By Scott D. Johnston

Damon Point at the southern tip of the Ocean Shores peninsula is among the “Eight Amazing Places on the Washington Coast,” said outdoors writer Greg Johnston when he spoke at the latest installment of the “Glimpses” lecture series recently, sponsored by the Coastal Interpretive Center of Ocean Shores.

Now in its fourth year, the series brings regional experts to speak on a variety of subjects related to the natural world, resources and history. The lectures take place each month, October through March, in the banquet room of the Home Port restaurant 857 Pt. Brown Ave. in Ocean Shores.

A guide to the coast

Johnston is the author of “Washington’s Pacific Coast; A Guide to Hiking, Camping, Fishing and other Adventures.” A native of Kirkland, he has worked as a reporter for The Daily World and Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspapers, the Associated Press, and AOL’s Patch Media Corp. He now works as a parks specialist for King County Parks &Recreation.

To a group of more than 30, Johnston described both his topic and his purpose:

“The Washington Coast is a priceless region – an absolute treasure,” he said. He hopes that “as people get to know it, they will come to value it and protect it.” As he described each of the “Eight Amazing Places,” he included a little history and geology, particularly those elements that are observable at each site.

His talk started at “the very northwestern corner of the 48 contiguous states,” at Cape Flattery. An easy hike of less than a mile brings you to the very tip, where, he said, “on your left is the Pacific Ocean, on your right, the Strait of Juan de Fuca.” The many sea stacks and caves, including one of two “hole in the wall” formations on the coast, are bathed in aquamarine colored waters not found elsewhere in the state.

Next stop on Johnston’s tour was Slip Point on the eastern tip of Clallam Bay, about 20 miles east of Cape Flattery. Part of a Clallam County park, the attraction is the abundance of tide pools, inhabited by purple sea urchins. “There are many tide pools and each one is like an intricate world of purple brilliance,” to be found after an easy 3/4-mile hike.

The Ozette Loop, a 10-mile trek which starts at the Ozette Ranger Station at the north end of Lake Ozette, three miles inland from Cape Alava on the Pacific coast, is one of the region’s most popular hikes. So much so that, Johnston said, reservations are required in the summer months.

The area is full of things of interest: Wedding Rocks to the south offers petroglyphs from the Ozette people; Cape Avala, the western-most point of Washington state, sits above the area that was once home to one of the busiest Native American villages on the Northwest coast. Along the beach and just offshore lies a maze of sea stacks, reefs, islets and islands, including some that are accessible at low tide, such as “Cannonball Island,” with its naturally sea-sculpted stone balls.

Johnston’s next amazing place was Rialto Beach, across the Quillayute River from La Push. He includes the coast’s second “hole in the wall,” which one can walk through when the tide is below five feet. In his book, Johnston wrote, “If you can do only one Olympic National Park beach hike, this is it.” Why? In less than 2.5 miles can be found “Miocene islands and sea stacks that invite ebb-tide exploration, tide pools and surge channels rampant with marine life, broad agate beaches swept by growling surf, gargoyle piles of old-growth drift logs, and a stegosaurus-like sandstone hogback with a passageway clear through it.”

Another of his favorite hikes heads south from La Push and offers “everything that’s exhilarating about the seashore. It’s very rugged at the beginning and end but in the middle you have miles and miles of crescent, sandy, rocky, gravelly beaches that are really easy walking,” he said.

“The thing that’s really spectacular to me is it’s the most intense concentration of sea stacks we have, probably anywhere on the entire West Coast,” Johnston explained. In areas known as the “Giant’s Graveyard” and the “Quillayute Needles,” there are places where “you look out at the ocean and as far as the eye can see there are endless sea stacks, jagged spires, little rocky islands in all shapes and forms … like this kaleidoscope of rocks.”

Kalaloch

The Kalaloch area, which stretches 14 miles from the Queets River to the Hoh River, offers easy beach access from seven spots in an 11-mile stretch of US 101. This includes well-known and much photographed Ruby Beach. Another highlight is the Nolan Creek western red cedar. At 178 feet tall it is thought to be the third biggest in the world and approximately 2,000 years old. Also, Johnston considers the Kalaloch campground to be the best on the coast, with its location on a bluff “right above the ocean.”

At the end of the Ocean Shores peninsula, Damon Point may be the most easily accessed of Johnston’s “Amazing Places” on the coast.

“The agate hunting is phenomenal,” he said. Another draw is the big variety of wildlife, including the shorebirds migration each spring, another captivating occurrence.

Cape Disappointment, at the mouth of the Columbia River, is home to “the best state park on the coast, hands down,” Johnston said of his final “Amazing Place.” The area includes two of the oldest lighthouses on the Washington coast, some old-growth spruce forest and a lot of serious American history.

It was here that Lewis and Clark came to the climax of their historic exploration. “You can stand where they were when they first saw the Pacific Ocean,” Johnston noted. The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center at the park memorializes that turning point in history.

The “Glimpses” lecture series is a fundraising event for the Coastal Interpretive Center. Each lecture is $8; a “season ticket” for all six was $40. The lectures are sponsored for the first time this year by the Oyehut Bay seaside village development.

More lectures coming

The next lecture is at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19. Speaking on “Another Kind of Beach Cleanup” will be Lydia Wagner, Environmental Specialist from the Washington Department of Ecology. She will talk about her current project, developing a water cleanup plan for the North Pacific Coast beaches to eliminate or reduce human-caused sources of fecal coliform bacteria.

The Coastal Interpretive Center’s website explains, “High levels of bacteria can shut down, permanently or conditionally, both commercial and recreational shellfish beds. For example, razor clam digging is a big tourism draw to the North Pacific Coast Beaches.” As the areas around the Twin Harbors beaches have experienced this year and last, “a closure significantly impacts local businesses and reduces revenue.”

Remaining lectures in the current series are Feb. 16 with Tom Rowley — “A Photographic Visit with Grays Harbor’s Shorebirds,” and March 16 with Joe Buchanan, WDFW Natural Resource Scientist — “Abundance, Distribution, and Migration of the Red Knot on the Pacific Coast of the Americas.”

More information on the Coastal Interpretive Center and the Glimpses lecture series may be found at www.interpretivecenter.org.