I’ve been to Ocean Shores many many times growing up. I grew up in Alaska but my parents grew up in Washington so we visited a couple times a year when possible (Christmas and summer). Summers we spent a few nights at the Royal Pacific (now combined with the Sands) with as many cousins as could fit. I grew up calling everyone cousin. I’ve since learned terms like “second cousin once removed” but “cousin” just rolls off the tongue.

From the hotel we can walk to the beach through some tall grass.

Along the grass we saw a male deer. Wandering the nearby neighborhoods we saw many more deer (all very habituated to humans it seemed), including a baby.

Having the beach nearby was nice for walking over whenever we felt like it, including sunset.

Every year we’ve gone to Ocean Shores we’ve gone to Iron Springs for the tide pools.

You can drive along a lot of the beach but here you park and walk (which is how I usually prefer the beach, except for the fire pit! See below).

So with our 60-ish cousins we walked along the beach and explored.

We saw a river otter playing between the rocks.

We saw anemone’s (pink-tipped green and buried green I believe), mussels, barnacles, crabs, razor clam shells, sand dollars, and ochre (common) sea stars.

 

 

 

I think these might be Goose Barnacles? They looked like jewels on the rocks! So cool.

We went to the bumper car place we always go to and smashed into each other and raced.

Between getting one of the faster cars on the race track and having mad driving skills I lapped everyone in go carts (super mario carts is good practice but not as fun as the real thing).

It’s really fun to reconnect with the cousins I grew up with and to see their kids (and have them meet our kid) and what they’re doing in their lives.

One of the nights we had a bonfire on the beach and made s’mores.

Sometimes simple is best.