Ozette-Cape Alava Triangle 8-17/18-2013

This hike was in the Olympic National Park, and is a loop (triangle) that starts at Lake Ozette, and goes to Sand Point along 3 miles of trail which is mostly boardwalk through the forest, north along 3 miles of shoreline to Cape Alava, and back to Lake Ozette along more beautiful boardwalk trail for 3 miles.  Or you can do it the opposite way.  I had only done the hike in to the beach and straight back out as a day hike, but Dave and I packed up the big packs and tent and went on an overnight trip.  It was fantastic!!
We stopped in the little fishing town of Sekiu on our way in for a quick lunch.

 

Dogs aren't allowed on National Park Trails, so Cedar got to spend the weekend with Grama Ruby.  We got our backcountry permits, our entry fee and started off on our adventure!

 

Here is some of the boardwalk on the trail.  They are putting new synthetic boards into part of it, but I think some of the boards are the ones I stepped on when I was little.  Nice old mossy boards. 

There are so many kinds of moss in the Pacific Northwest.  These were like little pink moss-flowers on a really thick pelt of moss.  They looked Dr Seussian.

It didn't seem to take long and we arrived at our camp area, Sand Point.  We found a great campsite just above the high tideline, and this was the view from it!  I wish I could share the sounds too... waves, seals, eagles... it was amazing!

It was low tide when we got there, so once we set up camp we wandered around the tidepools.  Walking through all the rocks you could hear the shore crabs scurrying under the rocks.  It was a cool but eerie sound.

purple shore crab

After poking around in the tidepools, we climbed up on top of the little rocky hill that is on Sand Point and looked out at ocean, sea stacks, rocks, and shoreline.  We were super stoked to see whales!  I don't know what kind they were. I thought maybe humpback, but the ranger we visited with later thought maybe sperm whales.  There were two of them and were pretty close to shore.

There were seals hanging out all over the place.  They were so cute.  They barked and splashed and sunned themselves on top of the rocks.

This photo is full of seals, but if you look to the upper right you'll see an eagle also! I didn't even see it when I took the picture.

This friendly little cottontail wandered into our campsite and munched on the meadow.  Dave went and sat down about 4 feet away from him and he didn't seem to mind at all.

This handy table came with our campsite.  I think the table top must have been some sort of flotsam or jetsam, but neither of us could figure out what it was.  It was too heavy for us to flip it over after it rained, and it had electrical wires like embedded in parts of it.

After dinner we heated up some more water and poured it into our bag of dehydrated apple crisp, and took that and our bowls and spoons back up on top of the hill to watch the sunset.  It was beautiful!

The rain pretty much held off in the day, but sprinkled on our tent at night, which was perfect.  I love the sound of rain on the tent, but prefer not to get drenched while walking around or trying to cook on a camp stove.  After some hot chocolate and cookies for breakfast, we packed everything back up and said goodbye to our gorgeous campsite, and headed north along the beach.  Curious seals watched us as we walked by.

 

One of the attractions along this hike is referred to as the "wedding rocks" which are petroglyphs about half way between Sand Point and Cape Alava.  Dave thinks they fell from the rock face above, and if we had any extra energy we would have gone up to look.  From the way they lay at different angles and facing different directions, etc I think he is right.

There were a couple places along the shore where you have to leave the beach and go overland if there is a high tide.  I was worried that they might be long stretches where you could get into trouble if the tide came in faster than you were expecting, but they were pretty small areas and easy to identify. We got around the first one, but had to go up and over for the second one.
Another thing of interest along the beach was this whale carcass. Someone had burned it and the ribs were missing.  I also didn't see a lower jaw.  I would have looked at it a bit more, but the wind shifted and almost made us both sick. 

When we finally reached Cape Alava there was a woman trying to get her little boy to come look at a deer.  He wasn't interested, as he was very involved with a rock and a tidepool.  She said "fine," and then asked us "do YOU want to see a deer?"  We were more enthusiastic, so she pointed to where it was and we took a break there.  She was completely unconcerned with people around, ignoring children that ran right by her to the privy and she walked right up to us on her way to the beach.

This is a cool island off Cape Alava.  I would have liked to check it out, but I think the tide would have to be super low and imagine it would be pretty easy to get stuck there!