Katie's Birthday Camping Trip (Rialto Beach)

Rialto Beach - June 6th, 2014
Pacific Coast - Olympic National Park
Mileage: 2 Miles (Round Trip)
Elevation Gain: Negligible
No Dogs Allowed

This post represents a bit of a departure from the traditional hiking and backpacking posts on this blog, in that our trip to Rialto Beach was most definitely car camping at its finest and most gluttonous. That being said, Allison and I both discussed whether or not we would do a post about this trip and decided that although it wasn't a hiking trip, we still wanted to share some of our pictures and document the awesome time we had for our blog readers.  

Our group of friends had done a very similar group trip to Rialto Beach in 2010, and we all enjoyed it so much that we new we wanted to go back sometime in the future. Rialto Beach was also part of the exhaustive Summer 2014 hiking schedule Allison and I put together. So, it was serendipitous when a few months before this trip, Katie and I were discussing what she wanted to do for her birthday celebration for 2014 and she mentioned that she really wanted a birthday camping trip to Rialto Beach.  She also wanted me to build her a swing on beach out of driftwood and 500 lb test paracord... More on that marvel of engineering later. So, we put our heads together, came up with a date that worked for everyone and setup an event thru the APPUM hiking group on Facebook.

We ended up having a final group of 12 people.  On Friday afternoon we loaded the cars and got on the a ferry headed to the peninsula. It might seem, on the surface, that the main focus of this trip was camping, but let me clear something up.  Other than building Katie's swing, this trip was really about gluttony. The consumption of large amounts of food and beverage being the main activity for a good 2.5 days.

Almost immediately after we got finished setting up camp, I grabbed a beer and set about collecting massive amounts of driftwood to construct Katie's birthday swing. After a few more beers, the realization that between the whole group I had access to over 400 ft of paracord stirred dreams of engineering. I awoke the next morning with a grand plan and began construction of a structure that was no longer just a swing, but a complete two story home, which included a swing, a kitchen and a second floor accessible via ladder. After about six hours of working off and on, it was fully functional. Much to my dismay, by the end of the night there were three revelers on the second floor and one swinging underneath.  Luckily my lashing training in Boy Scouts paid off and no one was crushed to death.  Click the any thumbnail to view a larger version.

 

Allison mid way through
her transformation
into a lobster-human

The weather ended up being cloudy the majority of the time which lead to less diligence from many of the group members when it came to sunscreen application.  By the time we realized we were getting burned, it was to late for some of us.  Allison was already turning into a wine poached lobster, in which form she still exists to this day.  When the sun did finally appear, we all put on our swimming stuff and took three very cold runs into the 47° ocean.  It was refreshing, if not almost heart stopping.

In order to camp at Rialto Beach the national park requires you to hike down the beach a little further than a mile from the parking lot.  You can camp anywhere you like after this point. I would guess this rule is to dissuade large groups from bringing tons of crap to the beach and having huge multi-day parties. Let just say they underestimated the will power of our group. By the time it was all said and done we had made almost three trips back and forth to our cars carrying as much as we could carry each time. Thus, we ended up with a miniature city. When it was time to leave we did the responsible Boy Scout thing and thoroughly policed and cleaned our area. Lets just say that by the time we got all the stuff back to the car we were all wishing that we had edited the amount of stuff we decided to bring out to our beach city.

Overall this trip was probably the best birthday party I have ever been to, and we can't wait to get back together with the group and do another Rialto Beach trip sometime in the future.