Sunday, March 26, 2023. Clamming at Mocrocks, Take 3

 Sunday, March 26, 2023. Clamming at Mocrocks, Take Three.

We disconnected from shore power and left the Copalis Beach Sunrise Resort at 8am, and drove the short 5 miles north to Mocrocks Beach.  Yesterday and today, the weekend, it has been a whole lot more crowded at the campground and on the beach.  However, today, the wind was minimal, and the clouds parted, allowing for filtered sunlight and pleasant conditions for clamming.  

The wind wasn’t pushing the surf up the beach, so as the tide went out, we were able to find more and more clam shows even an hour before the bottom of the low tide, which was forecast at 0.1ft at 10:44am. We had started looking for clams shortly after arriving around 8:30am when the tide was at 2 ft and dropping.  We did have to struggle a bit to find clams until about 9:15 when the tide was at 1ft.  Then there were plenty of clam shows as the splash lines receded.  If we had started clamming at 9:15, we could have easily gotten our limits in under 30 minutes, limited not by finding clam shows, but by stamina required to plunge and pull up the clam gun 15 times.  We generally have to rest a few minutes after plunging and pulling up two consecutive clams.  As it was, we were headed back off the beach to our RV’s at 9:40am with our limits of 15 clams each, including Franklin. 

We used our exterior shower hose hooked up to a hand sprayer to hose off most of our gear and clams, as well as Franklin’s.  We then cleaned half of our clams and put them in the refrigerator, saving 15 for our friends at China Harbor restaurant, live and intact.  As we were washing up the dishes, we ran out of fresh water, so we started home with some dirty pots and containers used in cleaning the clams in the sink.

It did begin raining pretty hard as we drove back through Hoquiam , but things dried up as we headed further inland.  We stopped at the WA DOT rest stop on Eastbound SR8 east of Elma to use the trailer dump station and take on some fresh potable water.  Unfortunately, the potable water switch was malfunctioning so the water would only turn on for about 3 seconds before shutting off, and only produced about 25 psi pressure, so we’ll refill the freshwater tank elsewhere, but have just enough water to keep the water heater and circulation pump from running dry. 

Traffic was uncharacteristically smooth with no major traffic jams- something almost unheard of nowadays.  We stopped at the Burlington Costco to learn that the peanut butter pies sold out early in the morning.  We then stopped in Conway to load up buckets of free compost for the gardens.  We had the auxiliary cargo carrier on the back of the RV just for that purpose.  The daffodils were in full bloom in the Skagit Valley. 

We did have the fuel light come on as we passed the Angel of the Winds Casino, but were able to make it to the Samcor with about 1.5 gallons to spare.  The diesel was $4.499/gal.  We arrived home just before 5:15pm.  

We did have an enjoyable and productive razor clamming trip and honed our razor clamming skills with the experience.  We also found a pretty dilapidated RV park at Copalis beach that has a great location, but not much else.  Since we can be pretty much self contained, we could use that same RV park in the future if we had to, because the location is unbeatable, and there isn’t a great beach access that our RV can drive on at Copalis.  We nearly got stuck when we drove on the beach at the Ocean City access. But there may be other accesses we haven’t checked out yet.  That can be for future trips.  

Saturday, March 25, 2023. Clamming at Copalis Beach

 Saturday,  March 25, 2023. Clamming at Copalis Beach

Ciara and 5 of her friends arrived late last night to their Air BnB in Ocean Shores, just past Damon Point park.  They dropped by at 7:50am to pick up a clam gun and bag for Ciara and were able to find parking at the beach access without any trouble.  Franklin had wandered out earlier and found the pedestrian bridge covered in ice.  We were on the beach by 8:15 and set to work. There was less wind, and the sun actually came out.  It was pleasant weather for clam digging.  We were able to get our two limits in about 2 hours, and then spent time helping Franklin complete his limit.  Ciara and her friends all managed to limit, so they had 90 clams to clean, but they made quick work of it, as well as several clam dishes for lunch.  Our clams filled 2-1/2 more containers for our freezer.  We may bring some of tomorrow’s catch home live and in the shell to gift to our friends at the China Harbor restaurant.  

Ben toured the “Clubhouse”, which is thoroughly ‘70’s vintage, but it’s warm and dry.  There is a laundromat which appears serviceable.  

There were several people using the clam cleaning stations.

We cleaned our clams in the RV, but dumped the shells and water at the cleaning station.  Many areas of the RV park are quite low lying and wet, so you need rubber boots to hike across the playground.  

“Resort” is really overstating things a bit, but since most people are camping in their own RV’s, so long as the water hook up, electric service and sewer work, that’s all that’s really required.  

For dinner we used a Costco rotisserie chicken breast and Rao’s Marinara in a jar, and fresh asparagus to make chicken with pasta and asparagus.  We also had toasted Costco ciabatta rolls with Boursin’s cheese with the pasta.  It made for a very tasty dinner. We had plenty so we invited Franklin to join us.  He had spent the afternoon touring Ocean Shores.  

To prepare for our Sunday morning departure, we topped off our fresh water tank, disconnected the city water and dumped our holding tanks.  To our dismay, after we dumped our tanks, water began to run out from under Franklin’s RV which was parked right in front of us.  It turned out that this was coming from the septic drainage port for the site adjacent to his.  That was rather disturbing.  Another good reason to always wear rubber boots around this RV park.  

Friday, March 24, 2023. Mocrocks Clamming Take Two and Damon Point

 Friday, March 24, 2023. Mocrocks Beach Clamming Take Two and Damon Point.

We were looking forward to hitting the sandbar at Mocrocks and getting our limits quickly, but there was a westerly 20 mph wind that was pushing the surf up the beach.  Ben could walk on the sandbar, but it remained submerged deep enough to obscure any clam shows.  Janet did better higher on the beach, but we had to learn to spot much more subtle clam shows- not the mini volcanos we have been used to looking for in the past.  Now we have to look for subtle movement in the sand just after the surface water has receded. At a lower tide level, this would eventually result in creation of the more classic mini-volcano, but for now, we have to keep a keen out for these quarter sized depressions.  Every now and then, we’ll see a more convincing squirt, but those are pretty rare.  We ended up clamming over 2 hours before the tide drove us back up the beach, 5 clams short of double limits.  

Ben gave the clams enemas to clean out most of the sand using the outside shower hose on the RV while we were still on the beach.  We then put them in the refrigerator and then drove down to Damon Point to look for agates. 

We were disappointed that there were no gravel bars visible at the end of Damon Point.  There were several other experienced agate hunters wandering the beach as well.  The point had changed dramatically from last year, and it looked like the agate bearing gravels were buried under several feet of sand.  It has also started to rain pretty hard as we walked back. While we had our rain coats on, we did not have our Gortex pants on, so we both ended up with soaking wet pants.  Janet did manage to find one agate, while Ben only managed to find two small chips of agate. We got changed into warm dry clothes and had lunch in the parking lot at Damon Point. We then drove back to the RV park.

We parboiled the clams to shuck them today. Ben got a bit hypothermic yesterday shucking them outside in the sleet and rain.  It was much more comfortable to do the entire operation inside the RV.  We filled two quart containers with cleaned clam meat and a half container with shrimp bait.  

Ben’s brother Franklin arrived around 6:30pm in his RV and parked right in front of our RV. He arrived just in time to walk out on the beach for the sunset.  Then we watched YouTube videos on cleaning razor clams to compare techniques.  

Thursday, March 23, 2023. Razor Clamming at Copalis Beach

 Thursday, March 22, 2023

It was a good thing to set an alarm clock to get us up at 7am because we were otherwise going to sleep in past the low tide.  It rained sporadically during the night, but towards the morning, it became pretty steady.  We did make it onto the beach at 8am, and there were plenty of people out clamming.  The beach access is a pedestrian bridge over a creek.  From the corner of the RV park to the surf line was no more than a quarter mile, so that was pretty convenient.  There is limited parking at this beach access with only enough room for 4 or 5 cars. But when we walked out over the dunes to see the beach, there were many cars and trucks near by so there must be other beach accesses fairly close.  

The upper part of the beach is covered with thousands of “shows” but these very quickly proved to be sand shrimp burrows and not razor clams.  We did find razor clams at the bottom of the beach where water receding back into the surf briefly forms a thin film that can demonstrate an occasional clam squirt, or if you looked carefully, you could see depressions of a clam show which would yield a razor clam.  However, many still turned out to be sand shrimp burrows.  We really had to work hard to find the clams as the tide hit -0.3ft at 8:30, and then the tide started coming back in quickly, pushing clammers back up the beach.  We ended up 3 clams short of double limits, but had daylight to deal with putting the clams up.  Yesterday, we parboiled the clams to get the shells off. Today, Ben shucked them with a knife to cut the two shell closing muscles.  Perhaps, not parboiling them will result in less tough cooked clams, but overall, it is quicker and simpler to parboil them, even though that requires having ice on hand to plunge the parboiled clams into to prevent them from cooking.  

The weather turned for the worse as the day progressed, with the wind blowing and sheets of rain intermittently drumming on the roof of the RV.  We had hoped to do some agate hunting at Damon Point, but with this weather, we will sit this one out.  The tide at Damon Point was at 2’ at sunset at 7:30pm.

We relaxed in the RV and had Costco’s Miso Ramen kit for dinner.  It was comparable to the bad airport ramen at SeaTac, but hard to beat for convenience.  

We’ll hope for better weather and clamming in the morning at Mocrocks.

Pacific Coast Razor Clamming RV trip. Copalis Beach RV Resort and Mocrocks Beach Razor Clam Dig.

 Wednesday, March 22, 2023. Copalis Beach RV Resort and Mocrocks Beach Razor Clam Dig.

We’re off on our first RV trip of 2023.  Razor clam season has opened late on the Pacific Coast due to red tides.  There has been pent up demand so large crowds have been showing up on weekends.  This  week, there are openings on Mocrocks, Copalis and Twin Harbors beaches.  The openings are also switching from evening low tides to morning low tides so it will be possible for us to dig on tonight’s low tide at Mocrocks beach, and tomorrow morning at Copalis beach.  

Ben was concerned about being able to find a place to camp if there really is high demand, so he made reservations at Copalis Beach RV resort, which is located right at the walk in only beach access.  There are lots of RV “Resorts” in the area, but most would require driving a vehicle onto the beach at a public access, and we were concerned that our RV might get stuck in the sand if it wasn’t packed hard enough.  All of these resorts are about $50/night, but this one includes electrical, water and sewer hook ups.  The State Parks have very limited capacity and all reservable camp sites are sold out.  A dry camping site with no utilities would be $35/night.  One with utilities would be $45-50.

We left home at 9:15am and stopped for diesel at Samcor in Anacortes, which had diesel for $4.499/gal.  This place has gained a reputation for cheap diesel pricing.  It is kind of in the middle of nowhere.  Only people traveling between Anacortes and Whidbey Island drive by but it is owned by the Swinomish Tribe and we’re glad it’s there.  It’s a convenient place to refuel at the beginning and end of our RV trips.  

Janet had an item to return to the Burlington Costco, and we had heard that Costco Bakeries had a new item- Peanut Butter Pies!  However, this particular Costco bakery had not yet received the ingredients, so it may be a week or two before it shows up.  There has been quite a buzz in the media around this new Costco item.  

As we headed south on I-5, we saw many gas stations selling diesel for as much as $4.99/gal.  We had little traffic until Northgate, where I-5 came almost to a complete stop.  There was an accident in the vicinity of 65th NE. Since it was lunch time, we pulled off I-5 and had lunch at Chiang’s Gourmet to wait out the traffic.  They have really delicious and generous lunch specials.  By the time we finished, traffic was back on the move.  Our next stop was our customary Lacey Costco diesel and food stop.  Diesel was $4.659.  We’ll refuel at the end of the trip back at Samcor now that we know that it really has the cheapest diesel price.  We picked up a Costco Pizza for dinner, donuts for breakfast, and a roast chicken for later.  

It was smooth sailing the rest of the way to Copalis, aside from a detour in Hoquiam due to land stabilization work on Hwy 109, which is the route most people take to get to the Pacific Beaches for clamming.  The detour signs in Hoquiam are quite confusing, but we managed to find our way because we had programmed the detour route into the RV’s nav system in advance.  

Copalis Beach RV Resort is certainly a rustic facility.  It has an unbeatable location for beach access, but is quite run down.  Arriving mid week, there seemed to be plenty of open sites.  We were assigned site 25.  The sites in this part of the resort look like pull through sites that have been split into 2 halves. Some people may have to turn their rigs around in order to get their utility bays within reach of the utilities.  I was a little surprised at how poorly leveled the RV sites were.  They didn’t bother to grade the site level before turning it into an RV park.  But it’ll do the trick for this trip.  Having water and power will be a bonus. 

There is 2 bars of AT&T cellular coverage, enough to send texts and emails, so that is also a plus.  The place supposedly had Wifi, but we didn’t find a signal at our site.  It may be limited to the clubhouse, which we may be too afraid to actually check out during this trip. 

There is an outbuilding with showers and a clam cleaning station.  The clam cleaning station has cold running water, lights, a roof, sinks and trash can.  

We got our site marked with our “THIS SITE IS OCCUPIED” signs and then headed north on Hwy 109 to the Mocrocks Beach public access road at Roosevelt Beach Road.  It is well marked and WDFW has a prominent sign indicating we were at Mocrocks Beach.  The approach was very hard compacted so we had no trouble driving our RV onto the area around the access.  There was plenty of parking on the compacted part of the upper beach.  We arrived about 2 hours before the bottom of the low tide which was to occur at 7pm.  Sunset was also supposed to happen at 7pm.  

Many people were already digging up and down the beach when we arrived, but the tide as at about 3’.  In our past experiences at Twin Harbors beach, the razor clam shows didn’t appear until the tide as at or below 2’, so we had our pizza dinner in the RV on the beach, and then leisurely changed into our clam digging gear.  For Ben, this was full waders, and for Janet, this was Antarctica inspired Gortex outer pants over below the knee Bogg boots.  We both had a layer of fleece and Gortex overcoats because the winds were blowing at 10-15mph and it was about 50˚.  

We headed out to the clam beds as the tide dropped below the 2’ level at 6pm.  There were lots of “shows” on the beach above the area wetted by occasional waves, but digging up a few revealed these not to be razor clams, but sand shrimp holes.  If one were there to surf cast for surf perch, if you had a sand shrimp pump, you could harvest an ample supply of sand shrimp pretty easily.  

As the tide approached 1’, Ben was able to find a couple of razor clams, but they were extremely deep, requiring plunging our 26” PVC clam guns at least 22” down, which was very hard work in the hard sand.  But as the tide dropped to below 1’, a sandbar appeared 50-100 yards beyond where we had been working.  We had to wade through about 18” of water to get to the sand bar, but as the tide approached 0’ at 6:45pm, the sand bar had lots of razor clam shows, and we could actually afford to get picky about only going after the larger shows.  We ended up with our two limits of 15 clams each and were headed back to the RV at 7pm.  

We were back to the RV park before dark, and after checking out the rudimentary clam cleaning station, and driving by the Copalis beach access, which was pedestrian only, and situated right at the corner of our RV park, we ended up cleaning our clam catch in the RV.  Our 30 clams ended up not quite filling three one quart screw top plastic containers from the Dollar store with the cleaned bodies and diggers, while a 4th container was 3/4 filled with the stomachs and tips of the necks, which make excellent shrimp bait when frozen in 10oz paper cups.  We’ll top these containers off with a portion of tomorrow’s catch before we put them in the freezer.

We were done with processing our catch of the day by 9:30pm.  Tomorrow, Copalis is open and the bottom of the low tide is at 8:29am.  It will be at 1’ at sunrise at 7am.  We’ll set our alarm for 7am and aim to be on the beach at 8am.