This summer we headed out to a place where we could hike out to the beach and go camping. Sounds like heaven to me. So with our friends Emily and Nick, we set off.
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| On the road again.... |
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| All the ships at the Bremerton on our way out. |
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| The Olympic Mountains |
We arrived late on Friday night, so instead of hiking out to Third Beach in the dark, we found a campsite close to the trailhead and set up camp. In the dark.
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| Breakfast early the next morning. |
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| Beautiful wooded campsite. |
We got in the car the next morning and headed out to find the trailhead. The hike was pretty simple. A mile of flat terrain in a beautiful wooded area with a little bit of a steep descent at the end.
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| And we are off. |
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| At the very end this was the bottom of the relatively steep hike down. |
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| We made it! And we got this picture thanks to the leader of a group of about 10 middle school boys that followed us down. Crazy kids. |
As we were looking for high ground to pitch our tents, so that we were not carried away by the tide in the middle of the night, Thomas found a perfect place. With a snake. He proceeded to set him down 20 feet away and said, "This place is good right?" Uh... No.
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| He is always finding creatures. |
After we set up camp, we headed out to explore. There were so many creatures!
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| These little Jelly Fish were everywhere! |
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| Thomas cannot go to the beach without finding a little hermit crab. It is impossible I think. |
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| And he even found a starfish. I just adore this picture of him! |
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| Now you know where my Blog Heading picture came from!! |
Down the beach there had been some damage from a storm.
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| This was one giant root ball. |
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| This was already written in the sand! So I had to take a picture naturally. After we got rid of the H which is not how you spell Mica. Come on now. |
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| Nick was king of the rock. |
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| Had to get our normal picture. |
We thought this was the end of the beach, but we found out later that there was a trail up and over this hill that would have taken us to another beach. Next time we will explore that for sure!
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| Beautiful little waterfall. |
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| Emily and Nick |
It was so grey and cloudy when we arrived, but by the afternoon it cleared up and was beautiful!
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| Our little campsite nestled in the logs brought in by the ocean. |
I wanted to try 2 new recipes on this trip. So we made campfire burritos for dinner. I cooked the chicken, rice, onions, and bell peppers ahead of time so that after wrapping it in a tortilla and aluminum foil, the camp fire would simply warmed them up.
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| Make shift table. |
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| Quite delicious! |
The other recipe was smores in a waffle cone. You just break up a cone and place mini marshmallows and chocolate chips all together and stick it near the fire. It was good, but it did not take the place in my heart of an original smore. Which of course is one of my favorite parts of camping.
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| Nick carved a pencil with his name on it. |
We survived the night without getting swept away into the ocean during high tide and in the morning we had a visitor.
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| The early morning sun and fog was glorious. |
As we headed home the drive was just beautiful.
I would love to explore more of the area between Port Angeles and Forks on the Olympic Peninsula.
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| The lavender farms on the Olympic Peninsula are just amazing. |
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| And of course the Narrows Bridge. Love this shot with Rainer in the background. |
All in all it was a fantastic and beautiful weekend and we will definitely be headed back that way. I mean you can't get much better then hiking and camping on a beach, right?
