Happy New Year to all our Clearwater friends. As you know, I like to stay in touch with all of you as the new year begins. I know we're in the depths of winter, but it's still a good time to think about the coming year and dates that you might make reservations for. As a wise man once said, "He who arrives late finds no bed." But before you go to the website calendar, let's take a walk through seasons past in 2018.

Winter 2018 was a wet one. Not particularly cold, but damp for sure. Our steelheading friends lost a lot of dates to the repeated freshets on the Queets and Clearwater. Hopefully 2019 will be a little drier. One positive note vis-à-vis steelheading was that the fish that were caught were bigger than usual, lots of them between 10 and 15 pounds. But razor clamming was great, lots of nice big clams. We had to dig at Mocrocks and Copalis, but this winter the DFW is preparing for some Kalaloch tides too. If you're a clammer, this is exciting, as the drive will be shorter. Keep your fingers crossed.

I spent most of the spring cutting firewood and keeping the hummingbird feeder full. The gardens got planted, the weather slowly warmed and the cow elk across the road went into hiding to drop their calves.

What can I say about summer? It's such a beautiful time to do so many things. We hit the beach, picked gallons of blackberries, swam in the river across from the house, did a little trout fishing and did everything we could to keep the weeds out of the gardens.

Fall brought many chanterelles and we picked our share. This made up for bad luck with smelting. We always seemed to zig when we should have zagged, and every time we tried, the phrase we heard was, "You should have been here yesterday!" Sadly, the fall salmon season was limited to September, but this year we're hoping to fish in October and November as well. Be sure to check with the Department of Fish and Wildlife for details.

So if you are receiving this newsletter, you know that outdoor minded people don't have any trouble finding things to do at Clearwater. To all the activities listed above, there are many more: hiking, biking, beach combing and birding are just a start.

We hope to see you again this year. Check the website calendar for open dates that are a fit for you and your friends and family. Just go to www.clearwaterguesthouse.com and you'll find all the information necessary to take the first step. See you at the Guesthouse soon!

Joe Novak

P.S. By the way, we've added wi-fi for those of you who enjoy being connected, but don't go overboard and remember why you're at the guesthouse to begin with.