Although you wouldn't guess from looking at the crown, I loved getting muddy when I was a little girl. My family owns a sailboat and, growing up, my older brother and I spent most of our summers on the shores of Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands, and the Gulf Islands in Canada. Low tide was an adventure for us: we spent hours watching strange creatures in tidal pools, digging for clams and geoducks, building mud castles, and letting our feet squelch into the cool, viscous mud that the outgoing tide left behind. We could occupy ourselves for hours in that mud; there was so much to look at and explore. Much to the chagrin of our mom, we usually returned from these expeditions covered head to toe in mud that reeked of low tide: we had mud in our hair, on our clothes, under our fingernails; we looked just like little mud monsters!! But our mom was patient. She would hose us down in the cockpit, feed us dinner, put us to bed, and watch us get just as muddy on the beach the next day. My brother and I loved every minute of it.

Those muddy childhood memories are some of my best; now that I'm an adult, I'm willing to anything that I can to ensure that future generations of children have the chance to enjoy the shorelines of Washington State as much as I did. That's why I'm promoting environmental awareness and conservation of our shorelines as part of the MudUp! campaign. If everyone joins the Mud Monster and me in doing their part to protect our shores, we can truly make a difference.

Watch video of Allison telling her story!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKeHNW9cCVM