Ocean City sits on the coast of Washington about mid-way between the borders of Oregon and Canada. We choose this location for the proximity to Olympic National Park, and our stay here will have been three weeks when we leave next Monday. We are lucky to have arrived in this part of the country during their official “summer”, August/September. As you can imagine, rain forests do not thrive where there isn’t an abundance of moisture. Marine layers aside, we have been lucky that our first big rain day since we arrived over two weeks ago is today. Perfect opportunity to throw some dinner in the crock pot, bake some cookies for Bob and get the blog caught up a little.
Our campsite overlooks a large field and we watch for the family of deer that appear every few days. A short walk down a narrow trail over the dunes takes us to the beach. Expansive and hard packed, at low tide Bob has been able to enjoy many miles on his bike, and I have thoroughly enjoyed my meditative solitary walks. Bald eagles land at the shores edge and broken sand dollars and tons of dead crabs are scattered in the sand.
After a few visits up to ONP we are glad that we planned for so much time here. It takes about an hour to get to the southern most part of the park so we have done a few day trips. The entrance road to the Hoh Rainforest however is almost two and a half hours away, and we knew there were a few long hikes that we wanted to do. We decided to spend a few days away from the motorhome at the Rainforest Hostel that is very close to the park, a great experience we won’t soon forget.
Wild blackberries are EVERYWHERE! Many hours have been spent picking and eating these juicy morsels. We have about 10 quarts in the freezer now, and hopefully will add to them before we leave next week. As Bob says, “We can get meat and things anywhere, but when will we have this opportunity for fresh picked berries?” I agree, and our plans are to have some left in the freezer when we get to the kids this Fall. Hmmmm, that’s going to be a tough one.
Our Friends and Family Tour has continued also with a wonderful visit from Rose, who we haven’t seen for a few years. She had moved from Fallon up to the Northern Peninsula of Washington back in 2016. Just coming off of a four day back country 20+ mile hike towards Enchanted Valley, the end point was not far from us here in Ocean City. Brought tears to my eyes when she was getting ready to leave. Not only because I will miss her smile, and it was so great to see her and catch up with her life, but that Bob took the moment to sincerely thank her for all the hours she helped us build our business at the nursery. I hope she always remembers those words, because I know for him to have opened up his heart to say them - he meant every word. Right now we are having a great visit with Ged, our friend from Kamloops, that we visited a few years ago at his home in British Columbia. About the best thing about this last three years is the opportunity to continue to re-connect with friends and family that we see so rarely.
So by the time I am finish today I hope to have a few posts caught up, thank you for joining us on the journey.
