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.