Backcountry

Saw an elk in the campground while on my morning walk. I made sure to give him plenty of space.

 Day two and it was time for the beach! After getting used to seeing it everyday for two years, I felt this was long overdue. On the drive over we decided to get a backcountry permit and camp right on the beach rather than a normal campground (a bit of a misnomer in our case since we wouldn't actually be in the woods). We thought it would be fairly early to get the permit, but thanks to limited ranger station hours this actually took quite some effort. First we went to the ranger station nearest the beach and found out they were closed. The sign however said to go to one of two other ranger stations or call a number. The number was useless so it was off to the next closest ranger station. Again, closed. At that point we gave up finding a ranger station (the next was about 2 hours away) and took a hint from other campers and just fill out the form sans official signature. Not the most proper way to do it, but oh well.

After wasting at least an hour doing all that we still had to find a bear canister to keep our food in. We almost threw in the towel at this point but luckily we drove past a general store and I remembered seeing the name on the ranger station's list of places to get one. Turned out to be a pickle bucket. Not really what I was expecting... We took it anyway though.

Our "bear canister". At least it didn't still smell like pickles.

Finally, we made it to Rialto beach. We took a nice walk and scouted out our campsite before grabbing our stuff. You have to walk about 45 minutes to get to anywhere you're allowed to camp. We found a perfect spot right at the beginning of the camping area - above high tide level, soft sand, and sheltered by a couple of large fallen trees. Back we went to the car to get our stuff. Since we had nothing to claim the site with we were a little nervous and kept checking for other people looking like they were going to camp on the beach as we walked back. We saw no one with packs until we got to the car. There we ran into a group of women all geared up and heading in the general direction of our camp site. Rather than lose the perfect spot one of the girls grabbed her backpack and took off powerwalking. Luckily she did because she got there just before the group who were starting to look interested in our area. While that was going on the other girl and I loaded up the rest of the gear and food. It was pretty heavy and a little awkward to carry since we hadn't planned on doing this before leaving, but we got it all to the spot.

There were enormous downed trees all along the beach

The largest seaweed I had ever seen!

The sunset that night was beautiful and we had an amazing fire thanks to all of the driftwood around. Dinner was ratatouille one of the girls had made at the farm. Before going to sleep I walked the pickle bucket with any scented items and food a good 5 minutes away just to be on the safe side. At least if the racoons found it they would still be far away from us.

The birds for mom

A more successful fire