Back in the summer, VR (an online friend in Manitoba) assigned me to get some salt water photos. Then I didn't hear from her for a long time, and worried. Well we are both still here, if barely, and happy to be reminded that we had the ocean when we had it.
While this blog was hiding under a rock, I went twice to the outer coast. Was trying out doing it as an overnight trip with motel, instead of a daytrip, to get around my energy problem. It works.
Trip #1: So it took me 5 hours to get out of the house on October 13, then finally I'm rolling determinedly toward Rialto Beach and three miles short of the beach
guess what
Roadblock.
Rialto Beach is in the PARK. At not one single moment in the five days that I had been planning this did it cross my mind that the #shutdown I had been following obsessively had SHUT DOWN MY PARK.
Easy enough to re-direct. First Beach is on the Quileute Rez, under tribal control (not the Park). So I went to La Push. Very warm. Very quiet ocean. I put on my water shoes for a little while. Not THAT warm. Put back on the boots and socks. Read for a while.
Sat in the car on the point overlooking First Beach. Tide coming in, ever so peaceably. Just a few pelicans cruised out towards James Island. Still reading. As IJ reminded me, I can read anywhere. Have often used that fact to get me on the road to Rialto in the past. Wouldn't I rather read to the sound of waves? Yes of course I would.
Hadn't been able to get a reservation in the motel in La Push, so eventually I adjourned to the Pacific Inn Motel in Forks. Supper in the diner. Later I wanted a snack and wandered on down the street looking for the convenience store I thought was there. [Not; that was a floating bit of crosswired memory: in Socorro, NM, the same configuration: motel and diner on the west side of a street in a town at convenient run-away distance from home and near someplace beautiful that I really wanted to be. No little convenience store a block or two down-highway from the Pacific Inn in Forks...]
In the morning, back out to La Push, to First Beach. It was even more blue, and just as peaceable. Watched the tribal fishermen working their nets in the river mouth for a long time. Then wandered home.
As pictures go, very much always-the-same-place. First Beach always looks like First Beach. But each occasion is its own self. Today's shirt-pocket full of small smooth pebbles are different from all the others, have their own parking place on the desk. Today's photos of the Quileute Needles are not the same as last fall's or next month's, even when they are the same.
Trip #2: For October 27 I did have a reservation in La Push: second floor, ocean view, thank you very much. The weather was beyond perfect blue. I myself wasn't feeling too crisp, but off I went to Rialto Beach. All I really wanted to do was read my book so I wandered not very far to the south from the parking lot, and sat by a log, and read.
When it got cold sitting there, even in the sun, I drove around to La Push and checked into the Thunderbird. Room 112. Upstairs. Opened the curtains. Opened the sliding door to the little deck outside the room. I had a bed, a couch, a kitchenette, books to read, a deck, and the entire Pacific Ocean. And I thought I might just move in permanently. Never leave. It's been a long time since I had such an upsweep of delight.
There was not much swell, through the night with the windows closed I could hear only the occasional larger waves. Thump-boom-swoosh reaching in through the glass. In the morning, a soft and subtle sunrise, a perfect blue horizon. The sunlight arrived on the sea stacks and on James Island.
Still not feeling very well, I just hung around sipping coffee and looking out the windows until checkout time, watching the waves break peaceably on the shore of First Beach.
Then I headed home without even going down to the beach, while I still had as much fresh energy and focus as there is available on a zombie day. Do you see? I can go be at the ocean even when I don't really feel well. This is epic.
Thanks to Olympic National Park, for Rialto Beach, and to the Quileute tribe for room 112.
Except for necessary emails re medical and family business, twitter is the only place I can talk these days, and that not very much. But I'm still here. VR has assigned me to go get three photos of the ocean. Luckily she is Canadian, and they call all salt water 'ocean'. Watch for pix from Ediz Hook and Salt Creek. Don't expect words.
October 2, early afternoon. Time for the dessert course (a peach and more chocolate) of our picnic lunch. From the Second Beach trailhead we drove down to the point overlooking First Beach and the river, to eat and look for pelicans. There were a few (no pix). They would fly by, from the river past James Island, then out over the ocean; then disappear. No idea what they were doing. The tide was still running full, washing in past the sea stacks which open the river to the ocean; with so much water and no boats heading out through the channel, it's hard to remember that the river's present course is not straight out where the eye goes. Quileute fishermen were working their nets in the river. There were seals also working the nets. One of the fishermen was shooting at them.
We had in mind to round up DG for an early dinner at Toga's Soup House, which closes at 6. So we soon started rolling for home. As we followed a pilot car past the road work on the Bogachiel River bridge, PG was sure she spotted elk way back through the trees (map). Once free of the flag people we did a U-turn and came back again, negotiated for permission to dart down Erickson Road to get nearer the elk.
A whole herd of elk were sitting in the shade of some trees. This made PG very happy. Sometimes you can have it all. Dinner was good, too...
Rialto Beach, October 1, 2012. We had everchanging colors, almost-sun, a plenitude of kelp. DG wandered slowly, endlessly photographing the drift logs, the ghost forest. A few pelicans passed by, mostly solitary.
Then we drove around to La Push, to eat lunch by the windows of the River's Edge Restaurant, and look for more pelicans. Some fish were definitely running out there. Fisherman were out tending their nets; and there were gulls, and pelicans, and seals in the river.
Heavy fog moved in; but not complaining: we had hours longer of good weather than we expected. PG thought she saw elk back under the trees in the field by the Bogachiel, but we couldn't stop because there was roadwork. We went home and had a fine fancy dinner at the Asian Bistro.
En route, we had looked for elk anywhere there had ever been elk before: on Beaver Prairie, and on Quillayute Prairie, and by the bridge over the Bogachiel River. No elk. However, there had also lately been a pelican deficit, and that was cured. Those pelicans in the air off Rialto, a few more pelicans in the river at La Push among the gulls and fishermen (no pix). Any day with a pelican in it is a good day...
Beautifully clear sunrise morning.
A perfect day to go up the mountain, and out along Lillian Ridge from Obstruction Point. But MP is in town, visiting from the desert; and we both wanted Ocean.
Endless blue water, blue sky, white foam. The tide was coming in. One pelican; not a whole string of them, just one, who flew away north, later returned. In the binoculars, definitely a pelican dude. Any day with a pelican in it is a good day.
Thank you, Olympic National Park.
PS Hope the video now works. Have had an awful time with it.)
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.
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.)
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.
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...
It was kite weather, and not. Inland just a little it remained sunny; on the beach, the marine layer drifted in, rarely so thick you couldn't see the blue behind the veil, or sunshine-over-there. There were enormous numbers of people on the beach: 78 people and 7 dogs on the clicker for the Ellen Creek Beach segment, though by that time the fog had slipped in. All over NW Washington, people must have looked at the forecast, declared this the first real summer weekend of a cold season (as well as perhaps the last one), and bolted for the Outer Coast.
This was a COASST survey day. No dead birds to report, unless I was just too spacey to notice. One notable bundle of feathers, but no measurable parts = it can't be identified and doesn't count. A bit of wrack. On one stretch the beach was substantially reshaped, though there have been of course no winter storms. A handful of pelicans flying past and a few cormorants in the air, down along the Rialto Jetty segment.
Another henge-builder with an interesting mind had been at work in the drift.
As usual, stopped at the pullout over the river to get online, this time the excuse was to check on my North Carolina friends just then having a hurricane. There were about three dozen mergansers in the river, flitting back and forth from shore to shore like they were playing some kind of water-soccer. Two eagles, moving more lazily from one side of the river to the other.
I need to ask Tim McNulty about these signs. How is the Wild Olympics Campaign progressing, and why is the only evidence that it is happening at all these (completely delusional) anti- signs on the West End? Maps and whatnot on the Wild Olympics Campaign website.
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...
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.
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...
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.
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...
A day with a lot of critters in it. Seals, a little porpoise dude coursing by, invisible fish, pelicans cormorants gulls.
There was a school of fish out there somewhere under the water. Gulls, cormorants, pelicans and seals were all working just offshore, the show moving slowly north as the invisible feast drifted along. Failed to get pictures of pelicans, but there were a few; any day with pelicans in it is a good day.
This was a COASST survey day. When I got back to the start point after the second beach segment, I settled on a bank of gravel against a log to listen to the waves, sift pebbles with my fingers, and read for an hour or so. Bharati Mukherjee, Miss New India. I am SO into it. Stopped again on the road home, at the pullout next to the Sol Duc River (around Milepost 210), to read some more.
Usually after mentioning that I was out on a COASST survey, there is nothing more to say about that because I rarely find anything. This day there were indeed dead things. What appears to be the sea lion from last month is now far to the south along the jetty beach. Much deteriorated, in fact no head so I didn't try to measure it or fill out a marine mammal report sheet. The (cartilaginous) skeleton of a skate. And by golly a beached bird carcass to record for science, the first on the Rialto Jetty beach segment since November of 2009. A northern fulmar. I measured and recorded and identified, the proper citizen scientist (though God knows I'm often wrong). Didn't glove up, a mistake; got my hands well imbued with the curious musty odor of the Procellariiformes. And decay. Disinfected twice, washed, disinfected, washed, and could still smell it. Must have been on my clothes.
The days are very long. Sunday afternoon headed west, June survey for dead birds on the outer coast. It's the season of 'June gloom, Juneuary, or tomato hell... whatever' as Cliff Mass writes, and I love it. Even when it's sunny inland, the marine layer keeps the oceanside gray, but by mid-afternoon on Sunday it was raining all over.
Unofficial report for COASST: no dead birds, lots of other beach matters to report: There was a deer on the beach, only the second time I've seen one there; by the time I'd whipped the camera out from under the poncho, he was walking away towards the drift. Ellen Creek was in summer mode, not running across the beach but just seeping out through the berm. Two black oystercatchers were on the sand, then flew to a rock (we don't usually have any shore birds at all at Rialto). The sea was very flat. Flights of pelicans out at sea. Some sea stars & bryozoans in the wrack, but mostly various kinds of kelp.
What appeared at first to be a piece of log shaped like a seal was in fact a dead marine mammal. I'll confer with my Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary mentor tomorrow because— as is often the case when left on my own with a dead creature and a data sheet— I couldn't identify it even though it should be obvious. It was way too small for a sea lion, but it had ear flaps so it couldn't be a harbor seal. I had to leave blank the ID fields at the top of the Marine Mammal Stranding Report.
Windshield wipers all the way home. :-)
PS Lovely interactive graphic about summer and winter beach profiles, part of a very instructive website from the Coastal Morphology Group, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
