A stormy beach camp

In celebration of our wedding anniversary, we went to a place called Cape Alava on the Washington coast. It's a long, long drive on the Olympic Peninsula but there's lots of cool stuff to gawk at (and take photos of). There is a boardwalk hike that takes you through the forest, which is filled with ancient trees, lichen, mushrooms, mosses, fungi, streams and other lovely things to gaze upon during your  contemplative three mile stroll to the beach. Once we arrived at the camping area and set up our tent, we poked around the tide pools and took photos. There is an immense amount of seaweed that washes ashore. I don't know the names of most seaweeds but I'm pretty sure this large bulbous plant is called "bull kelp." I love how the kelp looks as though it's being strangled by the seaweed that looks either like spaghetti or intestines (depending on your mood).

Strangled

The wind was extremely strong. At times I found it difficult to keep my camera still because I was being buffeted about. Because a storm was coming in and the next low tide would occur at 5:30 Sunday morning, we decided to do our beach hike on Saturday afternoon.

If you walk south along the beach, you can eventually get to another camping area called Sandpoint. There is another trail from Sandpoint that leads back to the parking area at Lake Ozette if you are making a giant loop (or triangle) of your hike. Before getting to Sandpoint, there are petroglyphs carved by the native people (I'm not sure if it was the Makah) in the 19th century. There's a very cool one of a sailing ship but we couldn't find it on this trip. Here are a couple figures of the one I think is the easiest to see. The petroglyph is actually lying horizontal but I turned it vertical for viewing purposes.

Petroglyph - Washington coast

I'm glad that we went on our beach walk on Saturday since it was dumping rain and blowing super hard when we woke up Sunday morning (during the night the wind and rain lashed at our tent - making for fitful sleep).

After breakfast under a tree that offered some shelter from the elements, we took one last walk on the beach before the return trip up the boardwalk. The rain had given us a bit of a respite, though the wind was still hard to walk against. Lovely beach and lovely couple days.

View from Cape Alava