Road Trip: Three Ocean Beaches in Olympic National Park
September 17, 2016
“That far-resounding roar is the Ocean’s voice of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it.”
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, from “Footprints on the Sea-shore”
Olympic National Park has several beach access points to the Pacific coast. On this road trip, we stopped at three beaches and walked barefoot in the sand.
Rialto Beach was the wildest shore with stretches of pebbly sand and sea stacks jutting up from the water.
Ruby Beach was glorious in the morning light. We descended a short trail down from the parking area to the beach. Old tree trunks littered the shore above the tide line. This beach, too, had sea stacks. But it also had tide pools to explore and fine sand to walk on.
Kalaloch Beach seemed tamer, with a wide expanse of soft sand down to the water’s edge.
“The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean —
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.”
— Robert Frost, “Devotion”
The Cry of Seagulls
August 17, 2016
“And oh, the cry of the seagulls! Have you ever heard it? Can you remember?”
— C. S. Lewis
One memorable part of my day trip to Rialto Beach was that I got many great photographs of seagulls in flight. They were feeding in the surf, right at the edge the water, and they were swooping past at eye level. So here are the results of my photo frenzy capturing the freedom of flight:
All That Vast Blue Panorama of Seas
January 29, 2014
” . . . and there they are, thousands and thousands of tourists driving by slowly on the high curves all oo ing and aa ing at all that vast blue panorama of seas washing and raiding the coast of California . . .”
— Jack Kerouac, Big Sur
I have a dream of someday driving every mile of the U.S. lower 48 coastline. Starting with Neah Bay in Washington State and driving south along the Pacific coast to the Mexican border. Then starting again in Brownsville, Texas and going along the Gulf of Mexico to the Florida Keys, and then north along the Atlantic coast to the tip of Maine. I don’t mind doing this journey piecemeal, and I’ve already driven much of the Washington and Oregon coasts. This trip was an opportunity to cover some of the California coast from Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco to Big Sur.
While the weather was sunny in San Francisco, we encountered pockets of low lying fog along parts of the coast. This is a wild coastline, with pounding surf and inaccessible shorelines at the bases of cliffs and bluffs. The pockets of accessible beach occur every so often — many are state park lands — and the popular ones were busy with people picnicking and playing in the sand. Few people were in the water or wading in the treacherous surf. We saw surfers on the beaches of Santa Cruz. It was easy to park roadside at the more remote beaches — remarkable that you could have these great stretches of beach almost to yourself.
The gray whales were migrating south to their birthing grounds, and we were lucky to have spotted evidence of their passing — three spouts above the water. No actual sightings of the whales themselves.
The California coast is extraordinarily beautiful. Here are some photos: