The central coast of Washington is a prime location for driftwood. The rivers coming down from the Olympic Mountains carry a lot of logs that have been washed out of the forests. In addition, all the logged off areas also generate a lot of drift when the heavy rains wash logs off them. They certainly provide an interesting texture to the shoreline. Since this section (at least) is part of the National Park, the drift remains for the next big storm to move them along the beach.
This is a view of Woodard Bay, an inlet off of Henderson Inlet (an inlet of Puget Sound) northeast of Olympia. If you look closely (clicking on the image to expand it will help here), you can see the bridge where Woodard Bay Road crosses the inlet. This is high tide. When the tide is out, there isn’t anything except mud from bank to bank … except for the little bit of water from Woodard Creek.
Below is a view of the inside of the canoe, showing the paddle and baskets of oysters and blueberries, and a kneeling mat.
Henderson Inlet is just outside Olympia, Washington and is one of the numerous inlets off of Puget Sound. This is looking northeast from the Woodard Bay Natural Resources Conservation Area … on Weyer Point, between Chapman Bay and Woodard Bay. The canoe on the left has a couple of baskets and a paddle on the inside … the baskets have oysters and blueberries in them (or depictions of such).
The image below shows Henderson Inlet from the other side Weyer Point, looking south.
Below is looking north again, showing the old dock that was used for the export of logs from back when there was a rail line (the Chehalis Western) running up to help feed the mills of Puget Sound. Notice how dense the pilings are on the dock … a requirement in order for being able to hold the weight of railcars loaded with logs and the engine.
This is the Marine Science Center at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, WA. The exposure range was extreme enough that it burned out the area in the upper right, but it seemed not to distract from the image too much. The point of land in the middle distance (it’s hard to see the far distance) is Point Hudson.
An ocean beach is a great place to see clouds. This is the Pacific Ocean from Kalaloch. A lot of the pacific beaches in Washington are part of the Olympic National Park. I liked the rain squalls visible below the clouds. You can also see several people at the waterline. This is good razor clam digging during the typical short season (spring) … some of my earliest memories are of razor clam digging.