This past Sunday Ian and I headed up to the Olympic National Park to Third Beach to go check out Giant's Graveyard. We gambled on good weather, and partly won/partly lost. Sunday was nice, but ended up getting cloudy right as the sun was setting, so no great photos for me (boo!).
On the plus side, Ian and I had a phenomenally great time. I couldn't be more proud of Ian on this trip. He carried his backpack and didn't complain ONCE! In fact, he was super-chipper the entire walk in. While we didn't have a bunch of elevation to gain or lose, we did have to scramble up and over some steep headlands which involved using ropes to assist with the climbs and descents. Again, Ian did fantastic!
Once we got to our beach and camp site, Ian helped me to set up the tent and get everything situated. I think the views we had were pretty stunning.
We did a bit of exploring while the tide was out, which allowed Ian to do some "rock" climbing. Or as he puts it, working on his climbing mojo. ;-) We got back to our campsite in time for a nice dinner, and then play time. Ian enjoyed learning to skip some rocks (he finally made some skip!) and playing in the sand.
Once Ian had had enough of skipping stones, while he was playing in the sand with his stick, I got the fire going. It was nice to just sit and relax, and enjoy some downtime.
We got rained on a bit last night, which means we didn't get to stargaze at all. Ian was really looking forward to that, but it obviously didn't pan out. We got up good and early for breakfast and packed up our stuff to head out. If you look closely in the photo below, at roughly the right third, you'll see Ian making his way up the headland. That was the smallest one, too!
Along the way we got to see a whale baleen and some sea otters on the beach and then again in the water - which was an instant hit with Ian (okay, me too); aside from a frog and numerous birds the otters were the only wildlife we saw.
Don't judge the photo below too harshly, this is a rough edit (since I won't have time to work on it for a bit). But this was the only sunset color we had, and it shows you Giant's Graveyard all spread out before you.
This was most likely my final trip to the Olympic coast in the short term, which makes me a bit sad. It is rugged, remote, and beautiful. I've enjoyed exploring the Olympics. There is still a bunch that I never got to see, but that will have to wait for another day, I suppose. Cheers,
Marc
