20260403 Friday, April 3, 2026- Another Clam Trip Wraps Up

20260403 Friday, April 3, 2026- Another Clam Trip Wraps Up

The alarm went off at 6:15am, and it would have been really easy to have slept in, but we had one more clam dig to get in before facing the possibility of battling traffic to get home.  

We got to the beach at 7am with pretty good conditions.  The wind was less than 15mph, and the sun was finding its way through the cloudy sky to light up the beach.  

Janet was able to spot the clam shows easier today, and had her limit in 20 minutes, while Ben used a thumper to provoke a couple of shows closer to the water before having Janet spot shows for him to fill his limit as well.  

We were headed off the beach by 8am with two limits and larger clams than earlier in the trip.  

On returning to the campsite, our gear got rinsed off and put away while the clams soaked in salt water.  Ben transferred about 12 gallons of diesel from the Jerry cans into the fuel tank, pushing the needle to full.  The RV was reconfigured for the road, breaking camp and the Bronco was rehitched to the RV by 9:15am.   

There was little traffic headed back to the city in the morning hours.  There is a rest stop in Elma with free trailer dump facilities, so we dumped our black and grey water tanks there, and also emptied the last of the Jerry can diesel into the fuel tank. 

Traffic did start to build near Olympia, but we were able to maintain the speed limit by using the car pool and express toll lanes on I-405, bypassing the I-5 University Bridge construction traffic mess.  Getting an early start on our return trip certainly allowed us to miss most of the city traffic.  

We arrived at the Angel of the Winds Casino by 12:45pm, where we topped up the fuel tanks.  Since their diesel was $0.40/gal less expensive than Samcor’s, and more than a dollar less per gallon than many local stations, we refilled the jerry cans to be used in the near future until Trump’s Iran war gets wrapped up.  

After a quick shopping stop at the Costco Burlington store, we unloaded the RV at home and then parked the RV back in the barn, and hung up our waders and clamming gear.  It was nice to be able to get that all done with daylight to spare.  

This is likely our last razor clam digging trip for this season since halibut season just opened, and then there will be shrimp season and then ling Cod season over the next 2 months.  In the meanwhile, Ben will have to do some troubleshooting to figure why the awning wasn’t working.  

20260402 Thursday, April 2, 2026- Clamming Success

20260402 Thursday, April 2, 2026- Clamming Success

It rained on and off through the night, but it stopped after 3am.  When we left for the beach at 6:45am, there was more daylight, so driving onto the beach was a lot less stressful because we could see where the beach was compacted and where all the driftwood ended up.  It was also a lot easier to see any clam shows.  

There was just a sprinkle of rain with winds of about 20mph when we arrived, but the rain stopped shortly thereafter.  Unlike yesterday, visibility was much improved and with the sun occasionally breaking through the clouds, we could actually see some clam shows.  There were very few of the classic volcano shows, but enough to show Mark and Jan what they look like.  There were mostly quarter sized depressions for shows, but they were visible.

Janet managed to find her limit within a half hour, while it took Ben about 45 minutes.  Mark and Jan received tutoring on spotting clam shows and digging techniques.  Mark had spotted at least a dozen good shows, but didn’t manage to pull up any clams until Ben followed him and plunged his longer gun into Mark’s original holes, finding the clams just about 6” deeper than the maximum reach of Mark’s welded aluminum gun.  With that knowledge, Mark was able to find more clams, sometimes plunging a second time into the hole, and sometimes reaching into the hole to feel the clam at the bottom.  

Jan was using one of our vented PVC guns, but she couldn’t get them more than about 16” into the sand.  Janet helped her by going in a second time with her vented stainless steel gun and let Jan try using the fancier gun.  The stainless steel tube is thin walled so it is less resistance to plunge it into the sand.  We eventually managed to get everyone their limit of 15 clams each.  

Mark and Jan checked out of their hotel and rendezvoused back at the RV with a box of donuts to learn how to clean the clams.  They were quick studies, having experience with cleaning shrimp, and were able to get their catch bagged up to go home with them.  They had to leave by 10:30am to catch their ferry reservation.  They were going back via Port Townsend so as to avoid the I-5 University Bridge construction mess.  

We ran out of propane just as the last of Mark and Jan’s clams were de-shelled, so we let out clam catch soak while we ran into town to refill our propane tank.  It looks like we can run the generator about 5 hours on a 20# propane tank.  

We tried to refill our tank at the closest RV park, but their pump wasn’t working properly.  After about 15 minutes of attempting to get it to work, we drove to a different RV park, close to the Westport airport, where they were able to fill the tank pretty quickly.  It helps that it is close to the library as well, so we could use the library’s Wifi to upload the blog.  

Ben discovered that Oak Harbor residents can get reciprocal library privileges with the Timberland Regional Library system, so he got signed up and can now check out books, DVD’s, and even have expanded access to use the library 7am-8pm 7 days a week, even if the library is otherwise closed, so that is cool.

Armed with a refilled propane tank, we were able to process the day’s catch and then go for a walk between the Westport Lighthouse park and jetty.  Janet did manage to find a Westport agate, despite most of that beach getting buried by fine sand.  

Dinner was leftovers, which have accumulated during the trip.  It sure is nice to have a refrigerator and combination convection microwave in the RV.  

20260401 Wednesday, April 1, 2026- A One Clam Day

20260401 Wednesday, April 1, 2026- A One Clam Day

Unfortunately, the weather forecast was accurate.  As daybreak approached, there was a steady heavy downpour of rain. 

We had departed the campsite at 6:30 am and promptly headed to the beach in search of any clam shows. Nevertheless, the persistent wind and heavy rain prevented us from witnessing a single classic show. Sheets of rain water erased any the moment they tried to form. Even Ben’s attempts to provoke a show with a pounding stick were unsuccessful. 

Despite the challenging conditions, Ben managed to elicit one clam show by digging a blind hole while Jan stood nearby. She was fortunate enough to witness the formation of the show and unearthed a small, yet genuine razor clam.

Due to the unfavorable weather, the beach was sparsely populated. However, we did encounter someone who had found two clams and had obtained two more from another individual who had also only found two but lacked the motivation to clean them. Jan kindly donated her clam to this person, hoping it would be enough for him to prepare a meal.

Consequently, we decided to head back to the RV at 7:30 am to get out of our wet rain gear and dry off. The Keurig was put to work making coffee. Jan brought breakfast burritos, which we warmed up in our microwave and enjoyed a satisfying breakfast and chat.

Preparing coffee and using the microwave on the inverter, drained the batteries from approximately 75% to 55%. Recognizing the need for battery recharge, we switched on the generator after 9am after Mark and Jan left to return to their motel room.
Although it would be nice to use the awning to shelter the entry from the rain, for some unknown reason, the awning wasn’t functioning. Fortunately, it didn’t end up getting stuck in the extended position. This issue will require further troubleshooting at home.  

At noon, we rendezvoused with Mark and Jan at Merino’s for lunch and had their excellent Fish and Chips.  We were able to cash in a full punch card for $10 off today. A freighter sailed along the jetty into Westport as we ate.  

After lunch, we did a driving tour of the Westport Jetty and Lighthouse state park facilities narrating over speakerphones as the torrential rain continued.  Mark and Jan then retreated to their motel room while we headed back to the RV to run the generator some more to recharge the batteries.  

In the afternoon, NASA was scheduled to launch the Artemis 2 moon mission so we headed over to Mark and Jan’s motel for a Blast Off party.  This mission is more than 2 years behind schedule, so it was hardly a sure thing, but to our surprise and relief, the launch went off without a hitch, boosting 4 NASA astronauts for the first time for a trip around the moon and back.

Returning to the RV, dinner was pasta with jarred Bertolli marinara sauce with green beans, rotisserie chicken and garlic bread with Mark and Jan, which made for a very pleasant evening sharing stories about travels and parenting.  

The weather ap says Westport received close to 1.5” of rain today, which we believe to be no exaggeration.  There is a 6” deep x 20’ puddle submersing part of the main campground drive, which is useful for rinsing sand and salt off the bottom of the Bronco if you go through it fast enough.  

There is still some rain and wind forecast for tomorrow, although there is at least some chance we will have good enough conditions for Mark and Jan to see a few classic clam shows and dig up a few more clams before calling their first razor clamming excursion a complete failure.  But we have enjoyed introducing them to at least a limited exposure to RV camping.  

20260331 Tuesday, March 31, 2026. Twin Harbors Razor Clam trip with Cichowski’s

20260331 Tuesday, March 31,  2026.  Twin Harbors Razor Clam trip with Cichowski’s

Our Senior Off Season camping pass is on its last legs.  In April, it is only valid for free camping Sunday through Thursday nights.  So we will camp tonight, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, and dig for razor clams Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings.  The low tides coincide with daybreak.  

We got off to a bit of a late start.  We received notification of a package delivery scheduled for today that required a signature, so we had to wait for the mail man, but Ben had also discovered that the conduits for the high rear floodlights had come loose, so he 3D printed new supports and mounted them.  He had also installed rear camera washers, which were from Amazon.com and usually a kit for installing windshield washers on UTV’s.  

We hit the road at noon.  Trump started a war with Iran a month ago, and with the Strait of Hormuz closed, fuel prices have really been skyrocketing.  Samcor, which usually has the lowest diesel prices around was $6.19/gal.  Angel of the Winds in Arlington has it for $5.99/gal, while the Costco in Lacey is $6.89/gal.  Ben packed three Jerry cans to fill up at the Angel of the Winds to hopefully get us round trip from there to the coast and back.  We also topped off the Bronco at $4.69/gal for regular.  
We made a quick shopping stop at the Lacey Costco, and although the price was much higher than Angel of the Winds, it was lower than most surrounding stations, so the gas station was very busy.  We picked up a rotisserie chicken, artisan rolls and carrot cake, in addition to a hot dog and soda for a quick late lunch.  

The weather driving down was beautiful, with mostly sunny skies, and the traffic was not bad taking the I-405 instead of I-5 because construction on the University Bridge has snarled traffic through downtown Seattle badly.  

As we approached Aberdeen and Hoquiam, the skies had darkened considerably, and by the time we arrived at Twin Harbors State Park at 4pm, it had just started to sprinkle a bit.  

We got set up in our usual spot- site 221, right next to the bathroom.  We then rendezvoused with our friends, the Cichowski’s, who had invited us to share in a dinner of home made chili with them.  We brought Costco tortilla chips, salsa and beer.  It was very nice to have the chance to go over some razor clam techniques.  It is hard to believe that they have never dug for razor clams before, although their children have.  

We will try to hit the beach at sunrise, which is just before 7am, so we will leave our campsite at 6:30am.  The tide will bottom out at 6:56am while official sunrise is at 6:48am.  Unfortunately, the weather forecast is pretty bad.  There’s an 80% chance of rain, and the winds are forecast to be 25mph with gusts to 40mph, so we may have some real trouble finding clams.  But the forecast for Thursday is much better.

20260302 Monday, March 2, 2026 Heading Home

20260302 Monday, March 2, 2026 Heading Home

The new LP tank that we got at Walmart was supposed to be sold full, but without weighing it, it’s hard to know how much LP was in the tank.  However, it ran dry last night after running the generator for only 3 hours.  Fortunately, we had just finished processing the clams when the generator sputtered to a halt.  During the night, we had to switch back to the main LP tank to run the furnace.  The temperatures have been dropping into the lower 40’s during the night, so having the furnace has been essential.  

We broke camp after running the generator for a bit to make coffee and tea, and to put some charge on the batteries which had gotten into the mid 40% charge state, but since we were headed home, we had shut down the generator with the batteries till below 50%.  

It took about an hour to get everything set to leave.  Ben had to use the Bronco to jump start another camper’s truck with a dead battery, but we had to move the Bronco anyways to get the RV out of its site.  We drive both the RV and Bronco to an adjacent parking lot for the State Park that serves a walk in beach access, which is flat and has long spaces suitable for parking long trailers to hitch up the RV and Bronco.  

The weather and traffic were quite pleasant from Westport to Lacey.  We did stop at the Montesano rest area to dump the black and grey tanks, and then made a stop at the Lacey Costco to add several gallons of diesel to assure getting back to the Samcor in Anacortes.  The diesel at Costco was $0.50/gal more expensive than Samcor, but still less expensive than other refueling stations in the area.  We did pick up a pizza for dinner tonight, and Costco hot dogs for lunch, as well as frozen vegetables that we need at home.  Having a freezer in the RV is handy that way.

There is a prolonged resurfacing project involving the University Bridge north of downtown Seattle that caused traffic to back up for about 5 miles, but despite traffic being quite heavy, it only slowed to a crawl and not actual stop and go.  

It was nice to get home with plenty of daylight to get things unpacked and put away. Ben was pleasantly surprised to see that the batteries had charged up to over 90% on solar during the drive home, which was largely under sunny skies.

 
This was a very pleasant RV trip.  We had pretty decent weather for the most part and didn’t encounter any major problems with the RV or Bronco.  We did end up with a pretty decent haul of cleaned clam meat and 2 quarts of clam guts which make really good shrimping bait.   

It’s nice to have this winter fishery to keep us busy and also give us an excuse to do some winter camping.  We’ll probably make one more razor clamming trip at the end of March/early April, when the low tides switch to sunrise.

20260301 Sunday, March 1, 2026: Twin Harbors State Park Clamming Day 4

20260301 Sunday, March 1, 2026: Twin Harbors State Park Clamming Day 4

The weather has been surprisingly nice this weekend, with frequent sun breaks and little rain since Wednesday and early Thursday.  Today, the sun was out for much of the day with broken cloud cover, and a mild breeze.  Our batteries were just a little below 40% in the morning as the solar panels began to register energy.  We ran the generator to make coffee and tea, and allow the batteries to charge up at 9:45am, as most other campers were out and about.  We had a group camping in an adjacent site with a strange plastic bubble enclosure around their picnic table and a small pup tent on the ground.  They had the unfortunate habit of cutting through our campsite, walking right behind our RV, to get to the bathroom and shower building, rather than walk on the driveway.  FYI, it’s poor campground etiquette to cut through anyone’s camp site.  

We went for another walk on the beach.  It was near high tide.  There were a couple of tire tracks heading north of the park high on the beach with two spots that looked like someone had tried to park, but got a bit bogged down in the softer sand.  But they had managed to successfully get turned around and out of there.  Janet collected a few more sand dollars for her collection.  There are some impressive waves with breakers up and down the coast as the ocean swell meets the shallowing beach.  

The campground seemed to largely empty out as most of the tent campers and pop-up campers packed up and left, presumably to go home in time to return to their Monday to Friday work lives.  Ben got in a shower since there was nobody around using it.  

Lunch was simple cup of soup, Cheeze-Its and rotisserie chicken.  We headed out to the beach at 3pm, even though the low tide was at 5:26pm.  The tide was at 2’ and dropping, and we did find clam shows developing a hundred feet above the splash line.  We were able to be a little pickier about looking for larger shows and did end up with our limits of 15 each by 4pm.   

We got back to the camp and Janet got in her shower while Ben started cleaning up the clamming gear and preparing it for stowage, since this was our last day of clamming for this trip.  

There was just enough time to get things put away and back into the Bronco to drive to the Westport Library to use their Wifi to Zoom the family in our Sunday ritual.  The library’s Wifi was not connected to the internet again, but there was ample cellular signal to use our cell phone hot spots to do the Zoom meeting using an iPad on the dashboard of the Bronco.  

When we got back to camp, we had a quick dinner with Ben eating another baked cod, rice pilaf and carrots dinner and Janet having a bowl of Ramen.  Then we processed today’s clams.  

Tomorrow, we’ll head home.  We’ll need to hit the rest stop in Montesano to use the dump station.  On this trip, since the campground bathroom is so close by, we only use the RV’s toilet for number 1, and treat toilet paper like in Mexico- into the trash, and not into the holding tank.  This makes dumping the black tank pretty quick and painless.  We also try to dump clam processing water down the campground drain, so our holding tanks last longer.  

20260228 Saturday, February 28, 2026- Twin Harbors State Park Clamming Day 3

20260228 Saturday, February 28, 2026- Twin Harbors State Park Clamming Day 3

The weather looked pretty decent in the morning with scattered clouds and frequent sun out as we started our day.  We ran the generator to charge up the batteries, which had drained to 43% overnight.  After making coffee and tea, the generator stopped as our external 20# LP tank had run dry.  This was all the excuse we needed to make a run into Aberdeen to get a propane refill.  On a prior trip, we did this at the Tractor Supply Store, but this time, the attendant noticed that our tank was out dated (manufactured in 2011) and he said nobody in Aberdeen recertifies outdated tanks.  Back home, our local Cenex has done this for a $15 fee, but the Aberdeen Walmart was right next door, and they had Blue Rhino LP exchange bottles for $19, so we did that.  With LP at about $4/gal, it was less expensive to do the exchange this time. The replacement tank had a manufacture date of 6/2025, so that should hold us for a number of years.  

While in Aberdeen, we had lunch at the Jack in the Box, which had a $4.99 lunch special with a cheese burger, fries and drink.  Our hometown Jack in the Box doesn’t do these lunch specials, so we jumped at the opportunity.  Oddly, the guy working the counter said they were out of hamburger patties for the cheese burgers, but that they could substitute the chicken patty instead.  It’s hard to imagine a burger place being out of hamburger patties, but then again, our hometown KFC used to always be out of fried chicken before they went out of business.  They guy behind the counter even upsized our fries to make up for being out of cheeseburgers, so that was a bonus.  

Although today’s low tide was at 4:41pm, we headed to the beach early at 2:30pm to see if arriving earlier might prove more successful.  We did find some shows high on the beach, although many were small clams.  As the tide went out further, there were new shows that appeared 50-100’ above the wet zone, and as the tide got lower, there were more shows with larger clams.  We were successful in getting our two limits (total 30 clams) by 3:45pm, so it was nice to be able to get that done and back to the RV before nightfall.  

We ran the generator to use the induction cooktop to process the clams.  The induction cooktop brings water to a boil much faster than the LP burner.  After getting the clams unshelled, we shut the generator down while we did all the cleaning.  After the clams were all processed, we ran the generator again to use the microwave to heat up dinner, which was another round of the prepared baked cod, rice pilaf and carrots meals and then switched to convection oven mode to toast the last of the Costco baguettes.  

When we shut the generator down, the batteries were at 74%, which should hold us through the night with no problem.  

Tomorrow’s low tide will be -0.5’ at 5:26pm, which is just before sunset.  We’ll probably go out about 2:30-3pm again to take advantage of the daylight and hope we find some clam shows again.  Tomorrow should be our last day of clamming this trip.  We’ll head home Monday during the day and try to avoid the rush hours.