Day 40--Hail to the Beach

Where are we? I realized that I have been waxing poetic (or dogmatic) about Kalaloch, but I haven't done a proper job of explaining it. So, what's the deal with this Kalaloch place, anyway? Kalaloch (pronounce it "clay-lock") is a place on the Olympic peninsula in Washington, within Olympic National Park. It's a place that my family have been going to since years and years before I was born.

Kalaloch is situated on a bluff over the Pacific Ocean. There are a lodge, cabins, a hotel-type building, and a campground to stay in. There's a small convenience store and a fancy restaurant. Other than that, the closest real civilization is Forks, Wa 40 miles away. Kalaloch is about 3 hours' drive from Seattle or 4 hours' drive from Portland, so it's far-removed from everywhere. Because of its remoteness, it's also pristine and beautiful. It's not the boardwalk-and-surf of California beaches, nor is it the crowds-and-beauty of Oregon's beaches. The ocean tosses up piles of driftwood on the shore, wildlife is abundant, we've seen whales, seals, and all sorts of wild critters. I think I've seen a bald eagle every visit for the last 10 years.

In the summer, when there's sunshine, you can play on the beach, make sandcastles, bodysurf or swim in the waves, paddle the driftwood around in the creek like makeshift canoes, make forts from the driftwood, or hike endless miles of sandy beach. You can almost plan on rain at Kalaloch, summer or winter, but it's spectacular in rain, too.

Kalaloch has been a formative part of my childhood. Many of my earliest and fondest memories are located there. I feel like I grew up at Kalaloch. In my younger years, my family camped more often, but as my parents aged, they drifted towards the cabins. I took Jen there for part of our honeymoon, and she fell in love with it. We've gone there, camping or in cabins, more than once each year that we've been married, and we return there as often as we can. I had a friend-of-a-friend from the east coast talk about how her family always summers in Cape Cod. I could tell she feels that kind of attachment to the place. While my family isn't quite in the socioeconomic class that "summers" anywhere, Kalaloch fills that place in my heart.

I mean... we named our band after it-- it's gotta be something special, right?

Okay, so now that you know all that there is to know about kalaloch...

Edgar, playing "baby" in Sabrina's makeshift bed on the nightstand. Photo taken moments before Edgar managed to knock the bed to the floor with himself in it.

We had a better, if interrupted, night last night. Edgar woke up several times, but went back to sleep. Sabrina woke up once or twice, too. I slept and tuned everything out, so it felt like Jen was using me as a snooze alarm. She’d hit me and tell me to fill Edgar’s bottle, or hit me and tell me to sing to Edgar, or hit me and tell me to change his diaper. I ought to file a spousal abuse complaint.

Anyway, Edgar woke up just before 8, which is reasonable, unless you got a poor night’s sleep, which we all did, so it felt way too early.

I got him up and dressed and headed to Grandma’s cabin. Edgar sang “I love Grandma, she loves me” really loudly outside, but the curtains were closed, so we went to take a walk on the beach.

...with lots of puddle-splashing along the way.

It was the beginning of high tide, and the waves were washing up into the considerable amounts of driftwood here on the beach at Kalaloch. Edgar got to the driftwood piles, and was curious: “What’s that?” “That’s a log, it used to be a tree.” “Okay. What’s that?” “Another log. It used to be a tree, too.” “What’s that?” “Another log.” “What’s that?” “Log.” So forth and so on.

"Log."

It hailed on us at the beach, the first of four or more hailstorms today. Edgar threw the little snowballs at me. We watched the waves for a bit and then headed back to Grandma and Grandpa’s cabin, where they were up and ready to do breakfast. 

Moss on a fence. Not a bit out of the ordinary.

Edgar and I ate breakfast while Jen and Sabrina slept in. We fed the birds again. This time, I held out the pan of leftover chips, oatmeal, etcetera, while Edgar took things one by one, and did his best toddler-throw towards the circle of birds that kept a respectful about 6 feet away from us. Problem is, when a not-yet-two year old attempts to throw, he’s as likely to throw stuff behind himself as in front, and most of the time, whatever he throws ends up at his feet. Oh well. It was fun to watch the seagulls and crows. The seagulls are larger and more numerous than the crows, so they get the most of the food. The crows sneak in when the seagulls are distracted or not paying attention. The crows stick together, so 3 or 4 crows can keep a bunch of seagulls away from their meal. I threw a bit of food to try to make sure that both team seagull and team crow got a crack at some food.

Later, once Jen had woken up, I convinced her to take a walk on the beach with me. She was a little concerned about imposing on my parents and making them watch the kids, but they had a standing offer to take the kids while we walked on the beach, and we hadn’t taken them up on it yet.

The tide was high. +11.0, if our tide chart is correct (it’s got some glaring errors, so it may not be). We watched the waves coming up the creek towards the lodge. At times, the creek appeared to be running backwards as the tide came in.

On the beach, it was hailing constantly. It was cold enough that it didn’t seem to want to melt off the sand.. I dared a few dashes on the open sand below the logs when the waves were out, but Jen stayed up in the safety of the higher driftwood. It took us a while to get back our “log-legs”. When we come here, we always start a bit apprehensive about walking across the piles and piles of driftwood, but after a while, we develop balance and a sense of how to get from one place to the next. It’s not unusual to see kids and grownups running across the logs after several days here. Today’s hail made the logs slippery, adding an extra hazard to log-walking.

  

That's hail on the logs and dark gray sand, making it look white.

Jen in the hail.

Me in my natural habitat.

Jen and I made our way out to the mouth of the creek, where the high tide was pounding loose logs against the shore. They would crash around us, making thunderous noise. In the creek mouth, a flotilla of hundreds of logs milled around in the surf, pushed out by the river currents, and in by the waves. We brought our camera with the express intent of taking pictures and video, and at the moment we got out to the end, the camera battery ran out. I’m glad Jen won the we-won’t-need-a-battery-charger-on-this-trip-oh-yes-we-will argument. Maybe we’ll get a chance to take some pictures tomorrow. Suffice it to say, the waves and tide were powerful and we felt awed standing so close to so much force. We saw logs that twenty people couldn’t lift, easily tossed and moved by the action of waves that we’d think nothing of splashing in, in summertime.

The power of nature.

A little salal plant growing in a drift log, sheltered from pelting hail.

We came back to the cabin to warm up and dry out, and it was lunchtime. After lunch, we all retired for a much-desired nap. As you may have noticed, reading this blog, I relish a good nap, but I don’t have much control over how long I sleep, so I must’ve had a 3-hour nap or more. It felt amazing. Apparently, before I woke up, Jen was having a serious discussion with Edgar about whining. He’s been quite the whiner, really since Sabrina was born, but especially in the last few days. I woke up having dreams about drinking wine. I was totally an alcoholic in my dream. Apparently, both my son and I have a problem with whining/wining.

After the nap, it was low tide, and Jen and I went out again, this time taking a lot of pictures. We’re in search of album art, so I hope that one of these fits the bill. In the meantime, enjoy some of our pictures (click on any picture to enlarge, I think).

We walked among the debris of this morning’s high tide, including logs strewn everywhere from the tide’s pounding.

With each wave line of the retreating tide, there was a rainbow of partially-degraded plastic bits washed up in the surf, a reminder of the awful things that we are all doing to our home.

Today’s low tide was supposedly -0.8, so that’s nearly a 12-foot swing between high and low tide, for those of you following along at home. 

We had dinner with my parents, and Edgar about drove us crazy with his whining. We were all close to wits’ end. At one point, I told him that I turned whiners upside down. He whined, I held him up by his ankles. That made him laugh. He laughed until I put him right side up, at which point he would whine again. I’d hold him upside down, swing him, tickle him, etc. He got to the point where he would whine just so I’d play with him, so I’m not sure if it fulfilled the original intentions, but it was fun while it lasted. For a change, my parents and Jen played some 3-handed pinochle while I watched Sabrina and tried to keep Edgar occupied.

I know I've posted about a million pictures today, but I want to post not one, but two videos of Edgar being cute (and whiny):

It's just like having a dog.

Here you get Edgar's "Power of Greyskull! Kssh!", plus you get to see him drop his sword on his sister. Pretty typical.

Finally, it got to be Edgar’s bedtime, and I took him to our cabin and put him to bed.

We played a few more games with my folks—some dominoes and yahtzee for a change as well as pinochle. Sabrina was cute and just laid on the table content to be near the action. Wow. Our first child would’ve never done that. This is what a baby’s supposed to be like.

Later, it all came crashing down. Sabrina blew out her diaper, but we were out of diapers, so I had to sneak back into our cabin to get the new package. By the time I came back, Sabrina was melting down, and Edgar joined in on the baby monitor. He woke up and wanted his mommy. So, night was over. We came back to the cabin, sang Edgar a bunch of songs, made sure Sabrina got fed, and prayed for a solid night’s sleep on our last night here in Kalaloch.