June 21 – 23, 2019
Last year I went to the beach at Westport, Washington on the weekend of the summer solstice! We wanted to ring in the beginning of summer in style! Now mind you, the coast in Washington in the summer is not guaranteed to be warm, and may be downright freezing, so don’t be expecting any photos of shorts and people lounging in the sand. We still had a great time!
Lelani and I left work early on Friday and drove down; we were camping and wanted to make sure that we had plenty of time to get set up and get dinner made. Other friends were joining us too! She headed down to my work to pick me up and we stopped off for lunch at Kona Kitchen, a great Hawaiian place near my work! We soon found out that we might have been better off eating on the road…
As usual, traffic in Seattle on a Friday afternoon was terrible, but at least we were entertained by tracking our progress against “the head”…
We camped at one of the Loge Resorts (yes, my spelling is correct); if you haven’t been to one, they have been converting old motels into new hipster-chic facilities. The one we stayed at had camping (both tent and small RV sites), hotel rooms, and a hostel dormitory. There was a stage with music on weekends, fire pits, and communal BBQ’s. It was a fun place to stay, and the tent site was covered; that came in handy because it rained! Drawbacks were the fact that you were approximately 4 feet from your neighbor in the next tent site over. My neighbor snored, so the earplugs I always carry when I travel came in handy.
Saturday we checked out the harbor, where we watched people crabbing and fishing, and listened to the seabirds overhead. We went to the beach too, and enjoyed some time spent searching for sand dollars and walking the beach. You don’t have to spend too much time searching for sand dollars there; you really just have to wander around picking them up, as the beach is covered with them! If you go though, make sure to only collect the dead ones, which are already white or a faded tan color; the live ones are a purplish black color.
That afternoon we visited the Gray’s Harbor Lighthouse – you can climb to the top and see the view, and the third-order Fresnel lens. The lighthouse was completed in March 1898, and stands 107 feet tall with 135 steps to get to the top. It is worth it though – that view! Originally, the Gray’s Harbor Lighthouse sat about 400 feet from the waterline, in the last 120 years, the beach has experienced significant accretion, so it is now about 4,000 feet from the water! I always enjoy seeing lighthouses when I travel and I especially appreciate when I can climb to the top.
We also visited the Westport Winery; they have an extensive tasting list consisting of a few whites, lots of reds and several fruit wines. They had a sparkling wine that I really liked, and I purchased a couple of bottles to take home. That evening we made a delicious dinner of steak shish-ka-bobs and corn on the cob, and ate our dinner while watching a guitarist perform on the outdoor stage. It was fun to see!
Then, before dark, we headed out to the beach to watch the sunset and have a campfire on the beach. See all those clouds in the photo below? That made for a pretty much non-existent sunset, but oh well! It was still pretty, but it was soooo cold and windy that night! I really had to bundle up! Are you sure this is summer?
The next morning Lelani and I went for an early morning walk on the beach before we packed up our gear to head home. We found a little restaurant downtown, where I had hashbrowns, eggs, and fried oysters; it was so delicious! About noon, we got on the road for another long, trafficky drive home… What a great weekend though!
Wine and History Visited 