Olympic National Park Day 13

Day 13: Olympic NP Beaches

This morning, the fog combined with the smoke from the forest fires in BC was so dense that it was difficult to see more than a ¼ mi.  We could barely see the water from our room.  After breakfast, we took a walk on the beach, waiting for a ranger program at 11.  The beach was pretty deserted and with the fog it was quite surreal. The beach was covered with crab carapaces, the remains of constant feeding by the shorebirds, mainly gulls and sandpipers.  We also found a sea otter carcass that had been pretty well devoured, but the furry paws were still intact, allowing us to make a positive ID. CSI has nothing on us.

 The ranger talk was very informative.  Ranger Megan gave a very animated talk about the sea otter and the gray whale.  The sea otter is a “keystone” species, a species whose health is indicative of the overall health of the environment.  The sea otter was hunted to near extinction in the late 19^thand early 20^thcenturies on the Olympia Peninsula, but was reintroduced in the 1970’s (which failed), then reintroduced successfully in the 90’s. The otter population is now thriving here.  She told us about gray whales that have beached themselves on the beaches in this area, and about a whale that washed up and died on the beach about 3 weeks ago. We were given explicit directions on how to find it.

So, off we went to Ruby Beach, in search of the gray whale.  Ruby Beach is about 5 miles north of Kalaloch.  We walked down the steep trail from the parking area that opened to a great view of the rock stacks that dotted the beach. It looked a lot like Oregon’s Cannon Beach, 100 miles to the south.  We started walking south toward the beached whale, but before we got too far, we noticed a seal on the beach.  On closer inspection, the seal was, as they say, sleeping with the fishes.  We found out later that he had come ashore earlier that morning, very sick, and died just a couple of hours ago.  This coastline is very dangerous for marine animals. 

 A bit further down the beach, we found a large piece of baleen, the filter that the whale uses to strain food. The baleen weighed a ton! Just 50 yds further revealed the recently departed gray whale.   It was an intact juvenile female and, though not fully grown, it was huge. If you stood upwind, you were fine, but walking downwind was another matter.  The stench was horrendous (and it’s still in my nose)!

 We next went to South Beach to check out yet another dead whale.  Access to the beach was through a (not so attractive) campground and required some fancy maneuvering over massive amounts of driftwood. The whale, here, had been decaying for several months, and was now an anatomy lesson.  This whale’s smell was not as bad as the previous one, but I didn’t really feel like I wanted to spend any additional time with it.  We all decided we had seen enough dead @#$%^ today.

 We spent the remainder of the afternoon on Kalaloch Beach at our lodge searching, unsuccessfully, for the “tree of life”.  This was a tree growing on top of a cave allowing one to view the root structure from below.  Even though we were close to low tide, we couldn’t figure out a way to get across the creek without getting our feet wet.  I tried a homemade bridge made out of driftwood.  To my dismay, one of the logs was floating, not fixed; on the bright side, I found out my boots were waterproof.  We finally got cold and tired and gave up.  Instead, we went back to the “Mercantile” at the lodge for some delicious hot chocolate.

Dave and Molly had noted a slew of blackberry bushes outside of their room.

We were now seasoned pickers after our experience in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, and within a half hour, we had an ice bucket full of lushes blackberries.

Dinner tonight was lackluster to say the least. The highlight was dessert (but then, isn’t it always?).  We cajoled the waitress into bringing us whipped cream to put over our blackberries that we picked in the afternoon. Toby and I couldn’t resist some vanilla ice cream to go with it.  We are all ready for some Seattle restaurants tomorrow.