<< Sol Duc Falls and Beyond

07/27/15 - To the Lighthouse

We walked out to the lighthouse near the end of the Dungeness Spit. There are good tides for taking this hike roughly every two weeks. You can walk out to the lighthouse, a ten mile round trip, at high tide, but that means walking on soft sand and clambering over driftwood. At low tide, there is lots of smooth, relatively firm beach, four and a half miles of it. (You'll see the next good tides for this hike if you scan the column to the left, you can look at our tide tables, or you can download Tidefinder.)

It was a particularly nice walk because of the good sand conditions, the low tide and the clouds. Walking on the spit is a strange experience, like walking out to sea dry shod. The spit is narrow, so one has a sense of being at sea, especially when one looks back at the mainland, miles away. There was lots of driftwood, including a few collections of logs still held together by straps for shipping, even as the wood has already started graying and weathering.

Dungeness Spit is worth a visit, even if you just take the half mile walk from the parking lot to the start of the spit or, perhaps, stroll another half mile to the marker stake. For the full experience though, wait for a low tide and take the long walk out to the lighthouse.

The lighthouse - visitors welcome

Our first glimpse of the lighthouse - Click to zoom in and scan the horizon towards the right.

Driftwood

Miles of wild beach

Gentle waves

A lost bale of timber

Another lost shipment

Keywords: dungeness spit, tides