Along the Pacific

Our last full day on the Olympic peninsula was Sunday.  It began with a local church service in Chimacum.  We went with the Fords, another couple who are also NOMADS and also members of Escapees.  They have their own lot here at the RV park. After that we had a HUGE breakfast at the local café and got to know them a little better.  They have worked a lot of projects, mostly in the west, and we found that we have worked with many of the same people at different times.

On Monday we pulled out and headed south, stopping for a scenic view of the Hood Canal from the top of Mt. Walker.  We have no pictures to show, because the lower elevations were fogged in.  Our destination was the Long Beach peninsula in the SW corner of Washington, jutting into the Pacific Ocean and just north of the Columbia River.  This is where Lewis and Clark ended their western exploration and spent the winter of 1805.  We found many RV parks throughout the communities on this point, but selected Sand Castle RV since it honors Passport America membership.  The drive here was through some Weyerhauser land where lumber is the primary crop.  One area in particular was hit hard by hurricane force winds in 2007 that took down hundreds of acres of trees.  It was harvested like a clear cut and replanted.  Again, no photos, but the size of some of the stumps was amazing.

Yesterday we back tracked a bit to the town of Aberdeen to have a couple of drug tests.  We have been unable to find any NOMADs projects here in the west for the remainder of the year, so we have contacted Amazon to work in one of their warehouses (“fulfillment center”) until Christmas.  If they can promise us day shifts, and if we pass the drug tests, we will spend November and December in Fernley, NV.

We plan to meet up with some friends in Oregon later in the week, so a good part of last night was spent studying the maps and calendar and planning our short term schedule.  The result was that we will stay here a little longer, so we spent this morning cleaning – not just our usual top to bottom 15 minutes, but really cleaning a lot, maybe 45 minutes.

To make up for the lack of earlier photos, here is one from one of our walks on the beach tonight: