Hike - Part 2

Alright, so I'm going to finish the second half (the beach portion) of our hike. But first I'd like to say that I successfully finished "New Moon" (second book in the Twilight series) yesterday and got to bed just before 12 and still managed to keep my house clean (I'd take breaks from reading frequently to help the kids with something and would tidy things up before sitting down to read again), my children fed (making a simple dinner included) and happy and I got to take a nap to recover from my all night-er the night before and I also managed to pick some friends up from the airport and change a load of laundry. Yay for learning balance!

Alright - back to the hike! So as I said at the end of the last hike post, on Wednesday we hiked into the Hoh Rainforest Visitor's Center and spent a few hours there while we were waiting for our shuttle. The guy who we'd coordinated the shuttle with was named "Willie Nelson" (I put it in quotes, but that really was his real name!) And the funny thing was that he wore a big cowboy hat and boots and had long grey hair with a grey beard! So funny! Anyway! So we loaded our packs onto his small bus with the help of a few guys who were also taking the shuttle to LaPush 3rd Beach trailhead. Once we got in the bus we started talking to the 3 other people in the bus and they were hiking together and had done a very similar trail as we had and were going to the same place that we were! 2 of them were married and the 2 guys were brothers. We had a great discussion with them about religion and answered a lot of questions that they had about our church. It started off when we told where we were all from and Diane and I said that we lived in Utah. One of the guys asked us if when we were making the decision to move to Utah if the thought ever crossed our minds that we would never be able to buy a beer again. We laughed and told them that we were actually members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and we didn't drink so, no, it never crossed our minds. And a great respectful discussion was underway! They were from the East coast and were really neat people! Anyway. We drove to Forks where we stopped at some little trailer park camping kind of place where they had coin operated showers. We all took our turns showering and cleaning the 6 days worth of grime and yuck off ourselves while the others went through the resupply bag that our shuttle guide had brought for us. We reorganized and repacked everything (and ended up sending about the same amount of stuff BACK with him as he'd brought in). And then we headed off to the trailhead at LaPush. *Sorry another Twilight insert! (maybe the book was more distracting that I realized!) The guy told us that Forks was getting thousands of people coming everyday just to see the place where Twilight was set! Forks is a tiny itsy bitsy nothing town with nothing to draw anyone there... at all! Even the little mom and pop restaurants were pretty disgusting and didn't have good food or service! No draw, except the book and there was not a single hotel available to sleep there because they were constantly booked full (hotels, trailer parks and campgrounds all full because of the Twilight craze! It was so cool to see all of the mossy trees and the beach that they walked on (actually they talked about 1st beach and we were on 3rd beach but they were all pretty much the same) and be able to visualize everything SO perfectly while I read. So fun. I'm glad I went BEFORE I read the book so I could picture it better. While we were there on our hike we were in Port Angeles, Forks, LaPush and Olympic National Forest, Seattle, and drove through Olympia. We also drove around Crescent Lake - all places talked about in the book. K so that's all!
So we got to the trailhead and hiked down to the beach through ferns that were taller than me! I felt like I should have a machete (how the heck do you spell that big huge sword-like knife?!) in my hand hacking through the bushes! The trail was a dirt path only about 1 foot wide and the bushes and shrubs and ferns grew RIGHT on either side of the train often only leaving a few inches of space in the middle from your knees up! This picture is in one of the wider parts of the trail! For the first little while of the hike down to the beach from the trailhead my mom told us all the set up for Twilight (none of us had read them yet and she was almost done with the first book). Diane made her stop after awhile because she wanted to read them. So we got down to the beach and the first thing that I noticed were the sea stacks out in the middle of the water! So for everyone who is like me and has no idea what a sea stack is, it's basically a rock jutting out of the water. Here's a picture of 3rd beach and the sea stacks in the distance.
And here's a sea stack with a tree on the top of it!
Every beach had sea stacks. Some of them were tall skinny rocks with nothing on them and others were covered with a kind of mossy covering and others had grass and trees growing on them! So cool! Another thing that every beach had were cliffs as well as TONS of drift wood logs. Every beach had a mountain/cliff that came around all sides of it and they were all crescent shaped. And at the top (next to the mountain/cliff) of every beach there were hundreds upon hundreds of drift wood tree trunks. All of the branches gone and the bark all rubbed completely soft. One night we were hiking way too late by the moonlight and we actually got stuck up on these drift wood logs because the tide was too high and we were out of beach to hike on! Super scary, because if the tide came up too high we'd be washed away with it or get our leg caught in between them and get all smashed up! Not to mention you weren't ever quite sure how steady the logs were that you were stepping on and having the surface of them be so smooth, you'd always have to be careful about slipping! Anyway!
Well the way the beach hike worked, you walked around the crescent shaped beach (on the wet sand closest to the water because it was the most hard packed and easiest to walk on) and then you'd get to a point where you'd run out of beach and you'd have to know how to walk on water to pass (a skill none of us had yet mastered). So we looked for a "danger" sign (a red circle with a black x on it) somewhere up on the cliff/mountain that marked the trail up and over the headlands and then down again onto the next beach. Well these danger signs really just meant "don't try to cross below at the waters edge because it's not safe with the waves crashing on you against the rocks" (or something not quite as wordy I'm sure) but whenever we saw them we came to realize that it was ALSO implying that we'd be doing some outrageously dangerous thing to get up onto the headland and then an equally as dangerous thing to get back down onto the next beach. This is the first one that we came to.
Now, I'd like to remind you that pictures do not do much of anything justice because this was really quite steep and pretty high. In the bottom picture there you can see my aunt Di at the top of this little ladder and my tiny mom at the bottom! And imagine doing this with a 40 pound backpack on your back with gravity pulling you backwards out away from the ladder! Nice! What was funny is that though it was pretty hard to do all of these things we didn't really feel like we were in danger and it was a huge adrenaline rush and sense of accomplishment when we DID them! Here's another view of a different rope ladder where you can see the beach in the background and get a feel for how straight up/down these ladders were and why they were the only way up!
Then another time we came to this steep rock wall with loose gravel and dirt on it (aka slippery and dangerous) and nothing but a rope to help you keep your balance as you go up! Here is a view from the bottom looking up (notice my aunt at the bottom and my mom and Rachel up towards the top - tiny) if you look close you can see the "danger" sign on the tree on the far top right (the circle one). And then the next picture from the top looking down (those twigs at the bottom are full sized tree trunks, just to give you some perspective.)

Here's another crazy thing we came to while we were hiking. We struggled our way up this super steep rock path only to find that it dropped STRAIGHT off on the other side! They had some ropes so you got to repel down the side (but no repelling equipment except your hands rubbing raw on a super coarse scratchy rope! AND just to toot my own horn! I did this all with mostly one hand because my left hand still had my finger in a brace and I couldn't grip things and it tended to get in the way a lot - yes, I know, I know... thank you, thank you!)

We also came to a lot of stairs on the trail. These ones had the bottom 5 steps completely broken off! And it left us at the bottom trying to figure out how to take one gigantic 4 1/2 foot step up! As you can see there was pretty thick brush on both sides of the stairs. Luckily someone had left a rope tied to the bottom and so we got to PULL ourselves (and our 40 pound packs) up that nice staircase!

As you can see we were all pretty amazed and impressed with one another that we were able to accomplish these terrific feats! We also saw some beautiful things Here is a typical scene. We constantly saw this waves rolling sun low in the sky a sea stack and a mountain/cliff.
This was at our first camp. In fact I was standing directly in front of one of our tents when I took this picture! A big drift log looking out to a (birthday cake - according to Peter) sea stack with trees on top of it. You can see that we camped on the sand not far from the water. At this camp we also had a small river running along side us that fed into the ocean. It was super pretty!
This is one of my favorites. It was at low tide so we could walk out to several of the sea stacks and this one had wheat-like grass growing on it and it just looked so cool with the ocean and more sea stacks in the background!This is another one of my favorites because those footprints belong to the four of us. We'd been talking about the different prints that we each made in the sand as we walked. You could see who was getting tired, who was feeling pigeon toed and who was feeling a little woozy and couldn't keep in a straight-ish line! It turned out to be a really cool picture!
This was taken right after we reached the top of one of those super crazy "I'll throw you a rope and you figure out the rest" kind of trails up to the headlands. I thought it was cool how this single tree fell right into the path of sunlight on the water.


Ok there were also TONS of tide pools and one time we waited until low tide and walked out to this super slippery wet moss covered rocky tide pool area and found some cool stuff. Starfish and Anemones mostly and some crabs and jellyfish (but only dead ones). I love the BRIGHT colors! The purple starfish were SUPER purple and the anemones were NEON green and pink! And all of the moss was SO lush and bright green because it had JUST surfaced from being under water as the tide dropped. So cool!
Ok so on Wednesday I woke up feeling a little hoarse and congested. As the day went on it got a little worse. I took some cold medicine that night and Thursday morning I woke up and my head was floating I was so congested. (These next few lines get a little 7 year old boy nasty so feel free to skip down). My nose was running constantly and with our toilet paper supply dwindling and so very necessary for 4 girls I didn't dare use any of it. I tried using a leaf to blow my nose a few times but it seems to just be SUPER messy because it just held everything I was blowing out onto the lower half of my face GROSS! So I resorted to okey-blowing! I had sunk so low and was so desperate to get rid of the congestion.! YUCK! Anyway! So I was not feeling well. We stopped for lunch and then realized that we were actually at our sleeping destination for the day! We had miscalculated the miles and instead of it being 6 miles it had only been 2 1/2! So as everyone talked about whether or not to set up camp or press on I laid down on the warm sand. There was a nice cool breeze and I was feeling SO sick! So I instantly fell asleep. My mom woke me at some point and told me she was worried I'd get sunburned so I turned over to cover my face. Anyway, I did get quite the burn but it was worth it. That was the absolute most comfortable sleep I'd ever had! The sand totally contoured my body and it was so warm and the breeze felt so good. I still have a nice line across my knee caps and the underside of my arms (my elbow crease area) was burned and just started peeling today at church! But I came home looking tan according to Peter (but of course it could have been stubborn dirt that didn't wash off in the hotel shower).
K so that day we decided to stay at that point for several hours to wait for low tides and check out the tide pools (those were the ones I talked about above) and then make and eat dinner before we left about 5:30 and then we'd push on for another 5 1/2 miles or so to our next stop. We had headlamps and could hike in the dark if we needed to but we did not want to have to go up into the headland and then down again in the dark (that's where all of the crazy ropes and ladders and things were) so we had to hurry past that point and then it was just beach the rest of the way, no big deal! Well we ended up not needing our headlamps because there was the coolest most amazing full moon that completely lit up the whole beach as it shone down AND reflected that same bright light off of the water. We could see EVERYTHING including animal prints in the sand without lights long after sunset! So anyway, we got past the headland and down part before it got dark and thought it was smooth sailing. We figured if we got completely tired we could just stop and set up camp anywhere on the beach! WELL we'd forgotten to check the tide charts and we would be hiking at high tide. High Tide meant less beach to hike on, and certainly not enough beach to camp on! This is the night that we got caught hiking on a HUGE debris of drift logs! We were hiking along no big deal, when all of the sudden an enormous wave came and crashed right at our feet! We ran up onto the logs the farthest from the water and then realized that the waves were staying up that high and we had no choice but to hike on the logs for awhile! Anyway, we pulled out my mom's GPS and tried to figure out where we were and how much farther we had to go and couldn't quite get an exact location but we knew we were close. We'd also run into a couple who was camping a ways back (the ONLY spot with enough room between them and the tide for a tent) and they said that Mosquito Creek (our destination) was really full. There were a couple boy scout groups that came in with at least 5 tents each and tons of other campers there, making it at least 15 tents camping right there on the beach. We heard that there were campsites on the headland just above Mosquito Creek but we didn't want to have to forge any rock walls so late at night being so tired in the dark and besides we were pretty sure they'd be full as well! So we decided to just find the first spot with enough room on the sand for our tent. We were hiking right at high tide so we were pretty confident that the tide was not going to come up any higher and wash us out. So we found a spot where there was quite a bit of sand and there was a huge fallen tree that blocked the waves as well. So we set up camp. Well just as we were getting ready to climb into bed (at 1:30 in the morning) a crazy rouge wave came out of nowhere and crashed right at the base of the fallen tree that we were camped behind! The water didn't go above the tree, but it went AROUND it! We quickly grabbed our packs (which were leaned up against the tree) and moved our tents back several feet. No one was super confident that it wouldn't happen again, so we stayed up a bit longer and made sure the waves were getting farther away and not closer! Anyway, here's a few pictures of the spot we camped in after we'd taken down the tents the next morning. You can see the dark spots on the sand where the waves had been.
We were only camped less than 1/2 a mile from Mosquito creek, which was where we were going to sleep our last night there, so we were ahead of schedule by a full day. However, the very last stretch of our hike was kind of tricky and you HAD to time it right with the tide or it was impossible! There was a very particular time that we had to leave in order to reach the dangerous spot at low tide. There was no way to get up over the headland so you had to cross around at the waters edge. And there usually WASN'T a waters edge as the waves usually crashed right onto the rock cliff! So we had to get up at 5am that morning in order to get to that spot at low tide. Well it was the craziest muddiest part of the trail and we were crossing rivers and splurching (yes that's a made up word to give you a feel of the sound) through mud bogged trails and slippery roots and more broken staircases and ropes thrown at us and it was ridiculously slow and difficult! And then my mom slipped and twisted her ankle and pulled a muscle (or tendon) in her foot and we stopped and taped it up and drugged her up and pressed on. We decided not to rush and that we'd just wait until the afternoon low tide which wasn't as low as the morning low tide, but we figured it still be pretty good. We had no idea that the craziest "danger" sign down to the beach trail was saved for the very last! This thing was so ridiculous! There must have been a stream somewhere nearby because it was dripping muddy water and then making all of the dirt behind the ladder where your boots go just a mess of slippery mud! Part of the trail had slid away down the mountain so they strung a rope across for you to hang onto as you walk across a non-trail on the side of the mountain! And then once you got to the end of that non-trail, there was a steep 4 foot drop onto a slippery mud bogged platform-ish area that was only about 2 feet by 2 feet with some really nice mud covered rocks just for some added excitement and then it dropped off on all sides down to a muddy rope ladder that went straight down! HOW THE HECK!?!?
Here is my super mom who managed all of this on a foot that she could barely walk on! You can see the corner of that blasted danger sign just to the right of her head! We groaned every time we saw that sign! (This one below was actually the second ladder in this last series and it wasn't as muddy or steep as the crazy one above. But STILL! Look at the angle on that picture. Insanity I tell you!)

So we made it down the crazy muddy rope ladder of terror to find that the tide was still really high and there was no where for us to go! Right at the bottom of thr ladder was a maze of drift logs and the waves were crashing down right at the bottom of them. There was a beach, just beyond a big rock cliff deal that jutted out of the mountain, but there was no way around it right now with the tide where it was. So we just hung out and waited (you can see the rope ladder on the right and my mom below it on the left). We made brownies in baking bags in my mom's cooking pot on our tiny little propane stoves (pocket rockets). And ate buscuits and gravy through the same method and then waited. Rachel and I both took naps on logs (also surprisingly comfortable!)
So when the tide lowered enough for us to get around the rock to the beach we went ahead and went on. The scary part was at the end of this crescent shaped beach where the waves were still thrashing straight against the cliff wall, how could the tide lowering really make this safer?! So we went to the end of the beach and waited again. There were the COOLEST rocks on these beaches too! Super colorful and a ton of them looked tie-dyed! So crazy! There were striped rocks and white rocks (I brought some home to use for lessons on the brother of Jared gathering stones to put in his barges) And heart shaped rocks (I brought several of those home) Anyway, we spent our second waiting time collecting rocks to use as game pieces and souveniers and such! (*Twilight insert* I'm not to "Breaking Dawn" yet but aparently they talk about picking through the colored rocks on the beach in that book and this is exactly what they were talking about! The beaches were COVERED with the coolest most colorful rocks I'd ever seen!)
Well we checked our tide charts and realized that like it or not we were at the lowest tide that we were going to get for the day! You could see bolders now peaking up out of the water instead of water going straight into the cliff walls so that was aparently the best we were going to get! So we started off on our rock hopping! Luckily these rocks were very rough and unless they had moss on them (several did) they were not at all slippery even though they were still wet!
We'd be clammoring along over the rocks and waves would just come crashing right by us!
And there was this one spot that was crazy to get around and you had to time it just right between the waves. We figured out that every 7th wave was the biggest one and then the next 6 would be smaller. So we had to count waves and then hurry on not knowing how long we had before we'd be able to get high enough up on the rocks to not get soaking wet.
My mom is amazing that she was able to do this with a hurt foot. You never knew how your feet were going to land. There were no flat surfaces and it got pretty crazy for all of us sometimes. Well, we made it past the rocks of doom and came to a stretch of drift logs and then a short stretch of beach and we were home free! It was so amazing how many emotions we felt as we hiked out of there. Relief that the crazy parts were over and that we'd make it out virtually unscathed, and total exhaustion as well as a twinge of longing for it to not be over and not really have to leave. But it really was over! Our boots were dirty and worn and done!We walked to the parking lot and found our rental car that our shuttle guide "Willie Nelson" had brought down for us and climbed in and drove out! We ate dinner and a disgusting mom and pop diner where there was hair in the food and the salad bar was a bucket of lettuce a cup of croutons and a cup of sunflower seeds and 3 choices of unmarked dressings. We were a day early out of our trip so we didn't have a hotel reserved until the next night. We searched all over and wore out the batteries in my mom's cell phone looking for a hotel with vacancies but no luck. We went to several camp grounds and still no luck! We debated setting up our tents on the lawn at the LDS church in Port Angeles, but decided against it. We drove until SUPER late and finally found a trashy campground directly off of Highway 101 and pulled in. We set up our tents for the last time and went to sleep!
We got up the next morning and went into town "Quilcene" and found an unmarked laundry mat that surprisingly was still in working order and washed a load of clothes so that we could unembarrasingly do some sight seeing in Seattle that day, while we ate a delicious breakfast at the Twana Roadhouse. We brought our clean-ish clothes to Seattle where we checked into our hotel and showered. We got cleaned up and then went out to do some sight seeing and Pike Place Market. Well we found parking and as we started to walk around we were Super Disturbed! Eveyone was scantily clad and hanging out in all sorts of places and everyone looked like they'd just stepped out of Woodstock!! Dreadlocks, tie-dye, and very VERY far away "happy place" looks on their faces! People were asking us for money or joints and talking about where they'd found the absolute best crystal meth on the planet! And even worse that that was that the entire Market closed down early! We wandered around in our knee legnth shorts, and shirts (any shirt was majorly out of place here) and tennis shoes and clean hair and felt SO displaced among the shirtless, free flowing, barefoot, dreadlock hippie crazies that were swarming around us! We found several people that were dressed somewhat decently and asked if they were from around here and could tell us where we might find a place to eat that was open, no one that was normal was from the Seattle area!! So we stopped a security officer (and wondered why in the world the place wasn't swarming with them) and asked him. He laughed at us and told us it was "HEMP FEST" and that it wasn't always like this. He said they'd probably shut Pike Place Market down early because they knew it'd be flooded with crazy high people. That also explained why no normal people down there were from Seattle, they all knew better!! Anyway! It was an adventure! On our way back to the car we passed SEVERAL ambulances picking people up off the street that had fallen over and hurt themselves thanks to their blessed Hemp Festing! NICE! Anyway! We finally gave up on eating in downtown Seattle because we didn't want to be there after dark... for sure. Like so much scarier than being dropped in the middle of the bear infested wilderness with no gear or flashlight or anything. Super scary! So we drove back towards our hotel and by then everything was closed except for fast food drive throughs and Denny's so Denny's it was!
Another quick funny side note was that we saw in the paper that Seattle was suffering from an intense "heat wave" and that they were having extensive trouble with the power because of the air conditioners going at such a constant high rate. The paper stated that temperatures had been 90 degrees for 3 days in a row! *gasp!* and that illnesses were to be expected!! LOL! We got such a kick out of that! But it is true that in Washington you really don't have to run your air conditioner hardly at all because it stays so cool. And the power was an issue, we couldn't have the lights on in our hotel room at the same time as the blow dryer. We had to unplug the mini fridge and all of the lights and then we could blow dry our hair! Well that night there was a thunder storm and lightning strikes took out all of the luggage conveyer belts in the airport! So they had a pile of luggage 5 feet tall and 30 feet long at the southwest checkin desk! Planes were leaving without luggage and people and it's a pretty big airport so they had no idea how they were going to get peoples luggage all the way to their gates without the belts! Crazy though how the weather can have such a huge effect on everything!

So anyway! That was a summery of our trip! I missed my sweet husband and my kids SOOOO much and was so anxious to get home to them, but I wouldn't have traded that experience for anything in the world! The spirit is always so strong in nature and I always find parrallels to life in every step I take and everything I see. Building bridges to get over yucky muddy spots of the trail, like finding ways to get through our trials in life and being grateful to the ones who built the bridges for us to cross and sometimes having to find our own way to improvise and make it through on our own. Nurse Logs were extremely inspiring! Nurse Logs are what they call fallen trees that smaller plants and seeds eventually start to grow on. They give lots of nutrients as they are disintigrating and they give smaller plants that can't fight for a spot on the forest floor a leg up and a place to grow. Full grown spruce trees have grown right on top of a nurse log. We passed a nurse log that was ENORMOUS and it had at least 5 huge trees growing on top of it. Think of the symbolism of needing to grow on the top of a tree that has already grown and built strong roots and then made a place for you to grow as they had fallen. Winding paths and rocky paths. Lush green grass and trees growing out of rocks and unpredictable waves crashing at our feet and having to find a way around them. There was always a lesson being learned or solidified in my mind as we hiked. And I saw things so clearly while I was hiking. (Quite literally acutally - Since my eye surgery I can see 20/15 with no glasses or contacts). And I found myself talking to my Heavenly Father constantly in my mind as we hiked, thanking Him for all of the beautiful things that we saw and thanking Him for keeping us all safe and helping us find strength to get past the crazy parts of the trail. I'm always amazed at how invigorating it feels to be surrounded by nature! I feel happy and peaceful and whole.

Thanks for taking my hike with me friends! Seriously you have to look through my picasa album because there are tons of pictures there that didn't make it to the blog! Here's a link to make it easier: http://picasaweb.google.com/janelleehat/August2008Hike