Dave and I ate second breakfast again this morning: the first was in the cabin, some of the fruit and veggies we had brought along for picnic lunches. Then after we got underway and made it to the town of Raymond, we stopped at a restaurant there to get Dave the coffee he needed and supplement the picnic food with something more substantial. It was a pleasant sunny day in Raymond and the second meal hit the spot.
Our first state park was a little historical site in Raymond on the side of the road, Willie Keil’s gravesite. He had died in the 1800s just before his family took the Oregon Trail from Missouri to Washington. The family put his body into a barrel of whiskey and brought it on the trail with them, then buried him and the barrel in Washington.
From there, we did a short backtrack to skirt Willapa Bay, heading toward the Long Beach Peninsula. We drove through the town of Long Beach and northward on the peninsula.
I had plans to visit two parks on the northern end, but before we got there, we were surprised to see signs for a state park not on my list, Loomis Lake park. The sign looked new but the park facilities were sparse and older looking, so we guessed that perhaps the state had perhaps recently taken over a county park. We took the required sign photo and used the park’s restroom before moving on.
Next was Leadbetter Point park, sharing the northern end of the peninsula with a wildlife refuge. There were trails in this park to the shore of Willapa Bay as well as the ocean beach side of the peninsula, so we hike the trails to both, with the rebound trip being about 3.5 miles total. The tide was way out in Willapa Bay and very quiet. But we could hear the ocean surf on the other side, so we turned and walked toward the ocean side. Once on the ocean shore, we sat in the sand dunes and watched several flocks of Sanderlings and other small shorebirds fly by, heading south.
After a while, we returned to the truck then drove to the final park of the day, Pacific Pines State Park. This was another small, simple park with just picnic tables and a restroom. We ate some more of our picnic food for lunch.
And then we headed back to Long Beach to find a place to stay for the night. We settled on the Oceanview Inn at the Arch – Long Beach, where we have views of the dunes and the ocean. We walked three blocks to a recommended restaurant, Castaway’s, for dinner and on the way back Dave stopped by the hotel lobby for a couple free cookies for dessert.
Lori's Travels 