After writing yesterday’s blog entry, we decided to go to Rialto Beach in the afternoon before going to dinner. It’s not far from La Push and Forks. And a spectacular beach it was! The tide and the surf were high, which brought the ocean close. But even better were the flattened rocks under our feet, piled up driftwood thrown up on the shore by storms and tide, and the exposed trees on the shore. The rocks had been worn flat and smooth by the power of the surf and formed a thick, loose layer under our feet. They would have made great skipping rocks if the water had been calm. There were many, many driftwood logs all along the shore, inviting you to sit or explore them. The trees were aged and blown bare at the bottom, but dark green and rugged on top. It was all enchanting and, after walking a ways on the beach, we sat on a log to watch the surf, sky and birds.
Then today, we hit the road after a leisurely breakfast in Forks. Just a few miles south was Bogachiel State Park, a forested and mossy green park dedicated to camping, although it was mostly empty on this Tuesday morning in May. We parked in a very small day use area and listened to the birds singing in the forest around us.
From there it was about a 2-hour drive south, first along Highway 101 that bends inward to Lake Quinalt then returns toward the beach, then down the Moclips highway. From Moclips, the next three parks were fairly close together. First was Pacific Beach State Park, where the tide was out and the beach was long, flat and sandy. We walked out toward the water and worked to identify the various species of shorebirds we saw running on the sand and probing for food. The second was Griffith-Priday State Park, which was simply a parking lot and trails to the beach and Copalis River, with few other facilities. Finally, there was Ocean City State Park, which has nearly 180 camping sites near the beach and is located just a couple of miles north of the city of Ocean Shores. (I didn’t take any photos of these parks.)
After those visits, it was lunchtime. We drove into Ocean Shores and found a small cafe for lunch. We also found a hotel with reasonable prices with breakfast included, the Lighthouse Inn, with ocean-facing rooms. There’s a lighthouse-type observation tower on the top of the hotel that we climbed a spiral staircase to enter, after we had dropped off our bags. The tower gave us a good view over the nearby dunes, beach and ocean.
In the afternoon, we walked along a paved path that weaved through the dunes in front of the beachfront hotels. There weren’t many people out but were quite a few birds in the dunes.
We ate dinner at a fish restaurant on the main drag of Ocean Shores, both of us enjoying Cobb salads with salmon added.
Lori's Travels 