Monday, August 18, 2014

8/17 Pacific Beach State Park, WA

This is a terrific beach-front state park along the Pacific Ocean, on the southern part of the Olympic Peninsula.  As you might guess from my previous posts, I am headed south down the Pacific Coast for the next few weeks. 

About the only problem with this area is the heavy fog.  Most days, at least while I was here, the fog did no lift enough to see the surf until about noon.  Here is a photo of the campground.  A bit more crowded than most state parks, although since I took this at mid-day most of the weekenders were gone. 

Just walking out to the surf turned out to be quite a hike, and it was not even completely low tide.  This is an enormously wide beach, I assume from the stream that has dumped a lot of sand over the years.  Nice sand, too.  Not sharp or gravelly the way some other beach sand was in Puget Sound. 

This is the stream, about half-way out to the surf.  It bends north along the flat beach area before it finally empties into the ocean.  You can see the fog bank on the right and flowing onto the beach in the distance. Sand was nicely hard-packed for walking.

Another photo of the stream headed out to the surf.  See the small people-dots in the distance?  People are the only things that give these photos perspective.

Whew!  Finally made it to the surf.  Because the land is so incredibly flat, the waves break across a very wide area.  There is an area where the water is only an inch or two deep so you can easily walk in it with beach shoes.  There are not too many shells on this beach which makes it even easier to walk on the sand.  You could probably walk barefoot, but you would really have to be careful where you stepped.  I got a small shell piece in my beach sandals, and it was sharp!!
 
Note that in this photo you can see the fog blowing across the sand between me and the shore.  Really weird to be out past some of the fog.  You can really see the size of this beach at this point because of the tiny houses in the town far in the distance. 
 
I have my bike battery charging and am planning on a bike ride later this afternoon, so more photos tomorrow. 
 

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