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Published: February 5th 2015
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We decided to take a winter trip around the Olympic Peninsula, and started out on Monday with a ferry ride to Port Townsend, where we stayed overnight with our friends Nancy and Mark. Our visit was great: a delightful dinner party, much excellent conversation, and a walk around their neighborhood....
On Tuesday, we drove along the Strait of Juan de Fuca for a few hours and then headed south to the Quileute Reservation, to spend two nights in La Push, on the beach.
On the way, we stopped to see the newly restored Elwa River. The dam that completely blocked the salmon's access was taken down a few years ago and the wild salmon runs have come back! More info and history: http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/elwha-ecosystem-restoration.htm
Our room here on the second floor of the hotel part of the resort (the rest of the resort was once just very rustic cabins, which have been renovated, and modern ones have been added along the shore. The tribe now runs the resort, and has made it a beautiful place to stay....
The Quileute once shared this coast with several other tribes, but were reduced to a one square mile reservation in 1889.
What our house would have looked like if.....
It had been born in a moldy trailer park to a meth addicted single mom.....
This house is the same model as ours but smaller and blue...Bill spotted it as we drove the back roads near Oak Harbor on the way to the ferry to Port Townsend.... The area was so isolated that the tribe was left off the list in the treaties in 1855. A white settler had taken over much of the reservation land by the time it was set aside for the Quileutes, and he staged a nasty guerrilla war against the tribe for several years, including burning their homes. He finally lost his claim in court....
From the Quileute official webpage: "Thousands of winters before the arrival of the White Drifting-House people (ho-kwats), the Quileute Indians and the ghosts of their ancestors lived and hunted here. For as long as the ageless memory of legend recalls, the Quileutes flourished in the territory which originally stretched from their isle-strewn Pacific beaches along the rain forest rivers to the glaciers of Mt. Olympus. Today, Quileutes need only lift their eyes to see the burial place of chiefs atop James Island, or A-Ka-Lat -- translated as "Top of the Rock". This sense of cultural continuity is their birthright and heritage. Though much has changed, Quileute elders remember "back in the days" when the "old people" dared challenge kwalla, the mighty whale, and who recounted the exploits of wily raven or bayak, who placed the sun
in the sky."
The entire reservation is at great risk from a tsunami, and the government finally gave them some land on higher ground in 2012....this article has more in and spectacular photos!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/28/1188893/-Tsunami-Geology-and-the-Quileute-Nation#
We hiked the whole of First Beach in the rain this morning, dodging the incoming tide. After lunch, we drove to Rialto beach, which is just to the north of First Beach, where we are staying, but requires a several mile drive to get across the river and back to the shore. There was a town here named Mora (after the founder's home in Sweden) with a post office and hotel...once again, no traces remain....
I found red jasper pebbles and a beautiful agate on this hike!
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taracloud
Tara Cloud
Wild winter coast
How great that you're visiting in the off-season! My parents retired in Coopeville, on Whidby Island, and I loved visiting them and exploring that fabulous Olympic Peninsula. How wonderful that they demolished a dam to allow the salmon to run, and that the Quileute can earn some money from tourists. And agate and jasper--yum!