Beach Trip

2018-09-15
Olympic National Park, WA

Today's hike was a triangle out at Ozette. I don't think it was specifically a rain forest but it has the usual quantity of ferns, moss, and huge trees. Not much rain on the hike today, though, which was nice. Side note: just because it's rainy/raining when you start the hike does not mean you should forget to put on sunscreen. Yes. Even in Washington.

Each leg of the triangle was about 3 miles long, so the full hike was about 9.5 miles. The first and third legs are through the forest, mostly on a boardwalk. It is pretty impressive how the boardwalk is in such fine shape in an environment that seems to be rotting everything in seconds. The maintenance crew obviously is able to keep on top of it somehow.

The middle section of the hike was along the beach. Ok; y'all caught me. The whole purpose of this trip was to go down the shore for the weekend and I just wanted a place a little less crowded than New Jersey, and with a few more sea stacks.

The light this morning was interesting. With calm water in the rocks reflecting a gray sky and the breakers a long ways out the pictures can be surreal. While you may think that tides are larger at higher latitudes (especially if you are familiar with the Bay of Fundy), it is really more a factor of geography than latitude. For example, there is also a large tidal variation in Panama and Columbia.

The actual beach portion of the hike was by far the hardest segment. We carefully timed it for low tide so that we could walk the whole way down the beach. They have overland "escape" routes you can take for portions where the other option is swimming when the tide is in, but we didn't want to rely on them. Besides, it was more fun to walk around the points.

Coincidentally, it was a beach cleanup weekend, although there was not much we could do to help there. I am an experienced garbage-picker-upper after cleaning the highway with the Lions Club a couple times a year, and I have to say that the early volunteers did an excellent job removing almost all the visible litter that was lighter than a tire or large chunks of metal. And they packed it all out three miles.

The end of the beach leg was Cape Alava, the westernmost point on the contiguous U.S. mainland. So much for "go west, young man." Been there, done that.

Hiking distance: 9.5 miles