so, camping.

I took off on Friday afternoon, and managed to hit rush hour in four major metropolitan areas before breaking free at Olympia and driving up the eastern side of the Olympic Peninsula, to just north of a tiny town called Liliwaup. Got there about 6:30, and we went and had dinner at a little diner a few miles up the road. My folks were staying at the same campground as some of friends of the family; my dad met France when they worked together, and Marilyn is his wife. I hadn't seen either of them in over a decade. France is a cool old coot, ex-Navy, really smart, and a raving liberal. He pays the guy who owns the commercial shellfish beach across 101 from the campground a bit of money for the rights to dig clams, harvest oysters, and I think do some crabbing there. We had some good minus tides this weekend, so the first thing we did after breakfast on Saturday morning was go out and dig clams.

Dad and France dug clams, Mom wandered around and beachcombed, and I took pictures. This was a really impressive beach; a minus tide exposed a swath of beach that must have been close to half a mile deep. There was a ban on commercial shellfish harvesting this weekend, but sonce we were private we were okay. (And yes, we cooked our clams really well; the vibrio bacteria that had contaminated the oysters a bit south of us is killed with adequate cooking.)

We came back and drive up to Hoodsport and the Staircase Rapids Trail, through the rainforest and to a bridge that was damaged by heavy snowfall and pretty much taken out afterwards. We did only half of the loop, but it was a pretty walk nonetheless. We came back afterwards and washed up and steamed a bunch of the clams we'd harvested that morning. Between five of us, we ate about eighty clams, and then there were some deep-fried oysters, and each of us had a whole crab for dinner.

Really, really good seafood. Clams are never better than when they've been dug on a nearby beach that morning.

I enjoyed seeing my folks and their cat, and about noon today I packed it in and came home. There are more pictures in the set on my Flickr account.