Elma, WA & a day trip to the Washington Coast

We decided to travel back south through Seattle on a Sunday to avoid the heavy traffic we would likely encounter during the week.  Our next stop is Elma, Washington, where I found an RV park that honored Passport America with a nightly rate of $16.50 per night for full hookups.  Sweet!

We traveled south on I-5 through Seattle and then turned west onto Hwy 8 at Olympia.

                                                                         

When we arrived at Elma RV Park, the office manager gave us a choice of a couple of sites and we decided on site D-7.  She also gave us some homemade cookies when we checked in.  Double-sweet!

 

On Monday afternoon, after getting reservations made for the next week as we work our way down the Oregon coast, we decided to take a ride as far west as we could go to the beach.  It had been cloudy this morning but the sun had started come out at the RV Park.  But the further west we drove, the cloudier it got.  By the time we reached Ocean City Beach, it was about 15 degrees cooler and cloudy again.

The beach is sandy and wide but it was deserted except for us, a couple walking their dog, a couple of other cars further down the beach.

We left the beach access at Ocean City and headed further north on Hwy 109.  The road was heavily wooded in some places...

 

 

...and then had been logged down to stumps or had new trees growing in other places along the road.

The next beach access we pulled onto was between some high dirt/sand cliffs.  The cliffs appeared to have experienced some slides in places.

Again, the beach area was wide and the surf was rough.

The trees at the top of the cliffs were very "wind-worn."

After leaving this beach access, we headed north again on Hwy 109 through more forests.

We pulled off at the last beach access we came to at Pacific City and could see some small "rock" island off the shore further north.

This is the only boat we saw off the coast all day.

And of course every beach has its sea gulls.

We decided to head back since we could not go much further north along the coast anyways.  As we headed back south on Hwy 109, we could see the mountains in Olympia National Park to our east.

We stopped at Wal-Mart in Aberdeen to pick up a few groceries.  I also needed some sunglasses because I have managed to lose my non-prescription sunglasses somewhere between Alaska, Atlanta, Nashville and Seattle.  That's a long way to go back and re-trace our steps to try to find them.  :) The Wal-Mart in Aberdeen is a smaller store and does not have as much in stock as the bigger Wal-Mart stores. 

I had difficulty finding a pair of sunglasses that I liked.  This was the first pair I tried on...

...and this was the 2nd pair.

Maybe I only need one lens in my sunglasses since it rains half the time here!  :)