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Published: February 7th 2015
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I've been using the book "Exploring Washington's Past: A Road Guide to History" as a resource as we drive...It has been a great source of information...It still amazes me how quickly and widely this area was settled by white immigrants. Lewis and Clark arrived here in 1805. By the 1850's industry had arrived...Native populations were restricted to reservations....forest cut down and shipped to San Francisco...homes, schools, court houses and churches built.
We spent our last night (a very windy and rainy one...) at La Push on Wednesday and packed up for our drive further south to Grayland on Thursday. Before we left, I jogged up the road to the Second Beach trail and ran that trail to the beach. It was so windy there that I had a hard time holding my phone steady for photos! The rain luckily held off until I was nearly back to our room.
We stopped at Ruby Beach for short walk, and then took a detour into Taholah, a town on the Quinault Reservation. A friend from Swinomish had lived there a few years ago while she helped with their Paddle celebration, and recommended a visit to the museum. We drove
Surfers!
As I was watching another surfer in the water, he lost his board, and had swim to retrieve it...He made it safely to shore to join his friend... around the small fishing town, and eventually found the museum, which was closed....but the director was there and let us in. There had been flood damage in December, causing the closure. We got to view many of the artifacts and heard the amazing story of the beginnings of the museum.
The Quinault had lost most of the reservation to logging companies by 1933 and are slowly buying back their land....
We explored the small, but mysterious town of Pacific Beach, where the Navy has some sort of installation....it was a research facility in the 1950s....
We continued on to Grays Harbor, through Aberdeen/Hoquiam (Kurt Cobain's birthplace), Westport, and finally to Grayland, where we spent the night.
We stayed in a very cute cottage, complete with loaner cat (who found us too boring, I guess, and didn't stay long). It got even windier overnight, and rained off and on. I couldn't run on the beach in the morning, because the wind was too strong! I ran instead through the cranberry bogs...
We drove south along the coast and then out to little Tokeland, which once hosted up to 500 visitors a day (who arrived by steamer
from Oregon to spend a day at the beach). There is still a historic hotel there, which we visited. Much of the town was washed away in the early 1990s in storms and floods. We continued around Willapa Bay through Raymond, South Bend, Bruceport (gone now except for the historic marker) and finally into Long Beach, where we are staying.
We went for a beach walk in the sun while waiting to check in, and then took a 6.5 bike ride on the beach front trail before sunset.....
We dined at the hotel restaurant Friday night and listened to some live music....
Saturday was spent lazing around, and then driving to some of Bill's family's places: the cemetery where his uncle, aunt and cousin are buried, the cranberry farm that his uncle bought in 1946, the old cabin they lived in for a year, and the church they attended...all still there!
Gusty winds and rains continued off and on all day...
We leave the Peninsula tomorrow to spend a few nights with a high school friend of Bill's, and to tour around Olympia, the state capitol...then back home!
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Don't you love small towns
We've been let into museums in small towns when they are closed. It is wonderful how nice people can be. Hope you enjoyed the music. We lived near Seattle for 7 years and loved going to the coast. Thanks for the memories.