot. We had been taking this walk a lot while they were repairing the road, but once we could get the Whiskey Bend and the like, we zoomed right past this area to get to our trailhead. With the road closed, we revisited. (The road has since reopened.)

Did we mention fall color?

Twisted Halloween trees

More color

The Elwha

Another view of the Elwha

Misty mountains

One of our favorite views

A view upriver

More misty mountains across the river

Keywords: elwha, halloween, weather

10/29/16 - Halloween Party

We held our first Halloween Party in nearly a decade and decided to serve some old favorites and a couple of new dishes. Lenore, our Halloween spider, was mistress of ceremonies in her web, and she presided over an appropriately spooky meal. We made our devil burgers with Parker House rolls, buffalo sliders and little red pepper devil horns and a batch of sausage mummies wrapped in strips of puff pastry. Black squid ink pasta with black trumpet of death mushrooms was a surprise favorite. Those tentacles on the table are emerging from our black kale salad.

UPDATE - We had 197 trick or treaters on the big night. That’s a new record for us.

Lenore presiding

Black kale salad

Sausage mummies and black pasta

Devil burgers

Appropriately lit

Keywords: halloween

10/26/13 - Seattle Fog

We went into Seattle to see Gravity in 3D on an iMax screen. It was a pretty good movie with much better writing and acting than we had expected from a movie where the real stars were 3D and IMAX. The physics, on the other hand, had us laughing, but that's because we played a lot of Spacewar back in the 1970s so we know some orbital mechanics. Still, they avoided a lot of the cliches, and, as noted earlier, it was a very gripping and entertaining movie, as long as we ignored the physics.

It was foggy in Seattle, so we took some nice foggy pictures, and Halloween was on its way, so we took some Halloween-ish pictures too.

Is this a comment on bicycle safety?

Foggy Space Needle

Foggy Seattle

Some Halloween themed art

Did we pass the smell test?

Keywords: halloween, seattle

10/29/12 - Halloween Spirit

We had a little gathering of ghouls to get into the Halloween spirit. Being Kalebergs, this meant some serious cooking in the Kaleberg Kitchen.

We started with a Spider Cake. That's an orange cake with chocolate fudge cockaigne filling and a thick layer of orange icing on top. We drew a spider in her web on top using chocolate frosting.

Then we made little buffalo burger devils. Those are little buffalo burgers on Parker House rolls with Kaleberg ketchup, pickles and onion. The devil horns were cut from a red pepper.

No Halloween is complete without disembodied eyeballs. It's a cliche, but an important one, so we hollowed out some of the last tomatoes of the season and filled them with a mixture of cut up iceberg lettuce, bacon crumble, chopped up tomato and mayonaisse. It's sort of an inside out BLT without the toast.

Finally, we made sausage mummies. You can see one of them being wrapped below. We used chorizo and andouille and strips of puff pastry. They're really easy to make, and as we know from excavations of ancient Egyptian burial sites, they're a dish with a long tradition.

A Spider Cake - orange cake, chocolate fudge filling, orange icing and a chocolate spider in its web

Devil burgers

No Halloween is complete without disembodied eyeballs.

Ancient Egyptian burial customs

Sausage mummies

Keywords: halloween, food, kale

10/25/12 - Lake Angeles Trail Snow

We scoffed at the recently appointed Christmas aisle at our local Rite Aid. They had barely set up for Halloween when the fake little trees, bright red stockings and glistening ornaments started to appear. Then we hiked a bit of the Lake Angeles Trail, and even before the foot bridge we started to feel some Christmas cheer. We really should have waited. We haven't even done Halloween yet, but it was hard to avoid unseasonal thoughts while admiring the light sprinkling of wet snow.

The bridge - We wimped out here. Next time, Yak Trax.

Snow and more snow - Yes, we're exaggerating.

A Christmas mushroom?

More mushrooms in the snow

The boardwalk - This area Christmasses up quickly.

Keywords: christmas, halloween, lake angeles

11/14/11 - Solitary Sol Duc

We drove out to Sol Duc Falls the other day. The resort was closed. The ranger's station was closed. Even sections of the road were closed with automated traffic signals regulating traffic. The parking lot was deserted but for a handful of cars. It was quiet and isolated and almost spooky. Maybe it was the Spanish moss. Maybe it was Halloween's ghost, but it was a touch spooky.

The trails were wet. In some places they were waterways. The falls were as roaring as ever. We made our way up to the canyon bridge. That's not very far, maybe a third of the way up to Deer Lake. It was cold, and there was ice on the bridges and wooden walkways, so we walked carefully.

It was a strange experience returning to the falls to find them deserted. Usually, there are at least a few people around. The bridge was a bit less icy, but still slippery. It was a strange walk, with a strong sense of being far away from people and things.

There were some elk crossing the road.

The forest was lush.

The little falls near the main falls - It's worth crossing the bridge and exploring a bit.

The falls, as ever

The canyon bridge

Snow on the valley walls

A bit of the trail

A fungal friend

These are either chanterelles or brown destroyers. Only our livers know for sure.

A damp bit of trail

A rocky bit of trail

Keywords: deer lake, halloween, sol duc, trails, elk

11/01/11 - Halloween

We had our usual Halloween passing out bales of candy to perhaps 200 tricker treaters. Our street must have a reputation as a soft touch. A reputation like that takes some living up to. That, and a lot of little candy bars. It also takes a giant spider in a giant web, our shaman transforming, and a bit of mad science. (Is there any other kind?)

Our spider greeting trick or treaters

Our shaman and mad science

Another view of our spider

Keywords: halloween, science

11/01/06 - Our Shaman Transforming on Halloween

The Kaleberg manse is a rather mystical place in the best of times, but around Halloween things get even worse. We've always had our shaman mask to greet the hundreds of trick or treaters trolling our neighborhood, but this year our shaman mask was transformed, and our shaman had company. The wood carving is by Ron Telek a Nishga artist from British Columbia who has created a number of carved wooden masks depicting mystical transformations. The glowing skulls are little Mexican sugar skulls that we created with molds from MexicanSugarSkull.com and stuffed with little flashlight bulbs in sockets from Radio Shack. The jack-o-lantern was grown locally, in the United States, so this Halloween montage is sort of a tribute to NAFTA, which some folks find pretty scary in and of itself.

Our Shaman on Halloween

Keywords: halloween, art, kale

11/01/06 - Halloween Party at Kastle Kaleberg

We just could not resist. What is a Halloween party without properly ghoulish food? (And we don't mean transfats). On the right are our devil burgers made with Parker House rolls, buffalo burgers, sweet onion and pickles. The little devil horns are little diamond shaped chunks of red pepper, and don't they look good enough to eat?

We also wrapped up a bunch of sausage mummies, but the photographs just didn't do them justice. We used sausages from Sunrise Meats down on First Street, and we were quite pleased. The shop doesn't look like much, but they've got really good meat, and if you ask nicely, frozen fish.

The reckless eyeballs below and to the right are hollowed out tomatoes stuffed with arugula, mayonnaise, and bacon, and decorated with a black olive for the pupil. They're a bit messy to eat, but who can resist an inside out BLT?

Devil Burgers

RIP Cupcakes

One of the contest winners - a chocolate cupcake done up proud.

Reckless Eyeballs

Keywords: halloween, fish, food