Day 19 – Wednesday : Ocean City to Dungeness (345 km) Now at the coast we turn north to follow highway 109 along the shore around Olympic National Park.
Yet another warning sign:
If a Tsunami and a volcanic eruption happen at the same time which sign do I follow?
Time to pull in for a cup of tea. This is the closest the camper got to the sea. I’ve driven on sand in deserts, but they don’t have tides or salt water, so I avoid driving on beaches – this is about as close as I ever get.
We head inland to join US-101 and stop briefly at Lake Quinault where we fill with diesel; US-101 then heads back to the coast.
We are a bit disappointed because we see very few places you can pull in at the coast and most of the road, although next to the sea when viewed from the map, is actually in the forest so has little view. We do find one spot with a good car park and wander down a winding path through ferns to explore the beach. It is a very nice spot, and bleached tree trunks litter the beach.
After Lake Pleasant we turn left off US-101 to get back out to the coast.
We still suffer the same problem, trying to find somewhere we can get down to the beach. After a couple of false leads (turning down roads that don’t give access to the sea) we spot a sign and detour to Crescent bay for lunch. It looks great, but at the bottom of the road is a private RV park that wants a fair amount of cash – it doesn’t really do people just stopping for lunch and I’m not paying a full night’s camping fee just for a 30 minutes lunch stop. As we return up the hill I spot a public car park and we pull in. We can’t get the camper level, so we daren’t stop for long. We grab some stuff and head down the steps to the beach.
There are posts showing the boundary on the beach with the adjoining private RV park lest you accidentally trespass on their land.
We turn the corner and through careful timing amongst the waves manage to jump to a rock that gives us access to steps leading up to the cliffs above. To our surprise we find a nice, but busy, campground set amongst the trees. We walk along the cliffs at the edge of the campground hoping they will take us back to the camper – I always prefer circular walks to returning the way we came, especially since it will mean braving the waves again to get down onto the beach. Usually when hiking, cycling or kayaking I carry a waterproof Garmin GPS. I can download detailed maps for free. However, in planning this trip I didn’t expect to get right out to the coast here, so when selecting map tiles I omitted this part of Washington. So we are navigating by guess work (the vehicle GPS I use in the truck covers the whole of the US, Canada and Mexico, but isn’t much good for walking, and wouldn’t cope well with salt water).
To our surprise we come across a war-time gun emplacement built into the hill – with the trees now mature around it you wouldn’t have a clue it was here.
We find a trail that leads in roughly the right direction, and are soon heading back onto US-101 through Port Angeles.
We are in serious danger of running out of rugged coastline and ending up in the suburbs of Tacoma. But driving along US-101 we spot a sign pointing to the left labelled Dungeness National Wildlife Reserve, and it has a camping symbol. We decided to give it a try even though the name is less than promising.
OK you might be thinking, what is wrong with that name? If you are from England you will understand. Dungeness is a triangle of flat, low-lying land jutting out into the English Channel consisting of marshland and gravel. It is of interest if you are keen on wading birds and nuclear generating stations, although the little village next to the nuclear plant has a sort of quaint charm about it.
Following the road we find a campground amongst trees on the edge of the cliffs. Having used one Washington campground we are now more familiar with the process. I take a photo of the sign board showing which sites were first-come first-serve so we can refer to it when looking for one we fit into. We soon find a decent site and returned to pay.
Once set-up it is time for a walk to explore the area, starting at the campground entrance where the sign indicated things to see and where cars had parked at the top of the cliff, indicating that there is at least a view point. A path from there takes us around the edge of the campground and on to an entrance to a separate park, staffed by volunteers, probably because it was a fee-pay park and most people probably wouldn’t bother unless someone was there to prompt them. I flash my America the Beautiful card which he notes details of. I suspect they want details so they can go back to the NPS and say “look, we had xxx people who didn’t pay because they had your card – give us some money please”.
A short walk of through the woods brings us to this view – Wow:
Dungeness is the longest sand spit in the US. It is 5 miles from one end to the lighthouse at the other, not that we have time to walk that far.
Its spine is littered with the detritus of trees that have fallen from cliffs further south and been washed out to sea. These aren’t just little bits of driftwood, but forest giants that seem to have gone there to die. It is like some strange graveyard for extreme whales or dinosaurs.
We take a final opportunity to cook outside.
