For a number of years now, my family and I have been going up to the Hood Canal area of Washington to gather shellfish. This year we decided to try going to Harstine Island in the lower Puget Sound, just north of Olympia. My daughter, Janet, was determined to get a geoduck clam. Supposedly they were available on Harstine Island. Janet, her family and I went up on Saturday. She had rented a house. My friend Estelle came up on Sunday and after that I stayed in her van at the local campground. We found Harstine Island to be a beautiful place. Absolutely only residential with wonderful beaches.

Pictures of the house, the community swimming pool and the beach.

The geoduck is usually about 2 feet below the sand and sticks the tip of its neck up out of the sand to breathe. It turns out they’re not too hard to spot, but they are very difficult to dig up. Because it’s such a deep hole, the sides of the hole keep collapsing because we’re right at the water table. So you need to put some kind of a barrier down to keep the hole from collapsing. Janet was able to get two geoducks. They took about an hour each to capture. Here are some pictures and videos of this fun adventure.

We also got one horse clam which is very similar to the geoduck, but not as tasty, and a good number of other butter clams.

The next morning, we went out again to get another geoduck. This time Lily‘s friend joined us. She was unstoppable.

We of course, had incredible meals from all of this harvesting.

Estelle and I took a drive around the north end of the island. Here are some of the pictures.

Here are some views from the campground.

On our last day on the island, Estelle and I went out to gather some more butter clams for Estelle to put in her wonderful paella.