Cape Disappointment

This is North Head Lighthouse, located within Cape Disappointment State Park in extreme southwest Washington, USA. I know it looks like a summer scene, but I took this shot on February 23rd. Yes, our early spring continues and we’ve dashed off to the beach (a different beach) once again.

We were out for three nights, which were a bit breezy and cool — but the days were stupendous, with highs in the high 50s (F), light winds and lots of sunshine.

Now, about this lighthouse. It’s old. Built in the late 1800s, and staffed by strong, sturdy types, I hope — they had to carry vats of oil up the stairs to the top because, well, I think a circuit breaker must have tripped and they couldn’t find it. Or something like that.

The whole family traipsed out to this light on a 1/3 mile-long trail. I had to carry Wally a lot; by this point in the trip his back legs were pretty tired. (So was my back — probably from too much carrying Wally around).

This lighthouse needs paint, I think, but maybe they’re going for a vintage look. That’s working.

We took off from Gig Harbor on a Saturday — the first day that offered reasonable campsite availability at the end of something the local schools call Midwinter Break. We didn’t have Midwinter Break back in paleolithic times when I was in school. Also, the teachers had wooden paddles with holes drilled in them to make punishment “more effective.” Maybe if the teachers had gotten more Breaks they would have been kinder.

We stopped to eat lunch at this pullout overlooking Willapa Bay. There were some issues with this road — narrow, winding, and a dearth of guard rails — that made Sooz glad she had been doing her get-over-fear-of-ledges homework. She proclaimed that this part of the trip amounted to additional homework.

Willapa Bay lunch stop

The lunch involved tuna sandwiches and a lot of yowling from the the back seat.

Cape Disappointment State Park, Campsite 34

Less impressive than the tuna sandwiches: our campsite. No, it was fine. Just not great, and probably not as pleasant-looking as most of the other sites we saw in the campground. Hard to pick ’em out using the online photos and Google Earth; and now I know to think about when the Google Earth photos are taken. This site will be very different after the trees leaf out. But still, it was fine.

There are some 220+ campsites at this very large park. Sites 1-160 are along Benson Beach, on the Pacific Ocean side of the park; other, primarily tent-oriented sites are spread along the shore of a small freshwater lake. 1-60 have full hookups, 61-120 are a mix of partially-serviced and tent sites, with some yurts sprinkled in there for the tentless and RVless. A few are very close to the beach, and become available for reservation “sometime in March, or when we feel like it” according to the state parks website. Hey, it’s all good. The boys loved walking to and from the beach; more opportunities to smell stuff and mark territory and meet other doggies and get admired by humanoids.

The beach was about a two-minute walk from our campsite; with the boys it was 10. It was well worth the stroll.

We all liked it here.