We left a little before 8 on Sunday morning. We had the border to negotiate, and with a longish drive ahead of us, wanted to get an early start. We had figured on having to stop a number of times along the way to keep the internecine bickering to a minimum.
In fact, there was little bickering. The border lineup was short, only about 10 minutes, and we stopped in Mt. Vernon for a refreshing beverage (cappucino, soft drink, lemonade smoothie thing, organic soy chocolate milk), so we made really 
good time, and were in Olympia around 11:30. We took the exit pointing to the state capitol and made 2 turns before parking on the street in a surprisingly congested city, considering that it was Sunday.
We discovered that there was some sort of festival on, one of those things where a traveling collection of undermaintained deathtraps is set up on the grass, and dodgy games of skill offer cheap and gaudy prizes. Along one side, a series of booths offered lifetime aluminum siding, psychic crystals, jewelry made with copper and beads and stones and just about anything else you can think of. And there was food. Purely by chance (or was it?) we walked across the grass and through a line of booths to stand in front of Barb’s BBQ and Soul Cuisine.
I grabbed the Ribs n Slaw meal, Chris had the pulled pork on a bun. The kids opted for things like hot and corn (yes!) dogs, and we sat on the grass.
Afterward, we wandered through the stalls, past a beautifully painted wall, and back to our car, where we discovered that we had once again failed to Read the Instructions: we had paid 75 cents to park, when the parking meter clearly says that the meter isn’t in effect on Sunday.
We headed south again, turning along 101 toward Aberdeen. We missed the most direct route and wandered along in a touristy haze, through hill and dale, although most of it was very pretty country.
We stopped outside of Raymond, because HouseApe 2.0’s dad is named Raymond.
We didn’t stop long, but long enough to wander up and down and climb on the Raymond sign.
By then, we’d been on the road a long time, and the back-seat good manners that had prevailed up until then (mostly due to HouseApe 2.0’s restraint: she really is mature for 11) began to break down, and we finally started to hear plaintive cries asking about our relative global position and our place in the timeline.
But in a surprisingly short time we reached our campsite, checked in, found our yurt (which I seem to have neglected to photograph) and began to decompress.
We were staying at Cape Disappointment State Park, so named, according to the website because “In 1788, while in search of the Columbia River, English Captain John Meares missed the passage over the river bar and named the nearby headland Cape Disappointment for his failure in finding the river.”
Good enough for me: Cape Disappointment it is.
The yurt is nothing terribly special: it’s like an inexpensive cabin without any amenities. The yurt is round, with a round hole in the centre of the roof. This makes for interesting halo-photographs, but it also provides a nice even interior light during the day. The yurts at Cape 
Disappointment have bunk beds and a futon, so the four of us were comfortable. They also have power and a little heater, so that the extent of the campiness of the camping revolved around cooking outside and having to walk over sand and asphalt to the flush toilets. The campsites were spaced a little closer than is typical in the BC Provincial campsites I’m used to, as well.
The first thing you notice after turning off the car is the sound of a truck-loaded freeway. A big truck-loaded freeway. “What the hell?” you think, and then you realize that there isn’t any goddam truck-loaded freeway here. That constant roar is something else.
It’s the ocean.
I grew up in the interior. I’ve lived near the coast for more than half my life, but it is an inland, protected ocean, calm, weedfilled, and relatively warm. On this beach, however, there is nothing between you and Japan but 5000 miles of open ocean, and even when the winds are calm the waves roll in constantly. Not huge waves, not most of them, but 3′ or so, with the occasional bigger one that pushes water far up the beach.
It’s almost hypnotic. The waves on a lake, or on the protected waterways of the Juan de Fuca, are small and mellow and interesting to watch. These roll in and mix in fascinating patterns on the sand.
We spent the rest of the day at the beach, retreating back to the yurt for hamburgers.
We got up the next morning and went to the beach again, but some of us had trouble re
alizing that there are a limited supply of dry clothes on camping trips, with likewise limited means of getting more, and so had to go back to the yurt. HouseApe 2.0 and I, meantime, discovered that at one end of the beach there is an area of silky black sand.
We decided that a trip into town was in order, as we needed paper towels and fruit. We toured through Ilwaco (If Mussolini was ‘Il Duce’, who was ‘Il Waco’, I wonder?) and then Seaside and Long Beach. We parked the car and wandered past places offering cappucino and massage, cappucino and art, cappucino and nearly anything. We ate lunch in a typical seaside restaurant, and bought an assload of salt-water taffy. Nobody knows for sure why it is called salt-water taffy, but I suspect that it is because it is invariably sold within shouting distance of the beach.
After lunch we went to one of the lighthouses and to oddly-named Waikiki Beach, which is like the other bigger beach further north, but smaller. There were a couple of people with surfboards, but the waves here were pretty small.
The wetsuits are a necessity. The water here is cold: I went in on the second day, and while I’m pretty hardy, I was not able to get in and stay in. The temperature data says it was probably around 53-54 degrees, which doesn’t sound too bad unless you’ve tried it. 54 degrees is bloody cold, and more than 30 minutes in water that temperature is physically dangerous. Back home, in Campbell Bay, Mayne Island, the surface water probably gets to 65 on a warm day, still cold but warm enough for an extended swim, while the deep water is probably more like 51. Go down more than about six feet in Campbell Bay, and you’ll feel the cold. It is interesting that people surf in Tofino, which is also on the open Pacific, with water temperatures that hover under 45 even in midsummer.
We followed the road to the back side of the breakwater, where we found a channel with small beaches and pools. It was sheltered from the constant wind, and we played and explored there for an hour or two, climbing the breakwater to watch a pod of dolphins and a golden eagle.
After that, it was back to the campsite for Indian food (all boil-in-bag, quite tasty) and then some reading time as four tired people waited for bedtime.
Next post: days 3 and 4.
Tags: Cape Disappointment, Vacation
Tuesday morning we got up and went down to the beach, which should astonish you not at all. We went to the north end, right up against the bluffs, where on the previous day HouseApe 2.0 and I had discovered an area full of black sand.
cool as hell. I’d love, LOVE to photograph a nude woman on this stuff. Alas, Chris would not agree to strip down, partly because there were other people there, but mostly because it wasn’t all that warm.
get acclimatized enough to swim, but each time I went under, the cold drove me back out again. But I can see why the Scandinavians view this as a tonic: if you can endure the shock of the cold, you feel marvelous once you get out.
sites to see if there were any primo locations, and then it was time for bed.