North Long Beach Peninsula

Monday and Tuesday of this week were gorgeous days and we utilized them to get out and about.  Wednesday - rain.  More like we had expected to have for Washington only there has been a dry spell and every place has a burn ban in effect.  Typically little rain during August but locals have said no rain since the beginning of July.  Very unusual. But we have been able to get out many times more than we had planned since it has been beautiful weather.

We stayed in Wednesday to get caught up on emails and such, watching the troops come in to park.  We are in a Coast-to-Coast park which is another type of membership campground but has opened its doors to the public.  I had trouble finding a campground to get to in this community, felt lucky we got a space here - but.  We have nicknamed this the Canopy-to-Canopy campground - we are so close to our neighbors on each side that if we put out our sun awning we would touch.  And very noisy.  You can hear them talking in each of their rigs, hear them walking (pound, pound, pound - heavy feet), and just rude - at 10:45pm last night I was ready to go to our neighbor and yell at him to shut up!

One thing though, we can hear the fog horn of freighters moving up and down the ocean's coast.  A low rumble, quite distinctive.

Leadbetter Sate Park - tide out 

Rain had ceased for awhile yesterday morning and we were just going to run into town to grocery shop but ended up driving north on the Peninsula to the end where Leadbetter State Park is located.  There are hiking trails there to Willapa Bay (bay between peninsula and main land) or cross over on trails to the ocean.  Since it was still sprinkling, we did not linger.  Drove back through a small town of Oysterville, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, cute.  Very old, and lots of history of oyster catching, canning, etc.  Today the old buildings are still there, the cannery is a sea food market.

Oyster Fishing Fleet - Oysterville

Oyster Shells being loaded on boat

Recycled Oyster Shells 

Did walk down to the docks where the fishing fleet resides.  Pretty impressive.  Watched an oyster boat being loaded with broken oyster shells and when they docked, asked what was going on.  The skipper said that they recycle the shells, bag them, then sink them into the bay where young oysters will cling to the mass and the juvenile oysters will use this mass for their remainder of their life until harvested.  I read that there is a shortage of oyster shells since many people use the shells for decorative or building purposes instead of recycling. As we drove back to the campground we saw where many homes would used crushed shells for pavement instead of dirt or gravel.  It did look pretty.