9/30/12 -- Kalaloch Beach and Heading South

I'm several days behind on blogging, but this time I'll bring you mostly up to date.  The short version is that we have driven the whole west coast of WA and are in the southwest corner of the state.  We're about 1 1/2 hr away from Vancouver but we don't have to be home until Oct 4th, so we're continuing to enjoy our journey until then. 

After we left La Push and Forks, we headed south down Hwy 101, the winding, two-lane highway that runs along the west coast of the Pacific Ocean from Puget Sound in WA all the way to the Mexican border in California.

A note about swimming in the ocean here.  Many of the beaches along WA's coast are dangerous for swimming. Riptides are common as the waves come from different angles and collide on the beach. A riptide can drown a person who is only playing in the waves up to their waists.  The riptide pulls them under and sweep them swiftly out to sea. These poor folks are never seen again. We saw warning signs against ocean swimming our whole coastal trip.  We weren't tempted anyway.  For our bones, it's too cold for swimming!

Ruby Beach

Our first stop was Ruby Beach.  I really wanted to go down to the beach, but the bluff was just too much for me.  The trail is steep and contains many steps. 

These steps were put in in the CCC days of The Great Depression.  They made the steps out of logs but the logs have shifted and the shifting sands have done their part.  Now the steps are of different heights and some quite high. 

We looked down on the beach from the parking lot and soaked in the beauty of this spot.  A short hike up the bluff led to the picnic area and the view from there was spectacular. 


Looking down Ruby Beach. 

The rock at the left is common, similar to many on beaches in WA and OR.  These rocks are known as "haystacks."   Birds -- gulls, cormorants, puffins -- love them
The rocks provide safe places for them to nest and raise their young.  Puffins are so cute and such interesting birds, but I didn't get a picture of a puffin this time.  Maybe someday...

The waves come in like, well, like waves. They tumble over each other and look like steps.   In the two-dimensional world of photography, they look like little bits of water lapping on the sand.   Not true.   Each wave is 6' or higher.  When you stand on the sand watching the waves spread out on the sand at your feet, you are looking up at the level of the larger ocean. 


Waves look like stair-steps
race each other to the beach
gulls swoop like surfers

Looking down on the beach gives a different perspective than when you are on the beach, looking up at the waves bearing down on you.  You can see how the waves swirl and break among the rocks that dot the coast. 


Waves swirl among the rocks, humps of lava, lumps of granite

There wasn't any camping at Ruby Beach, so we moved on, driving among incredible forests of cedar, fir, pine, tamarack, hemlock and alder.  The coastal rain forest lies along Hwy 101, sometimes right on the road.  The road winds in and out of the Olympic National Forest, a real wilderness area.  Ruby Beach is the beginning of half a dozen beaches that lie along the highway.  It's a breath-taking drive.

We stopped to check out the campground at Kalaloch Beach, named for the Kakaloch tribe.  We've camped there in the past, but things change and we didn't know what we'd find there.   

Kalaloch Beach

Kalaloch is crammed with trailers this time of year.  The parking spaces are small, many forest sites that I didn't feel comfortable using.  Then we watched motor homes the size of greyhound buses take the same spaces.  Some of them were towing cars.  I don't know how they did it!

There were still a few sites open.  We were fortunate and got a campsite right on the bluff.  We set our camp chairs by the camp road and savored this view until time for our nightly fire.


View from our campsite - note how very wide the beach is. 

We had only planned to spend one night at Kalaloch. We were so delighted with our campsite (very private and sheltered from the wind), our view and the lure of the beach that we stayed an extra night.  It may not have been our first idea, but this whole trip, we've wandered as the mood has taken us.  What a great way to travel!

That first night, we set up camp and I started the fire.  I was relaxing in our campsite when a visitor showed up.  This little fellow sauntered by, bunny-style (hopping), so close I could have reached down and touched his cinnamon-colored fur.  He joined us both evenings about dusk.  After about 45 minutes of munching his favorite dinner grass, he disappeared into the bushes.  We felt blessed by his presence. 


Our nightly dinner guest

The next day we bundled up and hiked down to the beach.  The trail was very close to our campsite, not too long or too steep.  I had to cope with the usual uneven stairs but there were only about a dozen of them. 

In order to minimize erosion from wind and wave on the steps and the trail, the National Park Service built a windbreak of vertical driftwood.  There is a lot of driftwood on this beach -- quite literally tons of it.



First you see the windbreak, then the bushes crawling up the hill above it, then the trees.
That's when you have an idea of the size of the driftwood used on this windbreak. 
Those trees were huge!

We bundled up because it was cold.  The fog was just lifting and the wind was cutting.  We were thankful to find a windbreak-shelter some kind person had built out of driftwood.  We sat with our backs against it, cradled by the soft sand. 


We spent the whole wonderful day on the beach,
basking in the sunshine, taking walks,
talking to seagulls and visiting with each other

Kalaloch is only a ten miles or so past Ruby Beach.  As you go south along WA coast, beaches get wider and waves get wilder, tumbling over each other.  Like many beaches along this coast, rocks peek above the waves.  When the waves break on them, the spray leaps high into the air.


The rock on the far left is submerged by a cresting wave, but the spray is easy to see. 
There are more rocks on the right.  Waves here too are about 6-7' high.

The Kalaloch River spreads its delta here.  One small branch of it came near our shelter.  Seagulls flocked to this running fresh water.  They ducked their heads and drank from it.  They bathed and splashed in it.  Then, when they were watered and clean, they stood on its banks and preened, cleaning and fluffing their feathers.  They weren't interested in begging for food but were into their own agenda.  As a result, they let me get quite close to them.  


The Seagull Spa

In the past, the only seagulls I've ever noticed were either flying or begging for food.  These seagulls were really different.  We know we aren't supposed to feed wildlife and these guys didn't expect anything.  Seagulls are supposed to gather their own food -- shellfish, crabs and the like.  They are really very intelligent birds. 

I remember one seagull that didn't fit this category.  Many years ago, I was on a beach somewhere on Puget Sound, a combination of rocks and sand.  The seagulls were feeding.  A seagull would grab a clam, fly straight up into the air and then drop the clam on a rock to break it open.  The gull would drop like a stone to get the soft inner meat before another seagull could steal it.  I watched them for a while, and then I noticed one seagull who was different. 

He was having a hard time.  He got the part about grabbing the clam and flying straight up into the air.  The part he didn't get was about where to drop it.  While other gulls dropped their clams on the rocks, this guy dropped his on the sand.  Every time.  He'd drop like a stone and then look at his clam.  He'd turn it over with his beak.  Then he'd pick it up, fly straight up in the air ... and drop it on the sand.  He was persistent, I'll give him that, but he took the prize for Most Stupid Seagull of the Year. 

On our day at Kalaloch Beach (back to the present), one young seagull found us interesting for his own reasons.  He came over to look us over, walking around us about 8" from our feet.  We didn't sit very still but he stuck around anyway.


Our seagull friend struts past Adina's shoes

After a while, our seagull buddy leaned into the wind and tucked one foot up.  We didn't know what that meant.


Why is he standing on one leg like that?

After a minute or so of standing on one leg, our seagull buddy lay down in the sand a couple of feet away from me.  He kept an eye out toward the beach for passing dogs, not all of which were on leash, but he also yawned and dozed.  We were doing the same thing.  We spent an hour or so like that.  We talked to him and we think he talked back.  



Sleepy Seagull Buddy

This was the first time we ever noticed a seagull take a siesta.  Since then, we have seen it several times, although none of the other seagulls chose to share our space like our seagull buddy did.  

As the afternoon waned and the wind got colder, we wandered back down to the Seagull Spa to see what was happening.   A couple of dogs had gone through and they had all left -- for about three minutes.  Every now and then a group would fly off and another group would fly in from another direction.  This was definitely their place.  I caught one group as they took off to make way for the next contingent of seagull bathers.   


A few of the seagulls left to make way for other bathers

In this picture of the seagull flock, the waves were catching the sun and it turned them silver.  It is a gift to spend a whole day (and night) hearing the roar of the waves.  They crest and break, crash and thunder, whether anyone is on the beach to listen to them or not.  Hearing them is the best music of all.

 

Fall is the time between the relatively warm summer and the wild storms of winter.  A lot of people were on the beach wearing shorts and clam-diggers and tee shirts.  We wore several layers, a wool sweater and a jacket.  We wore wool hats and gloves.  We've learned how to live with cold in Wisconsin winters.  The people who live here don't think this is cold.  It's a damp, sometimes dank, cold.  We're going to have to adjust to the difference, but we'll still probably bundle up.  It was 43 degrees in the trailer when we woke up this morning.

 

The wind never stops at the beach, or anyway not often.  As a result, the trees grow funny.  Every cell is bent by the wind.  Just as plants grow toward the sun, beach trees grow away from the wind.
 

Trees at the beach, taken from our campsite at Kalaloch Beach Campground
This picture is not tilted!

We have always enjoyed walking among the trees of the beach, just as we enjoy walking through the sand, climbing on driftwood (okay, maybe not that so much anymore), and watching the waves.
 

Willipa Bay and All the Way South

The next day, we moved on, stopping as our whims led us.   That night we camped on Willipa Bay.  It used to be called Shoalwater Bay after the Shoalwater Indian tribe.  I don't know why they changed it. 

 

Willipa  Bay (Shoalwater Bay) protected from the rush of the crashing waves
The fog hadn't finished lifting when I took this picture, late morning

The following day we continued running south along the WA coast.  We stopped in Raymond WA for a mess of the best fish and chips we've had in years.  We found it at a little trailer along the road in the parking lot of a fish company.  They had the most beautiful bench for us to wait on while they cooked our fish and chips -- now that's fresh!    

 

This beautiful carved salmon bench was even comfortable!


The Alaskan cod pieces were rolled in cornmeal and then fast fried, just the way they're supposed to be and wrapped in newsprint.  We got the smallest size order.  It provided us with 4 pieces of fish each and a mess of fries. 


Half of a small order of fish and chips!

Best of all, they had aged gourmet malt vinegar for me to sprinkle on my fish and fries. I love fish and chips spattered with vinegar and then salted. Adina tried it that way and allowed that it was awfully good. I hope all of you can come and have fish and chips, west coast style (but if you want to skip the vinegar, that's okay)!     



We camped that night at an RV park (with electricity available) in Ocean Park on the Long Beach Peninsula.  It's gotten cold enough that the flowerpot furnace is struggling to keep us warm.  We broke out our ceramic cube furnace and now we are toasty.  

 

We've been here a couple of days, just resting and enjoying the area.  I'll tell you all about that in the next blog!