TRAVEL DAY
From: Echoes of the Sea, Copalis Beach, WA.
To:Quileute Oceanside Resort, La Push, WA.
Day 219 – It rained all night and was very windy this morning. We looked at several weather briefings and decided to carefully & slowly go ahead and leave, rather than waiting until this afternoon when the wind was lower. We were traveling inland about half the journey to our next campground; the winds were higher on the coast.
We departed Echoes of the Sea at 10:40 a.m. after dumping tanks. It was 51 degrees with light rain and very windy. We had made reservations for 4 nights at Forks Sol Duc Campground in Forks, Washington and been assigned site #18. We arrived at 1:05 p.m. Site #18 was flooded with muddy potholes and we couldn’t get in to the site safely. If we had driven in, we probably would’ve gotten stuck in the mud. Rob called the phone number for the owner. His mail box was full and we could not leave a message. He’d tried to contact the owner earlier this morning to find out if they had drinking water at the campground. When he got the mail-box-full message, he sent an e-mail. The guy never responded. He walked around the campground and found that there were two campsites that were big enough for us and were not too muddy. He had no way to get in touch with the owner to find out if either of those campsites might be available for us to occupy the days we were going to be there.
We decided to call the next campground where we had reserved a campsite – the one we were scheduled to arrive at this coming Sunday – to check availability. Quileute Oceanside Resort, located in the Quileute Indian Reservation in La Push, Washington, was not a huge distance from where we were in Forks. We were lucky to find that they did have a campsite available, and we grabbed it. We let the girls out, we all had lunch, and we tucked them back in, left for our new campground, and arrived at 2:15 p.m. It was 53 degrees and windy.
Our drive today from Copalis Beach to La Push, WA was mostly through rainforests. For a couple of short time periods we drove along the Ocean, and those sections were quite windy. But inland, the road seemed to be somewhat protected from the winds by all the trees. We drove by all four Olympic National Forest rainforests; we’ll be returning to explore three of them within the next seven days. (We checked out Quinault rainforest a few days ago.) Most of the drive was very overcast with some heavy rain and very windy.
Quileute Oceanside Resort was very nice and we’re happy to be spending 7 nights here. We are right on the Ocean and currently the sea is very rough with large, crashing waves. There are several rocky sea stacks off shore; we can see them from the front of the inside of the RV. Very scenic. We were assigned site#2 for four nights. Then we’ll be moving to site #18, our original reserved campsite for the next three nights. This campground has very nice cabins and a very nice motel, all on the Ocean. We’re positive today’s problems worked out for the best.
Rob went for a walk down to the beach near sunset. We’d heard that the winter storms in northern Washington and British Columbia were something amazing to see. He was surprised to see all the huge fallen trees that had been brought to shore by the seas. Some of the trunks were as tall as he is, and the roots of some were twice his size.
