How many sand dollars will we find on the Hidden Coast?

After another night of full-hook-ups at Hoquiam River RV Park, we were up early to make a scenic drive up "The Hidden Coast" of Washington. You can only get to this remote stretch of the Pacific Coast from its southern entrance, and the road eventually dead ends into an Indian reservation. So we were expecting fewer crowds on this Saturday drive. We were also hoping to find some sea shells, maybe even sand dollars on the hidden beaches. We ask you to place your bets and predict how many sand dollars we will find. Keep that number in mind and keep reading. It was a 25-mile drive to get to the little town of Ocean Shores, Washington, for our first view of the Pacific Ocean this morning.

While we much prefer finding natural boulders and sea stacks on the beach to explore, at Ocean Shores we had only a man-made rock jetty.

Even though we got up early, we were two hours past low tide by the time we arrived at the beach. With no natural boulders protecting sea life, Mark had read that this massive rock jetty was a good place to explore at low tide.

Sure enough, by scrambling around those big boulders and getting to the water's edge, we found plenty of sea stars exposed by the low waters of low tide.

This duo of sea stars seemed to be dancing to the music of the ocean waves as they clung to the side of the jetty rocks.

This purple sea star was hanging on right above a long line of sea anemones. The anemones had closed their green feathery fingers until the water from the tide returned.

These exposed rocks were also home to small shells and barnacles that had glued themselves to every available hard surface.

So even though Ocean Shores wasn't the most beautiful beach, it was still an interesting place to explore during low tide.

But how many sand dollars would we find on this Hidden Coast? As we left the jetty and walked on the sand, we began to see the Saturday beach crowd arriving. But we found no shells, no rocks, and especially no sand dollars on this beach.

Before we left our campground this morning, we stopped by the office. In the last blog we mentioned that one of the reasons we stayed at the Hoquiam RV Park was the fact that the owner bakes fresh bakery goods every day to give to the campers. Even though we had just eaten breakfast, we stopped by to get the dessert of the day--lemon bars. After exploring our first beach, it seemed a good time for a fresh home-made lemon bar snack.

We decided to drive further north on the Hidden Coast road to the entry of the first Washington State Park in this area. Normally we would have to pay $10 to buy a one-day Discover Pass to park at the state park. But we had read a sign yesterday that informed us that this Saturday, August 9, was one of the free days where no pass was needed. In honor of Smokey Bear's Birthday, we could park for free this day. So we were a little surprised to see a young ranger patrolling the parking lot at Ocean City State Park, writing parking tickets for vehicles without the Discover Pass. Before he approached our pickup, we asked him about free admission for Smokey Bear's birthday. He thought we were joking, until we showed him the sign. No one had told him about this free day!

From that parking lot (where the ranger had to tear up some tickets he had just written), we had to walk about a half-mile through the forest and across the sand dunes to get to the ocean. Or there was a different entry where vehicles could drive that half-mile to park right on the beach. The Saturday crowd had picked up by now, and there was a line as far as we could see of high clearance vehicles parked on the beach.

We had read about vehicles getting stuck on the beach, so we preferred a walk on the beach instead of a drive. Besides, we could get closer to the water when we walked.

Again, we found almost no rocks or shells on this shallow beach even at low tide.

But wait, we're supposed to be keeping track of the number of sand dollars we find on the Hidden Coast. So Denisa started picking up the few she found in the surf. These look good, right?

Wrong! When she turned them over, each one was broken on the top. We were only counting the unbroken sand dollars, so we obviously couldn't count these. Our sand dollar count was still at zero for the Hidden Coast.

But it was a lovely day, with blue skies and calm winds. Ocean City State Park was still a nice place to spend some time. But we had to share the beach with that endless line of cars . . .

and bikes . . . and even horses. We found that horse-back riding on the beach was very popular here.

The Hidden Coast road ends in an Indian Reservation, and the Quinault tribe had a big casino on this road. We especially liked that it was a non-smoking casino that gave free play to new members. So we promptly signed up and promptly lost our $10 in free play. But they also gave each of us $5 towards a food purchase in their casino cafe. So we were glad to use our $10 off to purchase a Philly steak sandwich and fries for lunch. Still no sand dollars, but that sandwich was a good find!

Our last stop on the Hidden Coast was an isolated Griffiths-Priday State Park. Fewer people will drive this far along this coastal road, so we didn't see anyone checking for the daily Discover Pass. But thanks to Smokey Bear's birthday we didn't have to pay that $10 entrance fee. After parking, we had a one-mile walk through the coastal forest and across the sand dunes to get to the ocean. But on the way we found something new to us.

Another hiker introduced us to coastal huckleberries. While we have eaten huckleberries all over the mountains of the west, we had no idea they grew near the ocean.

While they are tiny, and not as tasty as their mountain cousins, we were glad to have a coastal huckleberry snack on our walk to the beach.

We also found a black-tailed deer on our walk to the beach. While we were used to white-tailed deer in the midwest, we were getting used to seeing their black-tailed cousins here in the Pacific Northwest.

When we finally made it to Copalis beach, we discovered why few people make this drive and long hike. The wide beach was very plain, with lots of holes in the sand.

Besides that, we had completely lost the blue skies we enjoyed just a couple hours and a few miles down the coast. We read that Griffiths-Priday State Park was usually windy and cloudy. That was certainly true today.

It was pretty miserable on this remote beach. We were getting sand-blasted, as were the local wildlife. There was so much sand in the air that we had a hard time focusing on this eagle perched near the beach.

There wasn't any reason to stay on this lonely uncomfortably windy beach . . . until we found our first perfect sand dollar in that dark sand. It was polished smooth and white with the signature five-petal flower on the top. And that top was not broken.

We were about a half-mile from the entrance of the beach when we spotted that first sand dollar, and then very soon we spotted another. But this was like no sand dollar we had ever found. It was fresh from the sea, with its fern-like covering still in place.

We turned it over, and it looked almost hairy when compared to the smooth white ones we usually find.

We were intrigued by Copalis Beach, even though the weather was getting worse. The wind was so strong that a huge flock of gulls had hunkered down on the sand, and didn't even budge when we walked by.

We found more of these fresh sand dollars, some of them with a tinge of purple to their hairy coverings. How many sand dollars will we find?

We seldom take home the sea shells we find. Instead, we use them to spell out something on the beach. Today we had enough to make our first-ever sand dollar dollar sign.

We used the polished white ones for the "s" and the purple new ones for the line going through it. It take 19 sand dollars to make a dollar sign. That's quite a few. But how many sand dollars will we find on the Hidden Coast?

As we walked further up that lonely beach, we realized that we were going where few people would ever walk. Few people come here on a nice day, and obviously no one else would walk this far on a cold and windy day like today. But Denisa was still bending down, picking up sand dollars while the grounded gulls watched. She obviously had more than she could carry, so she finally decided to just count them. But she would count only the perfect sand dollars without broken notches or cracked tops.

Besides sand dollars, we saw that the rough water had left a sea star on the beach.

We also found lots of crabs left stranded on the beach.

But how many sand dollars would we find on this singular beach on the hidden coast? As she counted, she hoped for 25, then 44 like our anniversary year. Then wouldn't it be fun to find 100? Wow! Could it be 200? We walked close to the water, then we walked back in the dry sand further from the ocean. In the 3/4-mile walk we counted 341 perfect sand dollars--and hundreds more that were broken. When you add the 19 in the sand dollar dollar sign, we found 360! We're guessing that no one had that number in mind when we asked that question at the beginning of this blog.

As we walked away from the ocean, we followed the river for a mile. As you can see, Denisa is still carrying a handful of sand dollars. When you see so many, you can't leave all of them behind!

We were tired from struggling against the wind, and we found we had sand in our hair, in our ears, in our noses . . . but it was one of the most fun beach days ever. As we drove south down the Hidden Coast road, we got back to the blue skies. It was crazy that Copalis Beach was so different than anything around it! After we took long showers at our full-hook-up sight, we were enjoying more of the good weather. We walked along the river that runs beside our campground, and through the private section of rain forest behind us.

We watched the sun go down over our river on our last evening. We have certainly enjoyed the Hidden Coast--and the 360 sand dollars we found this day!