SEPTEMBER 2009    PAGE  1                         |previous page | index | next page|

Tuesday, September 1 - Long Beach Peninsula

 

We arrived yesterday at our first Thousand Trails Resort in Long Beach Washington.  Last May, we went to Thousand Trails at Lake Texoma in Texas on one of those four day, three night free stays if you listen to the sales presentation.  We didn't buy, but we were gifted a free one month's membership in Thousand Trails, which we saved for this September. We drove up the peninsula as far as we could to Leadbetter Point.  Here, in other months, is a great wildlife refuge with many species of birds.  Unfortunately, this was not one of those months. We has a great time, however, hiking on one of the trail loops along Willapa Bay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few miles south is the old town of Oysterville. We found this old school, built in 1907, now used as a community building, as well as several older houses of mid-19t century vintage,  This area of Willapa Bay is still a major oyster region.

 

 

 

These unbroken large oyster shells must be repacked for restaurant use.  Here is an oyster boat being unloaded.

 

 

 

 

 

We stopped at the cranberry museum.  Didn't know that the University of Washington had a research station here, and that much cranberries are grown here.

They grow this heather to attract bees which are used to pollinate the cranberries.

 

 

 

 

 

We stopped at Jack's in Ocean City to get a good rock hammer, and some pine tar soap. Need the hammer for rock hounding, and the soap to repel mosquitoes.

 

 

On the south end of the peninsula, we get to see the Lewis and Clark discovery trail, and the final stop on their journey - Waikiki Beach (not the Hawaiian beach but a beach so named because a Hawaiian sailor was buried here). 

 

 

 

Below are two lightkeepers' houses at North Head Lighthouse, now rented out as vacation homes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we are at the Lighthouse - hair disheveled after the wind up there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here are the views on both sides of the lighthouse:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some cormorants on the side of the mountain.

 

But that wasn't the end of that day - more on next page...

 

 

 

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