tales from the Drivers' seat: Ocean again...

We had to jump ahead with our last post as we have been busy and wanted to share the birth of our new granddaughter, Dani, with you. So lets get back to our travels, where the last half of July we spent about two weeks at Dick's favorite place, the ocean or what he calls "the beach".

We headed to Ocean Shores, Washington to the Western Horizon park there. It's a huge park with most of the sites buried in the trees with nice and flat grassy spots. We found a nice private site where we could put up the dish so we could watch the Mariners play ball. The only problem with the park is that they do not have sewer at the sites and the honey wagon is out of order with no plans for getting it repaired. No problem, we seem to make it work with whatever we are offered. We spent about a week there and then moved down the beach to another park for the remaining time.

We toured various ocean beaches for long walks and gave C C a chance to get out and run, and let us tell you she really enjoys running on the beach. Now why is the back seat of the truck covered with piles of sand?

We drove around the bay and headed to Westport to visit Dick's sister, Doll. It was Saturday but she works 7 days a week this time of the year. She and her husband, Dave own and operate Cachalot Charters and the local kite and gift store. We caught her relieving her employees so they could have lunch before she headed back to the Port Office for her full time job. Thanks Doll for the two birds; we will get them in the air when we get back to some place where there is wind.

If you are ever in Westport make sure you stop at Cachalot charters and say hi for us. And if you need a kite to fly at the beach, that's the place to go.

We did catch Dave, who just came back from a day fishing and it was great to see him again. Thanks for the fish Dave. Not only did we get some fish from him, another boat was selling fresh tuna, if you haven't had fresh tuna right off the boat you are missing out.

Another day we headed north to Dick's favorite beach, South Beach, and stopped to enjoy the sun, surf and relax on the logs. Note that C C is also relaxing after her run in circles.

The beach is all sand except when you get to the top of the beach there is a rather steep climb through all the flat rocks. We had to stop and bring back a bag full of them for a special gift to our son-in-law, Darin.

Back to Ocean Shores and a walk on the beach on the bay in the morning with a -2.2' tide. It was our plan to find some agates but could not find any so we settled for several pounds of beach rocks for the tumbler.

The remains of an old pier at the Willapa bay at the end of Ocean Shores.

With the minus tide we spent an hour or more just walking and enjoying all there was to see. A little overcast but with a light jacket it was great to just enjoy our time together.

At one time they ran charter boats out of the Ocean Shores Marina, owned by the local Indian tribe, but the river has decided to shift and has filled it and the surrounding area with sand. One can still get in and out, if you have a shallow draft vessel, and if you wait for high tide.

They used to run a ferry from here across the bay to Westport, but not any more.

The plug got pulled on the marina on this day.

So how do you like the looks of this 57' Chev?

While we were at Ocean Shores the town hosted it's annual motorcycle rally and there must have been over 1500 motorcycles--they were every place you looked. We partook of the festivities and spent part of the day wandering around and checking out what was going on.

Did we say "57' Chev?" Take a closer look as all you see on the side and back of this 3 wheel motorcycle is a great paint job. And yes it does have a V8 engine under the hood.