Day 53 - Reminder that it rains in rain forests

The night was a lot quieter than the prior evening.  But the highlight of the night was that the clouds cleared overnight and the stars were spectacular.  While I don’t like having to get up in the middle of the night, this was a reward that made it worth the walk to the bathroom.

Today we decided was to be our beach exploration day and so after breakfast, we casually got ready for the day and piled into Rover to head west.  We retraced our steps on the winding narrow road out of camp and then hopped onto highway 101 to get to the coast.  We stopped at a couple of hardware stores in Forks, WA (we learned that this is the home of the Twilight series - who knew?!) to get a replacement latch for our screen door and actually had some success.  Then we headed over to the beach to start our exploring.


When we arrived at the beach, the parking lot was swamped.  We were the third car in the line as people tried to find any missing spot.  We gave up on that and backtracked to the first spot on the road back.  It was there that we met a couple that had just gotten back from Alaska. It turns out the are from Greensboro.  We visited with them for a while before heading to the beach.


Once we got onto the beach, Robinson and Sebastian had a great time challenging the waves (and then running away as the water approached their feet) and then hucking rocks and logs into the ocean.  No sooner did we convince them to start heading north toward “Hole in the Wall” than the skies opened and it started raining on it.  I ran to get the car and meet them in the parking lot, but when I returned it was clear we had just lost our beach day.  We were all soaked, unprepared for the rain (shame on us), and without a change of clothes, our beach day came to a very premature, abrupt end.  Sigh.



So we drove the hour back to camp and spent the rest of the day as a lazy day with the rains coming and going throughout the day.  Amy and the boys spent a lot of the day in the lodge and they ended up hanging out with a high school camp.  I spent much of the day catching up with this blog!  


As the afternoon waned, Robinson decided that getting into the lake was a good idea.  So, he waded his way in, probably in the coldest spot in the lake - where the creek inlet was.  He was clearly cold, but his brother decided that he wanted to join them.  Pretty soon there were two popsicles in a VERY cold lake.  Needless to say, they didn’t last long.




Once we got them warm again, we headed back to the lodge.  Amy played some more cards with them while I finally wrote out a few postcards.  Then we had our special treat of lodge restaurant dinner.  It was pretty good, but didn’t have quite the excitement and feel of Yosemite’s dining area.  After dinner, the boys met up with a few other boys in camp and soon they were all playing hide and seek and other games around camp.




We came back to camp and played some games together before I used the shower ($0.25 for 3 mins of warm water - what a bargain!) and we all got ready for bed.  It was certainly not the day we drew up, but it’s still a day of vacation and hey, that’s not too bad.






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