You haven’t been to the Olympic Peninsula until you have been to a slew of veterinarian appointments. It seems.
After we became assured that Wally would survive another year (or month, or week, or something), we got back out to complete our planned jaunt around the aforementioned peninsula. This involved a visit to Dungeness Recreation Area, a county park in the rain-shadow of the Olympic mountains way up there near Canada and other exotic foreign places.
This place abuts Dungeness Spit, a long sand spit with a lot of, uh, sand, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca on one side, and a protected bay on the other side, and a whole bunch of sand. Did I mention sand? It’s also a National Wildlife Refuge. There’s an historic lighthouse (is there any other kind?) near the end of the spit, but that is an 11-mile round-trip jaunt that we declined to attempt on this particular trip. Because, for instance, we didn’t have enough hot water to bathe afterward.
Back there beyond the sand spit are some islands and whatnot. I think they are the San Juan Islands, part of Washington, the State. There might be a small bit of Vancouver Island closer in, but I’m not sure. It’s sad that I’m not sure. But look, there is a lot of sadness in the world. War. Disease. Idiocy. So really, how important is it that I’m not sure about the islands? Still, I’m sorry.
So let’s get into the specifics of camping at Dungeness. No hookups. Lotsa trees. Solar panels not all that happy, on account of the trees. Narrow parking pad. Whatever.
It’s really nice at Dungeness, but remember: though it’s right on the Strait, it’s in the woods, and there are no hookups, so electricity is in short supply. No problem! We were careful about lights and fans and heat, and it was just for three nights, so we were going to be okay. And we had propane for cooking and hot water and the furnace. But.
The morning after we arrived, the water heater stopped working. WHAT???? I did some troubleshooting and determined that the propane supply was working just fine… but there was no spark to ignite it to make the water heater do its heating thing.
We survived. We heated water on the stove, didn’t take any long showers, and read a lot of online stuff about the general unreliability of RV water heaters.
When your water heater has no spark, you get one of these. It’s an ignitor board that works better than the ones that come with RV water heaters, perhaps because those people (the water heater manufacturers) are profit-focused, not quality-focused. I think. Anyway this one works better. I am not saying that water heater manufacturers are bad companies, or staffed by bad people. But the ignitor boards they use as original equipment do seem to have a bad reputation on the various interwebs. Hmmm. Note: the countertop seen here is not in The Toto—it’s at home. I don’t especially like this countertop—it was chosen by our home’s previous owner—but it’s paid for, which is more than we can say for the ignitor board, which is lost somewhere in this month’s not-yet-due credit card balance.
When you’re not swearing at water heaters, you can walk around this park and see some attractive sights.
At Dungeness you can stroll along blufftop trails and stare at passing ships, sinking suns and the occasional bit of bull kelp. A fellow came by and admired my lens. I didn’t know what to say.
And then you could return to your campsite (or, in this case, our campsite) and hang. Our site didn’t feel especially private, but a lot of them did seem to be.
This campsite had an odd layout, but it was just fine.
At some point there was some cooking outside, and the boys hung out and watched.
Wally and Tyler supervise the dinner cook.
It was a fine visit. I’m sure we’ll be back. Maybe. But we will probably try for a sunnier campsite.
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