"Highway Hijinks: A Yacht Club Tale"-- A loose interpretation of an actual event.

It was a sunny Saturday on April 26, 2025, when esteemed members of the Quilcene Harbor Yacht Club exchanged their boat shoes for work boots to tackle their civic duty: Adopt-a-Highway Clean-Up Day on Highway 101. Spirits were high, coffee was stronger than sense, and not a single soul remembered to bring bug spray.

Marcia Dean, self-appointed "Commodore of Trash," arrived fashionably late with a custom-made litter grabber she’d dubbed The Clawdiator. “Efficiency meets style,” she declared, just before it got tangled in a blackberry bush and flung a soda can into Jory Ihlen’s face.

Jory, ever the good sport, shrugged it off. “Only the third-worst thing to hit me on Highway 101,” he muttered, tightening the Velcro on his neon safety vest, which was mysteriously two sizes too small and gave him the appearance of a very responsible traffic cone.

Meanwhile, Mary Ihlen took a strategic approach, leading a sub-committee to rank garbage items by historical significance. “This Burger King wrapper is vintage 1993,” she said, carefully sliding it into a Ziploc. “We’re practically doing archaeology.”

Kori Ward, who had mistakenly thought this was a wine tasting event, made the best of it by narrating everyone’s actions in a David Attenborough voice. “Here, we observe the rarely seen Aaron Munn, performing his ritualistic dance of disentanglement,” she whispered as Aaron tried to free himself from yet another shrub.

After three hours, seventeen pounds of trash, and one accidental acquisition of a lawn gnome named “Steve,” the group declared victory. Though exhausted and slightly sunburned, they stood proudly where one day soon a sign will mark their stretch of adopted highway.

Marcia looked out over the cleaned roadside and sighed contentedly. “You know,” she said, “once that sign goes up, we’ll be officially responsible for this mess.”

Rick nodded. “Let’s just hope the sign takes a while.”