Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Cape Alava

I helped my dad move out to the Olympic Peninsula near Port Angeles in Washington State during the first part of November. It was a long drive that took two days and included a flat tire on the freeway for me when I was driving my dad's truck. Once we had all of my dad's stuff moved in, we decided to go for a hike. We drove out past Neah Bay to Olympic National Park to do a hike out to Cape Alava. We figured that this would be a good hike considering it had been pouring down rain since we got to Washington. I figured it was a good thing to do to keep my mind off of missing Jacqueline who was currently in Michigan. The trail was wet, but not muddy, one of the perks of living in the state of Washington. A lot of the trail was planks and boardwalk because of the amount of water on this trail. My dad recalled his first backpacking trip, which was out here as a kid in the 1950s. It inspired a long list of trips through the backcountry of many states and countries. Today it was going to just be an easy roundtrip hike using the ocean coast as part of the trip.
Once we got to the ocean, the rain really was not letting up. We hiked up the beach a ways to look at the shelter they found in the 70s from the Makah, I believe. That was interesting and surprising that any sort of artifact could sustain with the weather in the Pacific Northwest. Well, we were definitely soaking wet and the tides were not cooperating with us much.
We had to decide whether we wanted to make it a long,wet, cold miserable day or just count our losses and head back the way that we came. We decided to head back the way that we came and let the ocean batter someone else with its waves on this day. Still, it was great being back in the lush green forests of the Pacific Northwest. The Washington coast is so original, with
many islands and interesting birds to gaze out upon.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Gee, your dad looks pretty good for an old guy. Is that his real hair? Did a tree fall on the trail while you were at the beach?