Half-Way Through Our Vacation

So here we are on Wednesday, the official mid-point of our week at the beach. Saturday and Sunday we were too busy around the house and shopping to do a lot of fun stuff. Monday we had guests over and fixed BBQ ribs. Tuesday we went to the pool and made it to the beach, for the first time!

Wednesday we decided to explore the rest of the North Beach communities. Ocean City and Copalis Beach really are just wide spots in the road. Ocean City has a store that is a bit of history and Copalis has a bar. Not much doing at either place.

Then we drove through Seabrook, the newest of the North Beach communities. I understand that everyone wants some equivalent of the Hamptons, but I can’t see spending $500,000 for a two bedroom, one bath that you have to cross the freeway and down a flight of stairs to get to the beach no matter how nice the neighborhood looks.

We went through Pacific Beach and stopped in Moclips and had a picnic lunch on the beach. Then we had a nice long beach walk.

The beaches at the north end of Highway 109 are much prettier than those on the south end. The north beaches are framed by high clay cliffs that have abundant evergreen flora on them and silvery sands. They remind me of Kalaloch where we spent so much of our summers when I was a kid. In the south we have dunes, with yellow dune grass and either dark gray or ash colored sand. On the other hand we have real amenities in Ocean Shores that all of the northern towns lack (like a real grocery and hardware stores).

We did stop on our way back at the Wacky Warehouse in Pacific Beach. This is a throw-back in time to the beachcombers of the mid-twentieth century. This store has all the assorted detritus of storm debris, estate sales, local auctions and store liquidations. It is part thrift store, part pawn shop. Outside of the store were four locals, not employees, just people who like to sit in front of the store. We didn’t find any treasures there, but if you are in Pacific Beach it is fun to stop in.