Third Biannual Family Vacation: 2024

[Adapted from email travelogue, sent Tuesday, August 20 at 6:44 pm.] Sunday, August 18 And on to the main event! The Third Biannual Family Vacation! We did Leavenworth in 2020 and 2022, but pivoted to the very small town of Tokeland, WA on the southwestern coast of Washington State for 2024. But! On the way there, several of us stopped first in Westport, a small town (pop. 2,213) at the tip of a peninsula at the southwest of Grays Harbor, an estuarine bay about 45 miles north of the mouth of the Columbia River where it separates Washington and Oregon. I have been here several times with family over the years, but had not been since Shobhit and Barbara and I took my niece, Nikki, there in 2008, when she was a week and a half from turning 16. At that time Westport still had the old Westport Viewing Tower, which has since been replaced with a new structure, apparently because the old one became "unsafe due to rust." Shobhit and I climbed this new one, which I can't figure out exactly when it was constructed—it was sometime between 2010 (the most recent I can find any other photo of the old structure) and 2014 (the oldest I can find any other photo of the new structure).

Shobhit and I roughly tied my nephew, David, for who traveled the farthest in Western Washington to this year's Family Vacation—Seattle is 143 miles away from Tokeland, and Vancouver, WA is 138 miles away. It was about a two and a half mile drive for us (plus the minor detour to Westport), so Shobhit and I left at about 9:30 a.m., in an effort to maximize that first day. [Clarification: Nikki and TJ won for traveling the farthest overall, having come from Spokane in Eastern Washington—a whopping 402 miles.] Since checkin was not until 4:00 (although they still let us check in early), Shobhit and I drove past our hotel to check out another hotel, which I had only heard from two different people for the first time in the past week: the Tokeland Hotel, not only the oldest hotel in Washington State (built in 1885), but also supposedly haunted, by both humans and a cat. The hotel is beautiful, particularly inside—and we even went upstairs to check out the hallway between the guest rooms (where they have shared bathrooms, yuck!), even though we weren't supposed to—where they actually have a "Paranormal Log" of strange occurrences that they keep behind the counter. They'll let you view it on request, though, and some of these accounts are a bit intimate.

When we went out to the lawn behind the Tokeland Hotel, between the hotel and Willapa Bay beyond, I had to have Shobhit take my photo sitting in one of the lawn chairs they had sprinkled throughout the grass.

Once we were checked in at our actual hotel—Tradewinds on the Bay, which is owned by the Shoalwater Bay Tribe and on their reservation—Shobhit and I walked 0.8 miles from there  to the Shoalwater Bay Casino, the tiniest casino I have ever been in. No tables, machines only—not that it mattered to me; I never gamble. We just went there for orange juice! They gave it to us for free at the bar, and they let us walk right back out with them. We actually did this on both Sunday and on Monday; Shobhit left a $2 tip the first time and $1 the second time (the second bartender gave us smaller cups!), so all it cost us was a total of $3 (and steps, I guess), to get an OJ mixer for the bottle of vodka we brought with us. Anyway! This was a gorgeous view we had from a stretch of Tokeland Rd as we were on our way back to the hotel with our orange juices.

Cornhole time! Regretfully, unlike in both 2020 and 2022, no posed group photo was taken this year—it had been such a challenge gathering everyone last time, I wasn't sure it would be worth the effort—and this is thus one of two shots I got that came the closest. We had 25 people in the extended family who made it this year, about half of us in this shot.

Another mix of family members in a group shot, this one with 10 people in it—and the bay-facing side of Tradewinds on the Bay Hotel behind.

I was trying to take a photo of the full moon from the area behind our hotel on Sunday night. My phone never gets a clear shot of the moon, but it still took a nice shot here—and I had no idea until I looked at the photo later that it also features my nephew, Ricky, in the lower right corner.

Monday, August 19 Beautiful view of Willapa Bay from Tradewinds on the Bay, the first photo I took on Monday morning. There is no view of open ocean from the hotel, which is about a third of a mile away, across the mudflats you can partially see here. This was low tide, and it's mostly mudflats most of the time—but largely fills with water at high tide. It actually rained a lot of the two days we were there, but particularly the first half of Monday, we got a lot of sun, which as you can see, was beautiful while it lasted.

My dad got this shot of me playing cornhole, against my eldest niece, Brandi. I'm such an athlete!

Just after 2:00 p.m.: Willapa Bay as seen from the second floor balcony at Tradewinds on the Bay, at high tide. You can see how much more water there is out there now. The higher water level did not last long, only an hour or two. Also we didn't get to see the sun again from this point on. Oh well! I still had a great time. Speaking of weather, I also had to ask the lady managing the hotel what these things are, which others in the family thought might be for oyster farming, but I learned were actually sand fencing. These are placed along a neary berm (a berm being a mound or wall of earth or sand, a man-made strip of land serving as a barrier—I learned all sorts of new things on this trip!), with the intent to protect Tokeland and the Shoalwater Bay Tribe from erosion due to intensified weather from climate change and rising sea levels. I was told that if they did not take such preventative action, within a few years Tokeland could get wiped out. Fascinating and unnerving stuff.

Honestly, I almost wished we had a huge storm, just so we could sit in this domed hot tub while rain and wind whipped around us. Instead, we just got normal rain. ☹️

This shot was taken by Brandi—of six of the kids, all of whom would have been grandnieces or grandnephews of mine, between them kids of two nieces and a nephew. In any case, this is the view from inside the covered hot tub. You can also see my dad and Shobhit at the picnic table in the distance.

Brandi also took this photo, of me playing Cards Against Humanity on Monday night, with a niee, a nephew, and three spouses or partners of nieces or nephews—plus the oldest of my grandnieces and grandnephews, who is 15. (Many of the adults present had a blast embarrassing Jaycee by using slang like "rizz" or "mid," making Jaycee just bury her face in her hands.)

Tuesday, August 20 We all hung out for a couple of hours Tuesday morning before we all headed home. Just before Dad and Sherri drove away, when I realized I had not gotten a photo of them together the whole trip thus far, I asked to get a shot before they left. And I got this spectacular photo of my parents out of it. Looking forward to returning in 2026! Assuming erosion hasn't taken the town out by then.

[posted 7:36 pm]