Whales...

Six times in the past 42 years, we've spent our anniversary weekend on the Olympic Peninsula. We spent our honeymoon in a tiny rustic cabin on a bluff above the beach at Kalaloch, The tradition kind of stuck.

Over the years, a lot of our anniversary weekends have been near a beach, but we've come to the north coast, between Port Angeles and Port Townsend, more than any other place. It's become sort of a second home.

This year our special day fell on a weekend when there were wine club parties, snow in the Olympics, and the discovery of such a good landmark restaurant, we can hardly wait to come back.

On a hilltop high above Port Angeles is a tiny park at the end of a dead-end street, and it's full of art. There was a geocache too, which is what brought us there. It was easy to find the cache; harder to find all the hidden pieces of art that are hidden among the trees. This leaping whale is my favorite. Studded with beach glass and shells and rocks smoothed by the surf, you can almost smell the salt water.

Beach treasures...

So, I'll come right out and admit that this part of the Washington coast isn't my favorite. I grew up exploring beaches full of tide pools and sea stacks, with gravel beds full of rocks (and occasionally, an agate. With wild stacks of driftwood tossed up by wild surf. With streams making furrows in the sand from cliffs to the surf.

Beaches you couldn't drive on. Beaches where the only sounds were the crashing of the waves, the cries of the sea birds, and the scritch of rocks being pulled by the waves. Not the sound of vehicles being driven up and down, engines racing.

I prefer my kind of beach.

That said, there is a certain appeal to walking on the hard-packed sand, the waves curling over my feet, looking for treasure. On this beach, there wasn't much to find. But the looking was still fun.

A rather large jellyfish (which I almost walked on).




A pool of water and sand washing over a sand dollar.




A lot of wary seagulls. I had to work hard to herd this one exactly where I wanted it in my composition, and got a single photo before it flew away.




Lots of broken clam shells. In spite of not a single rock anywhere on this beach, shells still don't survive.



And that was it. I walked more than a mile north on the beach, barefoot, squishing the sand and water between my toes, and had great fun. My bare legs and feet didn't even get cold, which is not a common thing on a Pacific beach. But I found no treasures to bring home.