This is our first full day here, having arrived last night from Astoria. The morning broke clear and beautiful which is rare for this coastline. The locals says it’s pretty amazing but there’s nearly a week of fine weather descending on the area.
Outside the waves are breaking against the cliffs and the sea-stacks that I’ve loved for nearly 20 years now since I first came this way in 1991. Like music listened to for many years, the views here are part of some of my favorite memories of time and place.
Colette and I walked down to the beach but we could’t get there over the logs stacked up at the first path so we switched to the next path west and were able to get through. All winter long, all the rivers here disgorge tree trucks into the sea from the vast mountains and forests in this area and they wash up along the entire coastline making a beautiful sight. Once onto the mixed rock and sand beach, we walked west and just took it all in. (The Sacred) James Island, the breakwater, the sea-stacks and the little fishing town of La Push. Once to the end, we clambered up a small cliff and got back into the town’s roads.
We had a quick look at the River’s Edge Restaurant which is open again all year after an on again and off again pattern these last ten years. We talked to the owner and decided to come back and eat at least one meal there to support her and the place.
Then we walked back to the room and took right off on a walk up toSecond Beach (we’d been on First Beach) which is about a mile to the east of where we were.
Once there, you enter the forest and follow a long twisty path until it begins to descend down the the beach. The path is through thick and wild forest and then descends down until you emerge at the beach behind an enormous piles of logs. Above you, high up on a tree is a round sign with a highly visible “X” on it. It says, “here is the path”. Because, from out on the beach, the forest just looks like a wild and solid wall of trees. Such signs have helped me in the past when hiking these beaches.
After several false starts, we find our way over the piled logs and out onto the beach proper and we go for a long walk; first one way and then the other. We’re taking pictures, collecting rocks and we have the entire two-miles of beach to ourselves. Our footsteps are the first of the day though they look like the first that have ever been made there; the beach looks so pristine. No trash, no flotsam or jetsam of humanity washed up. Just sand, rock, green and the waves and sea-stacks. We run to cross a small stream in one jump. We see the places where the sand has separated into slightly different colors and we see the small curly markings of some unknown small beach animal.
We’re back from Second Beach by noon and have a quick lunch Colette prepares. We’re still so early in the day that I suggest we take off for Neah Bay and the Makah Tribal Museum since we have so much of the day left. Colette’s game so by 1 or 1:15, we’re on the road heading north and then west on our way to the uttermost western point of the lower contiguous U.S. states.
500 years ago, the Makah people lived on the shores of Lake Ozette on the far western side of the Olympic Peninsula. There was an earthquake and part of their village was covered in a huge mud slide. In 1980, a storm washed away some of the mud exposing the buried portions of the village and a scientific excavation was done and an enormous amount of day to day items from long houses to combs were recovered. This is what the Makah Museum is all about.
Unlike other peoples whose early history has been lost to time, the Makah people have suddenly had their past from 500 years ago returned. The lady at the museum told us that until these things were dug up some of the objects were only known through oral tradition and it was revelation to see that the stories of the elders were true and accurate.
After a long drive back, we arrive just after sunset tired but pleased with a long and adventurous day.
It wasn’t over though. At 4:15 AM, I awoke to see a crystal clear night time sky which is very rare here so I woke Colette and asked if she wanted me to how her the northern stars and constellations she’d only just heard described. She agreed and we put on some warn gear and went out for a look.
Orion (upside down from how it looks in New Zealand), Sirius, The Pleiades. Then I pointed out the Big Dipper which cannot be seen from New Zealand and showed her how to locate Polaris, the North Star from the Dipper. We tried to find Andromeda but I’d forgotten just how to do it. And then we got too cold to stay out so we went back into our warm room and retired again.
dennis