The Ocean on Sunday

Did went. I decided the whales either were at La Push, or not; and that I was happy to have seen one a month ago, and happy to know I could go look again. But really I needed a long listen to the sound of waves. So I went to Rialto Beach, and had the nicest time in months. Sea stars, anemones, black oystercatchers, gray sky turned blue etc.

Rialto Beach, May 18, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

I ambled out

Bryozoan, Bull Kelp, Rockweed (Click for larger image.)

toward Hole-in-the-Wall,

... (Click for larger image.)

beginning an hour before a not-very-low low tide. Maybe there wouldn't be any tidepool critters with the tide at this level, I thought, but yes there were.

Giant Green Anemone (Click for larger image.) Chiton (Click for larger image.) Pisaster ochraceus (purple sea star) (Click for larger image.)

Bird nerds will be happy to know I don't only greet cetaceans (and other charismatic megafauna, rivers, or stray sweeps of landscape). I also talk to birds. When I heard oystercatchers whistling and saw a pair circle past, all flappity flap, I too flapped my arms. 'Hi,' I told them, 'Hi darlings.'

Full confession. Later I had this guy nearby on a rock and I started edging closer to get a better picture. Bad me. After a while he squawked indignantly and flew away. No cheerful sounding whistles that time. 'Sorry, sweetie,' I told him.

Black Oystercatcher (Click for larger image.)

Eagles in the forest trees behind the beach. On the way home, an eagle sitting in the Quileute River from the pullout behind the beach.

Blurry eagle. (Click for larger image.) Quileute River eagle (Click for larger image.)

I kept looking back along the beach, unable to understand how it can still be so beautiful when we know we have spoiled the world. It's done. See what we have lost.

Not a single panoramic still in the camera. All the little videos I took for soundscapes have mostly only the sound of the wind blowing across the camera. But they are where the panorama of waves sweeping up the beach are.

Rialto Beach panorama, May 19, 2013 Rialto Beach panorama, May 19, 2013

Shoutout to @7shores for putting me in mind to go listen to the waves. Thankyou, Olympic National Park.

West Again

West again; the Outer Coast was calling. We looked carefully for elk when we passed Beaver Prairie. No elk. The air was a lot cleaner, and we had blue sky that was really blue all the way to the curve before Rialto Beach where you can first see the ocean and James Island— but just then from there the islands and the entire Pacific Ocean were invisible in the foggy summer marine layer.

Not Seeing James Island, Rialto Beach, August 11, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

No elk, and no eagles, either, but yes on pelicans, cormorants, gulls, sea ducks of unidentified sorts. Also the most people (and dogs) I have EVER seen on Rialto. As we were leaving, the Park rangers were turning cars back up the highway, because there was were no more parking spaces. To tell the truth, I wasn't all that willing to share; but needs must. It is August, and a sunny weekend (tho not on the beach), at the premier drive-to beach on the Outer Coast of Olympic National Park. We shared.

Near Hole-in-the-Wall (Click for larger image.)

... (Click for larger image.)

We ambled all the way out to Hole-in-the-Wall before eating our picnic. I promised EW that it would be worth the wait, and that it's the most beautiful beach in the world.

Giant green anemones on the rocks. One purple sea star. The sun began to play at burning back the fog, the colors changed and changed. Some pelicans sat down on the water out among the sea stacks and had a brief fishing party, which made me so happy I forgot to take a picture of them before they flew off.

Eagles(s), Oystercatchers, Cormorants, Pelicans

On Sunday, a bubble of sunshine out at Rialto Beach. GF kept not believing it; in his universe the weather is always worst on the outer coast, and they had driven through rain all the way from Seattle. But there it was: a bit murky perhaps, but sunshine. Sky blue-ish.

Dahdayla Rock (Click for larger image.)

Rialto Beach, July 15, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

PB ambled along, picking up small stones and "lovely sticks", while GF and I headed for the Hole-in-the-Wall, otherwise known as The Most Beautiful Beach in the World. (OK, so your mileage may vary.) For the Park's premier drive-to beach in the height of the season on a sunny Sunday, it wasn't all that crowded. We had eagles, and oystercatchers (GF recognized their profiles as they flew off, and me their whistley calls.) Cormorants. Gulls of course. The tide was dropping, but only to a 3.8 foot low. Not good enough for tide-pooling, but still, when we got out there, we had some giant green anemones to admire on the rocks, and the bolder people we going through the Hole. (It's marked on the map as needing a tide less than 5 feet.)

Eagle out near Hole in the Wall (Click for larger image.)

The air thickened. GF went over the trail to the next cove, just to see. Flights of pelicans began to pass by far out over the water. More flights of pelicans. We started hiking back, picking up PB along the way.

Later in the Day, Rialto Beach (Click for larger image.)

We had planned to go around to the La Push side of the river, just for geographic completeness, but there wasn't time since they needed to get all the way back to Seattle. Too bad, odds are the harbor at La Push is where the pelicans were heading. GF has never seen one close up, and we could have gotten pictures...

Same Bird, Different Tree

Out near Hole-in-the-Wall on Rialto Beach.

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Earlier in the week, COASST sent out an alert about a mini-wreck (outburst of beached birds) and a reminder of the protocol for recording large numbers of birds in a single survey,

Thanks to early reports from Third Beach, Shi Shi, and others, we're seeing an uptick of "true puffins:" Tufted Puffin, Horned Puffin and Rhinoceros Auklet on northern Washington beaches in January. For those of you around for the algal bloom in the fall of 2009 - don't panic! - this is a "mini-wreck" in comparison.

but I was not surveying, just paradin' the beach. Spent more time down near the surfline than up in the drift. But really I don't think there were any dead birds here, no puffins nor anybody else. Though they were being found to the north and south, if any had arrived on the swept-clean Rialto beaches, they were carried off or buried.

Soundscape for Cee

The One Beach

Off we went to the outer coast. The promised sunshine eluded us for some hours. On Rialto Beach we had wild water, the usual entrancement of visitors by the huge drift logs, a buoy up in the drift with English markings (apparently therefore NOT tsunami debris),

...eagles, oystercatchers, a little tidepooling—anemones, ochre stars,ribbed limpets and a seaweed called spongy cushion that first we looked in the book under tunicates and then under sponges before we found it—and, as Robinson Jeffers said of another place, "unbridled and unbelieveable beauty."

I still feel fine, you know. Well capable of hustling my visitors two miles along the sand to the most beautiful beach in the world, and back again.

(These images a mix of KF's and mine. You can tell mine 'cause my camera makes a grey world blue. (Click for larger image.)... (Click for larger image.)... (Click for larger image.)... (Click for larger image.)... (Click for larger image.)... (Click for larger image.)... (Click for larger image.)... (Click for larger image.)

Then we whipped around the corner to La Push, to the point overlooking First Beach, where I'd see whales in April if I saw any which-last-year-I-did-not,-not-once (see next post).

Processes

Monday. Over a couple of hours, the weather cleared, the tide crested, the swell subsided. It wasn't nearly as wild as I'd hoped, and the surf never washed over the top of the berm. I was watching one particular log to see if it would move at the height of the tide. Move yes, wash-away not.

Rialto Beach, about 2 hours before high tide, November 29, 20111 (Click for larger image.)Later (Click for larger image.)Soundscape for CeeMore soundscapes

Later we went around to the La Push side of the river and sat for a while on the point, looking sometimes towards First Beach, sometimes back north (the river, the boat harbor, Rialto Beach beyond), sometimes straight out west.

Jayden Bay coming out of La Push harbor, September 29, 2011 (Click for larger image.)
Same image, closer up; notice Hole-in-the-Wall at the far end of Rialto Beach in the distance... (Click for larger image.)
Jayden Bay heading out towards the Quileute River mouth, James Island behind her (Click for larger image.)

Pelican Heaven

Saturday. High season in Olympic National Park. People everywhere. And pelicans. Warm enough for water shoes, and to walk in the water all the way to Hole-in-the-Wall. When I got out there, lots of pelicans, diving and calling just out past the seastacks, and right beyond the surf line. You could see the flash of fishes in their beaks; once I saw one tilt his head and let a larger fish drop into his pouch so he looked momentarily just like a cartoon pelican...

Pelicans, Rialto Beach Near Hole-in-the-Wall, July 23, 2011 (Click for larger image.)More pelicans (Click for larger image.)Plenitude of pelicans (Click for larger image.)

Did I mention it is the height of the season? The sun was out, tides were moderate, and all over the Olympic Peninsula people suddenly needed to go to the ocean to walk to Hole-in-the-Wall. In the winter, on a weekday, in the rain, you can be out there and pretend you are "the only man under the eye of heaven" (which is Peter Matthiessen's last line in At Play in the Fields of the Lord or so I strongly remember it). Not yesterday. It is best to be glad that so many people know the place, love it, might understand why it needs to be protected.

People everywhere (Click for larger image.)

No good pictures of the little beach right before Hole-in-the-Wall. Too bad. The first time I saw it, I thought , "I'm not sure I've ever been on such a beautiful beach"; and that might still be true...

Hole-in-the-Wall, Rialto Beach, July 23, 2011 (many better pictures elsewhere in the blog (1)(2)(3) (Click for larger image.)

I flung the camera up and took many pictures of empty sea and sky, and blurry pelicans, cruising and diving. And seventeen little movies, two of which almost show ... look closely, you'll see them dive.

Pelican movie #17, Rialto Beach, July 23, 2011.Pelican movie #16, Rialto Beach, July 23, 2011.

A ranger came along. I asked what the pelicans were eating. "Fish," he said. Oh, great. They are now hiring dolts to be Park Rangers. "What sort of fish," I asked. "Lots of kinds of fish under there." Thanks, dude. I'll ask Bob Boekelheide tomorrow what would be some good guesses. If he doesn't know he'll just say, "I don't know."

On the way home, stopped as usual at the pullout over the Quileute River, and got online to check email and twitter. It's my new bad habit. Apparently a handful of hours is the longest I can stand not to be connected. The maps say Quillayute River, but the tribe is the Quileute, and the river is theirs, as is James Island visible off the beach, in the background on the other side of the jetty...

Quileute River Movie. No seals, no eagles. Lots of green.

The Most Beautiful Beach in the World

Rialto Beach to Hole-in-the-Wall.

Rialto Beach to Hole-in-theWall (Click for larger image.)