 |
| J, Matt and I |
During the night, it was cool to be able to tell what time it was by how loud the waves were due to the changing tides. In the morning, I awoke to the call of J informing me that a bald eagle swooped by with a fish in his talon. I didn’t fully comprehend this at the time, but I popped my head out of the darkness of my sleeping bag only to be blinded by the early morning light. Needless to say that I missed the show. We ended up sleeping in a little, but J got up a little earlier than I did in order to check out the tidal pools during low tide. I laid in my sleeping bag for a while struggling with the notion of putting on wet socks and wet shoes. I could still see my breath, but knew I had to get out there to check out the tidal pools. By the time I rallied and got to the tide pools on the cape, I was honestly more happy to get into the sun than look at the sea anemone. J was way out on the point so I stuck to rock hopping closer to the beach. I watch three bald eagles, one full grown, white headed adult and two juveniles, cruise in and out of the forest. They seemed as happy to see the sun as I did. Eventually I headed back to camp and began snapping some pictures and getting my breakfast going. Note to self: I need two packets of oatmeal a morning, not one. J came back sometime later and we both ate breakfast and sipped hot tea before lazily packing up. We decided to forgo the plan of heading down to Strawberry Point because it was already noon and we needed to get back across Mosquito Creek and meet up with the other guys.
Once we were fully packed up, we headed south back down the beach. In the distance, we could make out a day hiker approaching us from the south. While we had seen a few other people in camp the night before, we didn’t expect to see anyone on the way back this early in the day. We joked that Matt might have been ambitious enough to head this way, but we fully expected to see him somewhere around Goodman Creek, where the ford was very difficult. Low and behold, the distant hiker materialized into our long lost hiker, Matt. He told us that he wanted to go to Strawberry Point and that Joel had decided to head back early so we didn’t need to meet up with him. We decided to join him and headed out to the point, where we ate lunch and scanned the sea for wildlife. We ended up seeing sea otters and harbor seals along with a multitude of birds. J could tell you more about this, but I saw some ducks, little birds, skinny birds, bigger birds, sea gulls and bald eagles. J also taught me about lippets, chitons, blue mussels and sea stars, however, im sure that im missing something.
 |
| Best latrine I've ever seen |
We spent the afternoon around Toleak Point and Strawberry point. We also found an old A-Frame shelter from the early 70s along with an open door outhouse overlooking the entire bay. One of my favorite latrines of all time I must say. From there we headed back to the Mosquito Creek campsite. We crossed the Falls Creek, Goodman Falls (where the water had subsided quite a bit, making a ford a little more manageable, headed up and down a few ladders and eventually crossed Mosquito Creek at low tide in the waning daylight hours.
 |
| J on the left and me on the right |
J and I set up our shelters once again, while Matt prepared a fire. That evening, we finished off most of our food, polished off our liquor, listened to Matt play the harmonica and watched the fire dwindled into ashes. We had another tidal start in the morning in order to get around Diamond Rock, so we opted to take the overland trail instead of the southern beach route in case we got lost or missed the tide. J had to be back in Corvallis by 7 so we were on a tight schedule.
Monday morning, we packed the camp up in the dark and were on our way 7am. We carried a decent pace, but took our time to enjoy the last few hours of our adventure. We rock hopped our way across Diamond Rock at 10am and decided to eat lunch by the Hoh River, where a sea was fishing for salmon. I hiked on ahead to prepared the car and present the victory beers because every good adventure must be concluded with a celebration of hops. (Mirror Pond and Red Chair NWPA by Deschutes Brewery!) We ate the last of our food and jumped in the car to head back to Portland, where J and Matt would which to Matt’s Suburu to finish the journey. In the end, it was an amazing adventure. It had its hard times, but I was always rewarded for the work. I want to thank my uncle J for inviting me on this trip and I hope that there are many more in the future. But with the newest addition to the Feldmann family coming soon, J will definitely have his hands full. To Matt, I hope to be a member of Team Mosquito on the next trip. Thanks for the laughs. And here’s to Joel, the man, the myth and the legend.
UNT
Bryan
No comments:
Post a Comment