Road Trip to Olympic National Park (Part 3): Rialto Beach

“There was no end to the joyful exaltation on this edge of oscillations.”
— Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds

The Pacific Ocean at Rialto Beach, Olympic National Park

The last half of our Olympic National Park road trip took us to several Pacific coast beaches.  We stopped at Mora Campground on the way to Rialto Beach to pitch our tent, as we planned to have a picnic supper at the beach and stay until sunset.  We didn’t want to have to set up our tent in the dark.

Our campsite at Mora Campground

The beach was two miles from the campground.  We passed the Quillayute River as we neared the end of the road.  Straight ahead was the endless ocean, the mighty Pacific.

Quillayute River

Sea stacks at Rialto Beach

Fourteen shades of gray

“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach.”
— Henry Beston

This was my first time at Rialto Beach.  It’s a wild coast, with waves crashing and casting up sea foam onto the pebbly beach.  Sea stacks added interest to the horizon line.  Weathered driftwood lined the upper beach.  The water was cold, but irresistible to children (and adults).

Rialto beach

The wild shores at Rialto Beach

Our beach chairs

Driftwood

The sky

Waiting for sunset

“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”
— Victor Hugo

The Seashore of the Mind

Pacific beach near Kalaloch

“Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.”
     — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
With love, with love . . .”
     — Walt Whitman

“Like the long waves on a sea-beach,
Where the sand as silver shines,
With a soft, monotonous cadence,
Flow its unrhymed lyric line. . .”
     — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Secret of the Sea”

 

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