Happy Anniversary of 44 years of Wedded Bliss

So what does a couple of wanderers do to celebrate a wedding anniversary? It's hard to find something special when we had been doing so many special things on this trip. But we hoped to find a way to celebrate 44 years of wedded bliss! As we left Puget Island, we drove on Highway 4. The pickup climbed all the way to the top of the KM pass. We had pulled this trailer up some passes in Colorado that were more than 10,000-feet tall already on this trip. We knew we were close to the coast when the top of KM pass was only 760 feet. After climbing to that extreme height, we went back downhill to sea level as we turned onto Highway 101. This highway parallels the Pacific Ocean on the western coast of Washington. The speed limit on this highway was 55 miles per hour, and that suited our towing speed just fine.

Our first stop of the day was at Pacific County Court House, as recommended by our Boondockers Welcome host from last night. While the outside was as grand as some state capitols, it was the flowers out front that caught Denisa's eye.

How's that for an anniversary bouquet? Those purple hydrangeas were at the peak of their bloom. The red dahlias and blue sky made for a beautiful combination.

The Pacific County court house was built in 1910. They cleared the forest off the top of the highest hill in town to give it a commanding view of the county below. But they didn't use those trees in the construction, because too many wildfires had destroyed too many of the neighboring counties' court houses. So this one was made entirely of concrete, and is still standing 115 years later.

The court house's two-man security team escorted us through the metal detectors, and we realized this was more security than the last two state capitols we had visited. This county building also included a stained glass dome that rivaled any we had seen.

The carefully molded and painted decorations over the office door frames were also made of concrete.

As we walked back out of the court house and Denisa admired more of the flower gardens, we had a sense of dejavue. We had to go to our blog and typed in "Pacific county court house" in its search engine. Sure enough, we had visited this lovely building in 2017 when we stayed here in the town of South Bend, Washington. This is the oyster capitol of the United States, and we even tried (but didn't like) the oysters here. We guessed that meant we didn't have to try the oysters again this year. Besides, that didn't sound like a very yummy anniversary meal to us.

Our destination was just a little further down Highway 101 in the town of Hoquiam, Washington. We were celebrating our anniversary, so we stayed at a nice RV park with full hook-ups. While that was a nice treat after eight days without any hookups, the real draw to Hoquiam River RV Park was the home-made desserts that they hand out to campers when they arrive. Every day the owner's wife makes a new dessert, and they are becoming legendary. We forgot to take a picture because we quickly ate the sugar cookies with almond/toasted coconut frosting too fast. Then we started to do some laundry and flushed our holding tanks. Sometimes real life takes precedence over romantic anniversary plans.

The park owner was known for being friendly, and she suggested a trip to Westport for an anniversary beach day. So after eating fish tacos at her recommended restaurant in Hoquiam, we headed south around Gray's Bay and then west to the Pacific Ocean. We pulled into a free parking place at the beach and got our first view of the Pacific this year. We watched as a class of beginning surfers met on the beach and started attacking the waves. We knew they were beginners because we sat beside a seasoned surfer, who explained that no real surfer would stay in the white water close to the shore. He had arrived at the beach very early this morning when the water was like glass, and he had already enjoyed three hours of surfing today.

It's nice to be on the coast again! That big ocean was another of God's wonders that we love to wander.

We unloaded the bikes and started riding the paved trail that runs parallel to the coast. We were riding south, with the ocean on our right hand side.

While the sand berm separated us from the ocean most of the time, occasionally we stopped for a view of the water.

Once we got to the south end of the trail, we parked the bikes and took a walk on the Westport State Park beach. Normally it would have cost $10 to park at the state park, but bike riders get free admission. We didn't find any shells, just rocks on the state park beach.

So we were surprised when Mark found one perfect sand dollar in the surf. We needed to do something special with this special find on this special day. We sometimes use shells we find to spell out something on a beach. That's when Mark made a suggestion . . .

We couldn't find any shells, so we used the rocks from the beach. We celebrated 44 years of wedded bliss with white rocks surrounded by a heart made with colored stones.

We had walked a mile or so down the beach, and we were the only ones around. Without any photographers around, we tried to take an anniversary selfie--with minimal success.

After we left Westport State Park beach, we rode our bikes to the local lighthouse. This was the tallest lighthouse in the state of Washington. It closed for tours at 4:00, and it was just a few minutes past 4 when we arrived. Instead of a tour, we had to be content with a picture of the lighthouse against that beautiful blue sky.

Then it was a 2.5-mile bike ride back to the pickup, now with the ocean on our left side. This time it was against the wind so it felt longer.

That strong wind was good for the para-sailers that were zipping through the waves. We stopped to watch them in the surf.

Then we rode our bikes to the north end of the beach to climb to the top of the observation tower. That height allowed us to take a picture of the rock jetty and a big ship making its way out to sea.

We drove the pickup to the Westport marina, in search of a special anniversary meal. We found people buying raw tuna and other fish right at the dock. But we opted for cooked fresh fish and chips for dinner. Because it was our anniversary we even sprung for the expensive halibut. It wasn't greasy, it wasn't fishy--it was just the perfect anniversary dinner! To finish up this romantic anniversary date, we made the thirty mile drive back inland to our campground so we could finish up our laundry. It was another collision of real-life meets romance! Happy Anniversary, my love! Here's to another year of wedded bliss!