Wednesday morning, (10 Sept), we jumped into the Silverado to check out some more of the local attractions.  One place I had in mind to check out was Cape Disappointment State Park which encompasses the whole southern tip of the Long Beach peninsula.  As with most state parks, it is often difficult to get information on-line to determine if our big rig will fit.  So, with that in mind we headed South to the state park.

By the way, in my post for Tuesday, I forgot to mention that before we called it an evening, we took the Silverado all the way up to the North end of the peninsula along the Western-most road and came back down the Eastern-most road… just to see what was there.  Which wasn’t much, probably why I forgot to mention it.  Just more pricey RV parks (that weren’t on the beach) and lots of older run-down houses and trailer parks.

Before the entrance to the state park, there were a couple attractions along the narrow windy road.  The first was Beards Hollow and the second was the North Head Lighthouse.

Here’s a couple of those informational placards that tell a better story than I ever could:

We posed for a selfie:

The Lighthouse informational placard shows the trails with a satellite view:

The inside of the lighthouse was closed for tours so we just wandered around and enjoyed the views.

Here’s one of the fantastic views from the lighthouse.

I read somewhere that Cape Disappointment gets about 106 days of fog per year on average – making it one of the foggiest places in the US.  Fortunately for us, we had mostly-clear beautiful skies.

While we were there, the Coast Guard put on a show for us.  It appeared that they were practicing cliffside recovery.  They lowered a guy down from the helicopter to the cliffside a couple times and then it appeared to me, that the pilot messed with him by seeing how close they could get him to the waves below.  I took some interesting video of that.

These next pics are a couple neat views of the lighthouse and the pathway leading up to the lighthouse keepers residence.

Another informational placard that describes what the life of a Lighthouse Keeper is like.

After those first couple stops, we finally arrived at the State Park.

I checked in at the office which was actually a guard shack in the middle of the road to ask if we could take a tour of the park to see if we would fit.  Since we had already purchased a $10 Discovery Pass for the day when we stopped at the Lighthouse parking lot, they let us through.  We were pleasantly surprised at the number of RV spots they had.. and more importantly, some where actually unoccupied.  So we went back to the office/guard shack to get more detail on pricing and availability on a couple sites we made a note of. Of course, the couple spots we asked about were either reserved or for “admin use” whatever that is.  The nice lady gave us some possibilities and marked them on our map, so we went back to check them out.  We decided on site 162 at a cost of $27 per night which includes the $10 Discovery Pass that unfortunately we had already wasted $10 on.  Oh well – this place was really nice and the majority of the sites near the beach were set up in wagon wheel type circles that gave everyone nice space and access to the beach.  We booked two nights and high-tailed it back to the Sandcastle RV Park to get the Coach before it got any later… it was already noon.

Here’s our awesome new spot:

I had to be careful with the low hanging branches, but the Urban Escape Vehicle slipped in unscathed.

Once we got settled in, we hit the beach right away.  It was just a short walk across from our site and over the grass and tree covered dune.  Here’s a view of our beach with the lighthouse we visited earlier on the cliff above.

 

Stilla spent the afternoon combing the beach for shells.

The beach was dog-friendly.  We were able to let Coach off the leash… and he made the most of it.  Good thing he always seems to listen and returns when called.

Proof that Stilla was here 🙂  She took a footprint “selfie” with her iPhone.

We set up our chairs to enjoy the sunset.  Coach stayed in the shade when he wasn’t chasing sea gulls.  Our RV site is just behind the grass-covered, drift-log-littered dune.

We sat and watched the sunset before going back to the coach to run the generator so we could charge the batteries for the night.  Did I mention that we don’t have hook-ups?  Also, no internet or satellite.  Life is good!

End of day 1.  Day 2 episode begins shortly…