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.