Continuing up the coast of Washington State, Nick and I decide to get some more trail miles in at our next stop. We've both always been very interested in Native American Rock art and the chance to visit some examples in this part of the country is just too good to pass up. It will be about a 4.5 mile hike each way though. So, we'll get our exercise in.
The trail starts at the Cape Alava parking area and heads into the temperate rainforest. The trail has a lot of ups and downs, but is primarily along rotting board walks and stairs. It looks as though the Forest Service, or whichever entity is responsible for maintenance here, does a reasonably good job of repairing the board walks, but the moisture here makes it a loosing battle.
After backpacking nearly thirty miles over the previous two days, Nick and I are both in great shape and moving at a rapid pace along the board walks. I stop along the way a couple of times to examine a plant or a log, but there isn't a great deal to see until we finally reach the beach. Getting to the beach requires a steep decent down some very narrow trails, but we eventually pop out on the rocky shoreline with the Pacific Ocean in front of us as far as the eye can see. A number of small rocks and some larger ones dart out from the water like small islands as the waves roll in and crash to the shore
Once we hit the beach, we turn south and make our way over a carpet of dried and drying seaweed, which is actually quite comfortable to walk on. We have to navigate our way around, through, and over several washed up and bleached tree trunks, but we finally reach the area we believe the petroglyphs to be.
After looking around a bit, we find a singular example, but we were expecting many more. This rock art is supposed to be located near a point of white rock cliff called Wedding Rocks. Nick and I spend the better part of half-an-hour climbing around and looking for more examples. Just as our frustration starts to surface, a mother and daughter we had spoken too on the way here call out that they have found more rock art. We carefully make our way over to what they are looing at and see a couple of really nice panels. These panels include fertility symbols, as well some human faces with decorative headdresses. There are actually some pretty great specimen here.
We finally decide to head back to the car. We spend more time there than we had planned to and probably would have been irritated had we not found more examples, but the treasure horde of beautiful rock art quells that irritation and I think we are both glad we made the hike. Our total distance for this one was about 9.1 miles.
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