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Published: November 4th 2006
Rialto Beach Pano 02
Pano of line of sea stacks at Rialto BeachSaturday morning, October 2, 1999, I drove my RX-7 from Olympia to Fife to pickup a rental 28 foot Class C RV from a rental company. Leaving the Mazda at the rental place, I drove the big buggy back home to pack it for our trip around the Olympic Peninsula.
Our toy poodle, Shadow, is 10 months old now and became excited when he saw the RV in the driveway. We took him on our mosey down the Oregon Coast in May, and when he saw the buggy, he knew that it was a special time.
As soon as we opened it up to pack with provisions, he started to take all of his toys from the house to the RV; snakey, hedgy, junior, chicken and one eared bunny. For some reason he decided to leave froggy at home.
Ms. Nancy decided the RV needed to be cleaned before we departed, so we didn’t get away until around 3:00 p.m.
Never-the-worry, our first destination, Staircase Campground was about a 90 minute drive from the house. If you know the area, you recognize that this means we decided to take the counter clockwise route around the wonderful and
Rialto Beach Pano 01
Pano of Rialto Beach looking north scenic Olympic Peninsula.
Staircase is lush, and rain forest shady. The National Park Campground is at the end of a seven mile unimproved washboard, pock marked dirt road north of Lake Cushman along a mountain stream that flows into the lake. So, in the RV, maybe it took us two hours to get there.
We paid the entry fee which gave us a 7 day pass to any National Park campground and a camping fee for the night. Pets were required to be leashed. Shadow accompanied us on a walk of the area. One pleasure of an October vacation, after the kids are back in school, is that no campground is more than half full.
Another pleasure is the colors of the leaves on the deciduous trees. Orange, red and gold I am told. Color challenged, I see shades of yellow and various hues of brown. I often wish I could seen the colors that Nancy describes. They sound so magnificent. I get confused by reds and greens which seem to me to blend into jamoca.
Sunday morning, leaving Staircase, we motored along the western shore of Hood Canal enjoying the scenic bends and curves of
Rialto Beach Head Stack
First stack in line of sea stacks emerging from ocean. Highway 101 along the shoreline. It felt good to be behind the wheel of a big rig again, especially vacation bound.
We stopped off at Sequim for lunch at a favorite spot, the 3 Crabs Restaurant. Shadow stood watch in the RV and Nancy and I enjoyed a serving of butterflied, fried shrimp, baked potatoes, chased with a cream lemon pie dessert.
By late afternoon, we arrived at the Log Cabin Resort on the north boundary of Lake Crescent, a deep, glacier formed lake west of Port Angeles. The weekend crowd, if that is what it can be called, had departed and there were only three of us in the campground. Toddy time was observed, followed by a dinner of fresh tuna salad served on a crisp of lettuce with pickles and chips on the side. We watched a movie on the TV/VCR before turning in.
Monday, the first real day of vacation, found us on a detour from Highway 101; a twisting, undulating ribbon of asphalt, porpoising parallel to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It takes a steady hand and a pinch of luck to stay on the road with an oncoming brigade of
Rialto Beach Log View 01
View from sun bleached bone log on Rialto Beach wide bodied killer logging trucks. I’ve mentioned the “trick” before, to drive the buggy with one eye on the left outside mirror to make sure the back wheels are on my side of the yellow center line.
We inserted an audio tape, Men are from Mars & Women are from Venus, into the cassette player and learned a thing or two. It seemed kind of sexist at first and it was hard to warm up to the generalizations until our chuckles indicated that this tape was about us. This guy must have hired some private investigators to follow us around and take notes. It was like a miracle; it turned what I had thought to be years of complaints and criticisms into a poem of love and adoration. I just never had the code before. I felt released, basking in the love of feelings instead of literal interpretation.
On Monday afternoon we arrived at La Push, an Indian fishing village on the Pacific coast. Since our last RV visit to this area some ten years ago, a full utility campground has been established behind the dunes offering quick and convenient beach access.
Shadow’s interest picked up quickly
Rialto Beach Sunset
View of sunset at Rialto Beach when he caught a glimpse of the ocean and beach. While I hooked up the utilities, he found his yellow tennis ball and was ready to go. Nanny, Shaddy and Paddy spent a couple of hours walking the beach and playing with the ball. La Push is contiguous to Rialto Beach, our most favorite spot in the world.
The beaches of this northwest territory are stacked with the sun bleached “bones” of huge tree trunks which are washed out to sea during spring river floods caused by melting snow fields, and later, in the following winter, during seasonal storms, flung upon the beaches by up to thirty foot waves.
Just offshore, jutting from the water are sea stacks which, eons ago were eroded by shifts of tectonic plates giving birth to the Pacific rim “circle of fire,” and the unrelentless cascade of ocean waves and stormy seas.
The following night, we camped in the Mora campground, our most favorite place to camp on the western edge of nature. Trees, hundreds of years old, stand sentry, forming a canopy of shade and silence, of wonder and brief, but magnificent, contentment. Knarled and twisted root systems, gestated from nurse
Rialto Beach V View
View of offshore stacks at Rialto Beach logs predicated generations ago, leave a legacy of introspection. In this chancel, meditative reflection is not possible to avoid. Nature; life, reflected in the sea and the teal sinew of crepuscule. For the careful ear, the attentive eye, it is transformed into an expression of hope that somewhere, perhaps in a sanctuary such as this, there is more to our existence than our devotion to rubbing the under belly of the golden corporate calf.
It was a mile and a half walk from our campsite to Rialto Beach, a place that has become sacred to us. Time and time again, we have returned to this place which has captured our imagination, our hope and even our fear. Our fear is for the survivor, who someday will have the burden and sweet but tearful joy, that only a survivor can embrace, of bringing a container of ashes to seed the earth, wind and water with the conclusion of a physical life and the celebration of life everlasting; a half of a whole to be fulfilled at a later time by a friend or relative.
My fear is that either I will be the bearer of that container, or that
Rialto Beach Big Boy
Looking north beyond huge sun bleached trunk tossed onto Rialto Beach by winter storm. I will not. Joy, sorrow, sweet victory. Rialto Beach reminds us of the sands of time and that we are but pilgrims on a longer journey, in search of our end in mind; our ultimate destination.
In the meantime, after a refreshing shower in the RV that night, Nancy commented, “That sure was a short shower.” Now that I have listened to John Gray’s audio tapes, I have the code to decipher the feelings she intend to express; feelings which may have seemed to a uneducated male from Mars to be a critical statement about the length of the shower.
Instead of interpreting the comment to be a criticism that there was no way I could have gotten the smelly stink of the previous three days off in so short a time, I knew that Nancy really meant, “Honey, I am so happy to be on vacation with you and to have this special romantic time to ourselves. You are such a special person to have arranged this trip, planned the itinerary and do all of the driving over these narrow, hilly roads. You are my true love and I adore you. I hope that the shower was satisfying to you. You are my delight; my evermore.”
THANK YOU, Dr. John Gray! I have seen the light, and I believe!
Wednesday morning, we drove the RV to Rialto Beach for a last salute to refraction of the morning sun softened in the crests of cascading ocean waves that claw away at the beach head. Here, the beach is not sand but rocks. As the water flows back down the slope of beach to the sea, one hears the sound of rattling, briny soaked rocks scuttling into position before again being arranged by the next assault of sea, and the next, and the next, etc.
The next two nights, we enjoyed ocean views of the first official storm of the season. We spent most of the time relaxing, napping, snacking, sipping, reading and computing in the RV.
A highlight of the post trip was when we returned home and watched some of the video of the trip. Shadow was very attentive to video of him barking and chasing his yellow ball down the beach. He nosed the screen, seemingly wanting to play and join in the chase, watching the yellow ball roll off the screen, left to right. Instinctively, he walked to the right of the TV set to find the ball. Color him confused.
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