New Dungeness lighthouse WA (#1437)

The last planned site for my 'coastal' trip was to visit the New Dungeness lighthouse area, but that turned out to be my second odd social setting of the day (the first was back at Hoh Rain Forest). Heading out to what I thought was going to be the best spot for viewing the lighthouse, I was on a local road that seemed to just wander into the sound – if you look closely at the satellite view you can see that there was once a very long pier extending from what is now the road (the pilings apparently aren’t visible at high tide).

As I approached the edge of the sound, sitting in the middle of the road on folding chairs with a card table between them, were four people (around my age), drinking wine and apparently enjoying the sunset. The way that they were relaxing, I felt as if I had somehow driven into someone’s back yard and was concerned about invading a private space. However, since the road was clearly public, I walked up and said “excuse me, I’m just here to take some pictures.”

What followed was actually a wonderful experience. It was two sisters, one of their male friends, and his new wife, having a small party celebrating the new marriage, but doing it there because local people didn’t approve of the marriage. To accentuate the rebelliousness of the marriage, they had decided to have just this small wedding party at the beach. They invited me to join them in wine and cake – I declined, but we chatted for quite some time about the area and, of course, politics. With the sunset, spectacular view, and warm chatting with complete strangers, it was a quite nice marking of the shift from 10 days of adventure to the need to head back south on busier highways.

……

The cruise ship in the photo is, per the wedding party, an Alaskan cruise.