20230423 Sunday, April 23, 2023; Mocrocks clamming and heading home

 20230423 Sunday, April 23, 2023; Mocrocks clamming and heading home.

We got a bit of a break from the rain in the morning as people started packing up campsites and heading out for Mocrocks beach for clamming.  We topped off our fresh water supply, stowed all our umbilicals, and joined the convoy of vehicles headed to Mocrocks beach.  We parked in pretty much the same location each time this trip within a quarter mile of the access. This time, an older Winnebago View pulled in next to us driven by a couple in their 50’s who live on Hood Canal and who bought the RV about 3 weeks ago.  They were excited about moving up to their first Class C RV, having previously camped in a towable. 

The tide today wasn’t as low as Friday or Saturday, so we had to work a little harder to find the larger clams, but ended up settling for what clams we could fine in the surf.  We still managed to get our limit of 20 clams each but did things a little differently by sending Ben back to the RV with a full bag of 20 clams to start the cleaning process while Janet continued hunting for the last 10 or so clams to make up our second limit.  

Ben had developed a technique for giving the clams an enema which helped purge a lot of sand out of most of the clams using our fresh water outside shower hose connected to a hand nozzle.  After Janet returned with the second bag of 20 clams, we started to clean process them, but ended up running out of fresh water.  

We stowed the clams in process after having shelled them and dumped the shells on the beach below the high tide line.  Then we returned to the RV park a half hour before check out time, and refilled our freshwater tank.  We then formally checked out by dropping off our parking pass, and drove down to Ocean City State Park, 6 miles to the south, where we finished processing our clams and then dumped out holding tanks at the state park’s trailer dump facility.  Our Natural Investment Pass is valid for State Park entry as well as use of the boat launches and trailer dump facilities.  

We drove home along SR 108, which was back open after the state had shut it down to do some land slide mitigation work just north of Hoquiam.  We encountered pretty heavy traffic going through Hoquiam, which was probably mostly weekend clam warriors headed home to the big cities.  Traffic was also pretty heavy approaching JBLM. 

We stopped at the Lacey Costco to return an item and pick up some AAA batteries after discovering we needed some in the RV for temperature sensors and remote controls, and topped off the fuel tank, but after paying $4.79/gal for diesel at that Costco, we subsequently discovered that diesel was actually a lot less expensive up north with Samcor selling it for $4.43/gal and even the Cenex in Oak Harbor selling it for $4.45/gal.  

We met Ciara at Chiang’s Gourmet for a late lunch, and also met with George and his family there.  Ben had some surveying equipment that he had borrowed from George that needed to be returned, so that worked out well.  We gave both live in shell clams and some cleaned frozen clam meat to the staff at Chiang’s for their meal, and they stir fried some fresh razor clams with mixed vegetables and black bean sauce for us on the house.  

We ended up doing our weekly family Zoom meeting from the RV in Chiang’s parking lot at 5pm, and then headed home racing the sun.  Janet filled her compost buckets in LaConner and we made it home at 8pm, beating the sunset by 15 minutes.  

We’ll be doing laundry and cleaning fine sand out of the RV for some time, but had a productive and fun trip to the Pacific coast in the RV, having dug up 200 razor clams.  We’ll be giving a fair number of clams to friends and family as gifts and will be expanding our clam recipe repertoire.