May 12, 2015
Onto Neah Bay
The drive up the coast today was quite spectacular. More winding roads with beaches around every corner. They’re looking a lot more like the west coast we know up on Vancouver Island and less and less like your standard sandy beaches we’ve become to expect. Quite spectacular! We didn’t stop at all of them, there were just too many! One we did stop to check out was Ruby Beach. Amazing!
Ruby Beach
Bruce at Ruby Beach
Later …
We made it to Neah Bay! The town itself is not much. This is all Makah Indian Reserve and not much development or interesting things to see or do. The Makah Cultural Research Centre (museum) is however, a great place to learn about the history and culture of these people. Highly recommended!
Neah Bay
We’re dry camped at Hobuck’s Beach Campground which is right on the ocean. Just a very short walk across some dunes and low-growing vegetation. The beach is nice, it’s so different up here compared to the great, long, sandy beaches of Oregon & California. It looks a lot like ‘home’!
Hobuck’s ‘campground’
The campground we’re in is sort of an ‘afterthought’ from their main RV campground, just a big open field with lots of tents and a few RV’s (one of whom parked RIGHT next to us and has been running their generator for hours now … quite obnoxious!) Apparently there’s some sort of fish opening that’s set to happen any day and fishermen are arriving by the droves! A good time to leave here I think!
Hobuck Beach
We hiked out to the viewing platform at Cape Flattery to see Tatoosh Island where the Cape Flattery Lighthouse is located. What a beautiful sight! So rugged and wild! You can understand why so many ships over the last few centuries have gone down here. Between rocks, shoals, shifting sandbars it is quite an intense place to try and navigate. Bruce would have loved to kayak out to Cape Flattery, but it’s about a 5-mile paddle from our camp and that means 10 miles round-trip, something he’d be able to easily do but it would mean about 4 – 5 hours of paddling and we just don’t have the time.
The hiking trail to Cape Flattery
Hiking to Cape Flattery
Tatoosh Island just off Cape Flattery
Tatoosh Island and Cape Flattery Lighthouse
The Cape Flattery Lighthouse on Tatoosh Island
After our hike to Cape Flattery, we’re going to head for Sol Duc Hot Springs to finish off our journey before hitting Port Angeles and the ferry home. We got a bit of a surprise yesterday when I started counting days and dates and figuring out that our ferry reservation is for Thursday and not Friday! Good thing I figured it out though … that would have been grouchy!
Hopefully Sol Duc Hot Springs will be a nice place to have a shower (it’s been about 4 days!) and a soak. If there’s a restaurant we might just go out for supper tonight as a ‘last hurrah’ so to speak!
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