Stone Stacks

Ever since coming home from this year's vacation to the Pacific coast, my memories of previous years' trips have been whirling around my mind.

There have been a lot of great times at good ol' Kalaloch, but this trip from 2010 was one of my favorites. Because what we discovered, when we wandered down to the beach on the first day of our visit, were these marvelous stacks of stones.

They were everywhere along our favorite section of the beach - perched on logs, tucked into hollows, balanced in all sorts of precarious places. The effect was magical and exciting. And inviting. Once you saw them, you couldn't help but want to try your hand at making a few stacks of your own. It was surprisingly difficult to find stones of the proper graduated sizes, and get them to balance upon each other just so. Yet it was irresistible. Everyone in my family gave it a try. And many other campers who came strolling by added a few towers to the collection as well. 

Interestingly, over the course of the week of my trip, I never saw a single tower destroyed. Ranger knocked over one or two by accident, but we quickly rebuilt those. Despite all the frisbee-tossing, kite-flying, rock-throwing, stick-swinging, dog-walking people who happened along that stretch of beach, not a single stack was harmed. When I packed up my tent and headed for home, every single tower that I had found was still standing, plus quite a few that we had added to the collection.

Well. Except for maybe this one.

To read more about my camping trips to Kalaloch, go here, here, here and here.