America Day

We had our own parade!

 

 

 

Saturday morning we all got up at 5:30 am and set out for the Olympic Peninsula. 12 hours later we made it to the trailhead. One could say we made a lot of pit stops- breakfast,fireworks, gas, lunch, Walmart, permits. But we did eventually make it! There were 6 of us all outfitted with American flags that hit the coast trail and hiked in 7 miles. We naively assumed a flat beach hike was in store for us, instead it was over 1,500 ft elevation gain through a forest between the beach parts. It was so steep there were ropes to help you get up the muddy steep faces. We also had to watch the tide schedule which we'd never done before. I really enjoyed the whole thing, even if I was super tired.

 

We had a huge, HUGE beach fire that night and passed around some whiskey. The next morning we all woke up to blue skies and fluffy white waves.

Since we decided to do an out and back, versus a thru hike, we had all day on the beach. Naturally we made up a game using the only resources around us- sticks and rocks. I think it was called Jerkin the Gherkin. It started out more like bowling with rocks thrown at sticks stuck in the sand and evolved into a triangle game with partners. The scones (rocks) are thrown at either teams thrickets (sticks) - Prince Albert is the center thricket and the other two are something like thrumpet and scrumpet. Why we went English on 4th of July I have no idea. Then in the middle of the triangle is the Gherkin. If all your thrickets are knocked down you can throw one scone at the Gherkin, if you knock it down you may put two of your thrickets back up. This game was amazing! All the people walking by us seemed to think we were nuts though. Also my right arm really hurt the next day from throwing rocks for hours.

That evening we hiked the unweilding forested portion again to a  beach where we had to camp out at because the tide was too high to carry on. Next morning we all hiked out and stopped in Port Angeles for a greasy breakfast where one of the guys ordered pancakes for the table (genius!) It was so much food but seeing that we'd been eating dehydrated dinners we all over ate big time, worth it! We spent 4th of July the way I believe it was meant to be spent and met some really great people too!