Seriously Long Walk On the Beach

This past Saturday my friend Liz and I went to Dungeness Spit (click for map).  It is apparently one of the best examples of a (nautical) spit in the world.

Moral of the story, it is a REALLY REALLY REALLY long walk.  Like 5.5 miles each way through sand long walk.  I really missed the memo on this one and wore jeans and converse and didn't bring any water.  Oops!  Even though I read the wikipedia page in my head I thought it was like a mile tops.

After spilling coffee all over my car and turning a cupholder in a coffee lake, we got in line for the ferry at Edmonds around 10AM.  We were on the ferry by 11, and off on the other side of the sound by 11:30.  I was very impressed with the size of the ferry (202 vehicles!!) and the efficiency of the crew at loading and unloading the boat.  Then it was an additional hour and change to the spit.  This included my favorite intersection ever, where Woodcock Road meets Kitchen Dick Lane.  I am not kidding.

This is the beginning of the spit.  There is a lighthouse at the end, but its so far away you can't see it.  When you can see it on the walk you are about halfway there.

This is the sweet sign out by the lighthouse.  Apparently I neglected to take a picture of the lighthouse, so you'll have to internet search it.  It was very pretty, and apparently you can volunteer for a week to be lighthouse keeper and maintain the place.  Definitely worth it, the views were just insanely gorgeous.

They also had one of the old Fresnel lenses from the lighthouse inside.  It was old (made around 1906 I think it said), and very brass and expensive.  You could see the toolmarks in the metal, amazing to think the old lathe that turned out some of the fittings...

After the 11 mile hike (did I mention it's hard to walk on sand?!) we headed back to Sequim (pronounced squim) for fish and chips and then caught the ferry back to our side of the sound.  Dumping our shoes out was fun, I think there was more sand and stones in there than there was foot.