Wednesday morning we managed to depart from Port Angeles only slightly later than planned. We needed to get to Rockaway Beach, about halfway down the Oregon Coast by that evening, and we still had things we planned to see in Olympic Nat'l Park.
Our first planned stop was Rialto Beach on the west coast of the Olympic peninsula and about a thirty minute detour off of the highway. Its amazing. From the parking lot we walked to the beach over polished beach pebbles that separate the sandy beach from the wooded hillside, the rocks must be piled pretty deep because you can scoop them up by the handful and never find anything but more rock beneath. The overall color of the rocks is a dark gray but when you look more closely you find greens and reds and even purples and pinks and the occasional brilliant white. And I did look closely. And then I started to pick up my favorites. And pretty soon my pockets were bulging with rocks. When the kids caught on, they started to bring me the best ones they found too and by the time we left I had a sizable collection of beach rocks that Kris says have to go in MY luggage somewhere. So, forested hillside, polished beach rocks, sand, and all of it covered with huge fallen trees.
Next stop, Hoh Rainforest. Another detour off the highway but in the opposite direction from Rialto beach. So, back to the highway, slight movement in a southerly direction, and then east back into Olympic Park. This should have been about like Rialto beach time wise, but no one told us about roadwork in the park that would add over an hour to our trip. But fine. Driving and then parking issues aside, the forest itself was very cool. We ended up just seeing the Hall of Mosses trail right outside the visitors center. Lots of moss draped everything. It was even in the pond. Lots of tall trees. Really tall trees. I read that the trees here, sitka spruces, could grow to be as tall as 280 feet high, which is amazing, and also still about 100 feet shorter than redwoods can grow. Can't wait to see redwoods!
By the time we got out of Olympic Park, we were feeling a tad stressed about our arrival time in Oregon that night, but not so much that we would pass up the chance to see the Goonies' house in Astoria. All you can do is drive to the street just below it and snap a picture from there as it is a privately owned home up a private drive, but that was good enough for us and for several other fans who both preceded and followed us up the short street. After that little thrill we had to stop at Cannon Beach too where they filmed the Goonies' emergence from the caverns. By then it was getting very late, which is too bad because this was a beautiful beach I would have liked to have played at for awhile.
So we got to our house in Rockaway Beach, discovered the sad lack of much of a grocery store in Rockaway, and made do with leftovers from the night before that we had luckily packed with us from Port Angeles and finished our day on the beach watching the sunset and playing frisbee.
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