sea stacks, driftwood, mountains, and spits

hello from washington!

we just returned from rialto beach. (thank you to the washington natives who told us to go there!) i think it might be one of the most beautiful places i've ever been. the pictures probably don't capture it fully, but i guess they never really do. in this one, you can see the water and some driftwood and a little sea stack off in the distance.


[hello! this is sam. i am interjecting. i hate to interrupt, but i feel that some explanation is in order. raise your hand if you were just now thinking, "what the heck is a sea stack?" right - me too! okay, so a sea stack is a little island that's close to the shore. they are cool.

...also, rialto beach is a scene of destruction - enormously powerful storms and tsunamis hit it all the time, so the outer edge of the forest is continually being dessicated by salt spray, knocked over by wind and waves, and eventually swallowed by the sea. so you either walk on the pebbles and risk getting drenched when a big wave comes, or you climb around over a swath of petrifying trees and driftwood, or you find a path through the spooky forest.]

we had a lot of fun exploring. sam loved the crashing waves and the different sounds they made as they came towards us and then receded over the rocks. i collected stones but then realized i was not allowed to keep them. though i saw other people leaving with theirs, i have this thing about following rules. so, i left mine on a big fallen tree.


i wasn't the only one who made a rock arrangement!

[sam says: look at the size of that tree! or i guess there's no scale... so, just trust me, it was ginormous.]


we loved looking at all the driftwood. sam found this swirly one.


here i am looking thoughtful.


here is sam looking like a spiky tree.


a few days ago, we went to the dungeness spit, which also had fallen trees and driftwood and nice rocks but was much more calm. [sam: it's where the crabs come from!] i love spits because they are called spits. this one was seven miles long! here, sam models some driftwood.


[so probably everyone already knew this except me, but a spit is just a little tiny peninsula. practically a sandbar, except attached to the mainland. the dungeness spit is only a few dozen yards wide in places. maybe it's the longest in the world? or one of the longest? there was a sign but i can't remember.]

a nice man took our picture for us.


after camping for two nights near the spit, we drove to hurricane ridge in olympic national park. once we got to the top, we got out of the car and hiked a little to the top of hurricane hill. here's the hill.


here's the view of the mountains from the hill, with some crazy people trying to get in the way.


tomorrow we're planning to get rained on in the rainforest. we hope you are all staying dry where you are. we love and miss you.