More of Day 3

After the picnic on day 3 we traveled on north to Kalaloch Beach (my guide informed me it was pronounced Clay-lock) - from the mossy trees to the open coast. I am finding out that the trip up the Washington coast has some very unique country and is very interesting.

It was the first time I had seen the ocean in about 4 years. I was thrilled. We took the short hike down to the waters edge, sat on an old log, pulled off our shoes and rolled up our jeans. I couldn't wait to wade into the ocean. But was I surprised! Now I understood why Jan said we wouldn't need our swim suits at the beech. That water was way too cold to get more than our toes into it. There were people who had on swim suits or shorts and were getting wet. Jan said they were probably local people who did it frequently and were used to how cold the water was.

But regardless of the chill (and remember it was August) we waded, made tracks in the wet sand, and looked for sea shells. The tide was coming in and we didn't find anything but broken shells. I took lots of photos of the waves coming into the shore and of the sun just starting to think about sinking toward the west, as well as a few brave kids playing in the surf and building sand castles.

Interestingly there were big, tall trees that came almost down to the shore, leaving only a few feet of sand that varied from 3 or 4 feet up to about 50 feet for the beech area. I was intrigued by this as most of my visits to the beach had been in Florida and southern California where there were usually houses down to the shore or beach's. I had always seen photos of the trees and cliffs by the shore and always wanted to see it. Now I was.

There were lots of logs laying everywhere. Great big logs that had once been great big trees. My guide said that sometimes trees fall off of cliffs and get into to the ocean. Other times the logs are lost from logging operations near the shore, or from barges that carry logs on them or they might have been sunk in the ocean for hundreds of years. With the changing of tides and storms they are unburied and wash ashore.

Every year a few people are killed when they are playing on the beech and don't notice that there is a log coming in to shore. They are very heavy but the waves and water can throw them tremendous distances making dangerous missiles out of them.