After 17 months of planning, saving, decluttering, and taking more than one big leap into totally unknown territory, I finally made it to the coast. My whole vagabond vision was something like “me at the coast, taking beach walks every day” and it didn’t really get much more definite than that. Yeah, I know, there are national parks in Utah and deserts and canyons all over to see, but those weren’t what drove me forward all these months. I’m a water baby at heart, and the coastal waters are where I need to be right now as I figure out how to be retired and rewired and relaxed and refreshed.
To get to the coast from Seattle, you either go north (involving a ferry) and then around the top of the Olympic Peninsula, or you go south (through the hellish traffic that is Tacoma) and go through Aberdeen.
There’s another sign welcoming you to Aberdeen, but it’s on the main road, so I never get a shot at it. It says “Come as you are” which is a tribute to Aberdeen’s most famous son, Kurt Cobain, who grew up here. Man, I see why he left, it’s not much. But go through it you must if you want to reach the coast. So I did, as quickly as possible, and then about 45 minutes later, I was checked in to Ocean City State Park, on the RV loop.
And the beach? Just a short walk away!
Yes, those are tire tracks on the left. Before the coastal road was built, the only way to get from town to town was driving on the beach. So, in typical Washington fashion, this right remains and even at 10AM in the morning, there were more than a dozen tracks already laid down by cruisers. I can’t complain, I did it last Thanksgiving with my great-nephew Austin because, as native Californians, the thought of driving on a beach is just bit decadent.
There are other riders on the beach, too. I waited for the right shot and took this photo just for my friend, Susan, who loves horses.
Both the seagulls and I enjoyed the local crab, as you can see. Mine, however, came from the IGA and I didn’t have to shred it on the beach to get to the meat.
I was happy to see the bands of plovers every day. They are lovely little birds, scurrying away from me and my camera whenever I passed some invisible boundary, so I maxed out my camera’s zoom to get this shot.
And who says you can’t make money at beach walking? I found half a (sand)dollar today…
Sometimes I think I could just stand here forever and watch the waves.
But there are books to read, blog posts to write, and different beaches to see, so I head back up the sandy path to my little home and see what the camera captured.
Not bad for a couple days work!