Not that I'm going to change my behavior, but I feel bad.
Each year she says, I love the beach! When we get to the beach she says, It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Next year, let's go to the mountains. We'll see.
Regardless, this year we went back to the beach. Specifically, Shi Shi Beach in Olympic National Park. That's "shy-shy" not "she-she" no matter how many times you think it should be "she-she". The trailhead is on Makah Land (it's all Makah Land, but the trailhead is on the Makah Reservation) and it takes a long time to get there. Something like five hours to get to the northwesternmost point of the contiguous United States. That's a long drive. Good thing the hike isn't long.
I dropped Lilly at the trailhead and drove the half mile back to the overnight parking area. I had a nice chat with Breeze and hoofed it to the trailhead. We shouldered packs and started into the forest. It's gorgeous. Big trees. Thick (thick!) sallal. Nice boardwalks. The trail climbs and descends gently. It's never difficult. Well, not until you get to the National Park entrance.
At the border to the Park the trail drops precipitously to the beach. There are nice stairs and railings so it's not like you're using a sand ladder or scrambling, but the fact we'd have to go back up later definitely entered my mind.
The beach was easy walking. The tide was on the way out and the sand was firm. We had a permit, but there aren't assigned camp sites. You get to pick a spot and set up. Like previous years, we opted to camp on the beach. But where...
We found the freshwater we'd use for drinking (mmm: Petroleum Creek full of seagulls and seagull... stuff but thankfully no petroleum) and decided to keep going toward Point of the Arches which is the big draw. Huge seastacks extending from the shore. Clearly we'd be spending time there so we camped about halfway between the water and the rocks.
First task: set up the tent. Second task: Wade into the ocean. Duh. We're at the beach. Our important jobs done, we wandered over to the rocks.
Cool. There are true arches and caves carved into the rock and tide pools scattered between them. Unfortunately, the really low tides were in the middle of the night. Our low tide was only a foot or two lower than the high tide. Lame. We saw a couple of anemones and a handful of crabs. Even a tiny fish. No worries, we'd have the whole next day.
Lilly's had an early bedtime since she started working an early shift so we had a quick dinner and went to bed early. Even though the sky was clear as the sun set, we strung up a tarp above our flyless tent and crashed.
Good thinking, that. The morning was socked in with fog and everything was damp. Dare I say, moist? Probably not. It was a bit of a shock because one of the times I woke in the middle of the night I found the sky to be an amazing display of stars. Why were they so amazing? Apparently, the area we were in was a class 2 on the Bortle scale.
Yeah, yeah. "Bortle" is a funny word. I feel for John Bortle for whom the scale is named. It's a way to express the brightness of the sky at night. What it means to be in a class 2 area is you can see things you can't see in the city or even the mountains 50 miles distant from a city. AMAZING. And, yes. I did just drop some SCIENCE! on you. (And yes, I learned about the Bortle scale from my even more SCIENCE!y daughter.)
I tried to sleep in, but my early bedtime daughter also gets up stupid early. She was ready to go. Where? Dunno. Exploring. She made me coffee (naturally) and herself tea (blasphemer!). We shared a breakfast meal, packed some lunch-type food, and headed south along the beach.
Beyond the Point of Arches there's another bay. This one is sheltered by rocks that take the brunt of the waves. Does this mean better sand? NOPE. Instead of the easy-to-walk-on tiny-grain sand we were treated to bb-sized rocks. They were loosely packed so each step meant we'd sink about six inches. Definitely worse than actual sand.
But there were more rocks so we continued along the shore hopping on bigger rocks when we could and scanning the water for friends. Which friends? Otters and sea lions, mostly. I mean, there were lots of birds, but... you know... birds. Meh. We did see some sea lions and I think we saw otters farther out, but didn't get proof.
We went until the tide prevented further easy travel and headed back to camp. The sun came out on our way back and it was suddenly hot. Lilly, of course, stole my brand new sunshirt so she stayed cool and shielded while I cooked a little. Good thing I bought two of them. Too bad I didn't bring them both.
At camp we started playing cards. We found if we were in the sun it was too hot and in the shade of the tarp it was too cold. We compromised by lying half-in half-out. Now about the cards... Lilly is a bit of a shark.
We started playing gin rummy and had some fun. Then we tried scopa and fell in love. The game is super fast once you get the hang of it and there's nothing like yelling "SCOPA!" when you sweep the table. We kept score by writing in the sand. Lilly crushed me, but it was still fun. Once again, we had an early dinner and headed to bed just after sunset.
Again, I woke in the middle of the night. This time it was because I set an alarm. I'd heard the new iPhones can take great night pictures. They're not wrong. I won't pretend I configured the phone, but I will take credit for remembering a tripod. The only disappointment is that I've tried for so long with my big camera to get good night shots and then my phone does it way better.
As usual, this was a three day trip. Hike in day one. Explore the area day two. Hike out day three. We packed up our very damp gear, marveled at the pink clouds, watched as the sun kissed the Point of Arches, had coffee (of course) and started our hike out.
The beach was easy. The climb up to the Park boundary was surprisingly not as bad as I feared. The hike through the forest was no problem. We saw a few other people on the trail and a few dayhikers heading down to the beach. We got back to the car at about 9am and were on the road shortly after.
Yeah, the beach is sandy and it takes forever to get there. BUT, it's a super mellow place to go and there's always tons of time to connect with both nature and your loved ones. If we don't go to the mountains next year, I guess it will be ok. But the year after...
