In the morning, we packed up the car, said goodbye to beautiful La Push, and took these turkeys to breakfast at River's Edge Restaurant right on the water. It's the only restaurant on the Quileute reservation and there were only a few other people in the restaurant, all locals. After a nice hearty breakfast, we splurged on marionberry cobbler. I mean, why not? We'd never tasted marionberries before and they're native to the area. When in Rome....
After our leisurely start to the day, we weren't sure we could fit in the fabled Shi Shi Beach, which required a 4-hour roundtrip drive and a 6-mile hike. We decided to go for it. We drove on empty rural roads to the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula and ended up at the rather dilapidated trailhead. We'd been warned that although the elevation gain was minimal, the trail would be deep with mud and there'd be a steep descent at the end. But people seemed positively starry-eyed when they recommended it. We figured our Colorado lungs could handle it even if we haven't seen actual mud in years.
The first part of the trail had lots of wooden bridges and boardwalks. We kept expecting hobbits to pop out of the trees. After a while, the nice walkways disappeared and it was definitely a mud-fest after that.
Here's our reward after all that deep mud: our first glimpse over the cliffs! Next we had to climb down a steep ravine using these ropes for safety.
Soaking in the view...which was definitely pretty. But at first glance it didn't seem quite as "National Geographic-worthy" as I'd read. And it didn't really look like what we'd seen from the cliffs. Hmmm.
The tide wasn't all the way out and that meant we couldn't go around the headland to the next beach. We climbed around the rocks for a while, looking for starfish and sea anemones, and I got really nervous with each sudden surge of crashing waves.That's when we decided to climb over the headland. There was a tiny trail and some tattered dangling ropes which I did not find comforting or advisable. The headland was a rather dauntingly steep rock formation that quite frankly, I would have skipped if not for my adventurous husband. But on the other side...here's what we found!
It was starting to get late and we were concerned about the hike back to the car. (I wasn't thrilled about the possibility of running into a bear at dusk.) We had been moving north from beach to beach, which meant we were heading back parallel to the trail (albeit 200 feet below it). This is when the Kortsch-cut mentality set in and next thing you know, we're bushwhacking/climbing up a cliff, sans trail. I remember thinking, maybe this isn't such a good idea, but Daniel had scouted it and sometimes there's no way out but through...or up, in this case.
We finally hauled ourselves to the top, vertigo getting me a little weird, and found ourselves in a dense thicket, no trail in sight. Daniel went into orienteering mode and thrashed around for a while until he finally found a way to connect with the trail. He came back to us drenched in sweat, with a huge grin on his face. Apparently this is his idea of a good time. We climbed and crashed our way through and popped out with a few extra bruises and scratches. But we were happy to have "cut off some time," ha-ha.
When we got back to the trailhead--muddy, sweaty and singing random songs very loudly--we started chatting with a man in the parking lot, who was carrying a giant tripod and tons of photography equipment. I'd seen him back at the beach taking photos. We offered him a ride back to his car a couple miles up the road (which ended up being hard to explain to the boys who understandably have strict ideas about strangers in cars). Turns out he is a nature photographer named Jan Bell, who has won an Ansel Adams award. You can see some of his gorgeous photography here. (I think this could be Daniel's second career.)
From there, it was on to Lake Crescent. We drove east along the northern coast of the peninsula most of the way. It was ethereal with the sun setting over the Strait of San Juan de Fuca. That's Vancouver in the distance.Unfortunately, we rolled into the Log Cabin Resort starving. (Again, think campground, not resort.) It was late, and they were shutting down for the night. There are zero restaurants or stores within a 30-minute radius, and we couldn't handle the thought of more driving. So we raided the bare-bones camp store, and ended up eating ice cream sandwiches, chocolate milk, and random bits of trail leftovers for dinner. Who cares? It was a fantastic day. We had an adventure.
