Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Yurt Camping on the Pacific Coast

Hello to everybody! After a year long sabbatical for lots of reasons, am back with the photo blogs.

Last weekend which is mid-june, made a trip through the Pacific Coast along US-101 and experienced Yurt camping for the first time. Our yurt was in Grayland Beach state park.
In the morning, we headed straight for Fort Stevens State park in Oregon . We stopped at Raymond in between for brunch.
It is about 200 miles from Redmond. Following was our route to Fort Stevens.
Redmond to Fort Stevens
We stopped at the viewpoint before entering Astoria Bridge and enjoyed the view. Bridge really looked majestic.
 
Astoria Bridge

Fort Stevens state park still maintains the ruins of a ship, Peter Iredalw, which unfortunately was pushed to the coast by strong gusts of wind. The whole place is beautiful. There are 4 or 5 lots which are sequenced as Lot A - E. Each lot offers a different view of the Columbia river and the Pacific. Viewpoints are strategically placed.



View of the Pacific from one of the viewpoints.

After soaking all the ocean beauty we headed for Grayland Beach State park to settle in our Yurt. It is a nice tarp tent with a nice bunk bed, futon, electric charging points, electric light, even a heater! That was something in a campground. It was a very luxurious camping experience when compared with tent camping.
Our campsite - Yurt behind our picnic table




 Evening, we fired our charcoal grill and had some snacks and then headed for the beach for a beautiful sunset. This is the first time where we drove our car on the beach close to the water. Our 4-wheel drive got tested nicely and had a new-found respect for our car!! :)

Ummm......the taste of food mixed with charcoal flavor is something that is beyond description.
Sausages

Yummy paneer tikka
Our car with sunset beyond the horizon! The beach is so vast with no vertical intrusion in the view that one can truly feel the curvature of the Earth being spherical. All you can hear is the waves, it is so peaceful.
Sun set at the beach







There are well-maintained beach trails from the campsites to the beach. Once you are approaching the beach from the trail, you get a breathtaking view of the vast beach and the pacific.






After spending an hour or so at the beach we prepared our lunch and packed our stuff to return home.

In just two and a half hours from Redmond, this is a very beautiful place for camping and even for day picnic.

I shall try and add more photo blogs of our visits to places with novel experiences. It feels great to be back with the vast world of the internet web!