January 15-21, 2013
Tuesday- We cleaned the rig and got packed up and on the
road by 11:30. For the most part it was
an easy drive to our new home. The
campground is run by the county, and it’s a 20 minute, 12 mile super windy
drive to the coast. This campground is
simply amazing. It’s the only
development on the coast, so the beauty of the bay is unmarred by manmade
structures. This is a first-come,
first-served campground, which is surprising because it would be such a long
wasted drive to make it out here only to find the campground full. I wonder why they don’t have this on an
online reservation system. It works out
well for us, though. :-)
So there’re about 115 campsites, 25 or so with 30 amp
hookups. There’re about 10 premium
sites right on the ocean. People can
watch the bobbing seals right from their camp.
However, we chose a site on the highest of the 3 levels. Mostly it was for the hookup, but also, we
like being able to see the activity in the whole campground.
Getting here was difficult… there’s a steep section that
segues meanly into a sharp turn.
Ugh. We had to take off the
scootie and ramp before we could park, so Missy was behind me on the
scooter. For some reason, she shouted
out “stop” just as I was gunning it up the steepest part. When I braked, the whole rig and truck
started skidding downhill. Scary. But, I threw it into 4 low and we made it up
fine. Turns out that was the easy part.
Hoo-boy, these sites are narrow and close together. It’s a dead end, so you don’t have much hope
for error. We never do well parking in
spots that call for precision. We
pulled past our first choice and tried to back up into it. No good.
Poor Missy, I’m just hopeless at being able to help her back up. Good thing
all the sites on either side were empty.
We drove through all of them.
The best we could manage was being 3 feet off the side of the narrow
parking pad. With no room in front to
straighten out exactly on the pad…we gave up on that site. Missy turned the other way, and backed into
another spot. Again….it took a long
time. Blech. We juuuuuuuuuuuust fit with our
slideout. In fact, someone else had
already conveniently slanted the concrete pole (which protects the utility box),
and our slide just poked into it. I’m assuming we’ll get neighbors for the long
MLK weekend. That will make this site
uncomfortably crowded. However…man are
the views worth it. I can’t believe we
get an oceanview site! We can watch the
waves, seals, and surfers from our rig.
Totally worth the hassle!
Wednesday- so we were worried about what the weather would
be like here. Overnight there were
hurricane strength winds, and they continued into the morning. We bundled up for a walk on the beach in
hats and mittens. However, the winds
died down and the day turned lovely. It
was sunny and 70s. Hurray! On our walk, we saw spray puffs in the
distance. We know those are the
migrating grey whales. Too bad you can’t
see them. However, we can see the pods
of porpoises that go back and forth in the bay! You can just get glimpses of the dorsal fins,
but it’s still exciting every time. And
the sea lions are also common sights in the water. So glad we found this campground!
Thursday: Today was the day…we agreed that we’d get in our
kayaks no matter what. We took a beach
walk with the dogs in the morning. We
didn’t see anyone surfing today. We did
see some day-use people park and head south out of view with their
surfboards. I had read someone’s blog
review of the surfing here, and they said a popular wave was about a quarter
mile south. But, since it’s around a
curve, we can’t see. Because we had the old man with us, we couldn’t
walk down and see.
After lunch, we got suited up and drove down to the
beach. We were nervous, and our wish to
see other kayakers to see how ocean surfing is done went unfulfilled. In fact, there weren’t any other people in
the ocean. From our campsite up on
high, we thought the waves looked kind of small. But when we got down to the water, they
looked much bigger. I helped Missy
launch first. Turns out that getting
launched in the ocean is a lot harder than on a river. There must be some technique for doing it
that we just aren’t aware of. The
trouble is that you have to start on the beach and then try to judge how far
out to walk your kayak before you’ve gone too far and will be swamped by the
waves. But if you start too high on the
beach, you are stuck and can’t paddle.
It was most frustrating. We both
spent a fair bit of time hopping back out of our yaks to dump water and then
try again. Finally, we gave up on
doing it solo and just took turns helping each other out. That worked fine, because we needed to wake
our dead legs after 15 minutes or so anyway
So our first time out, we were stiff. Why do we have to keep relearning that
lesson? Luckily these waves were
spaced generously enough that it was an easy roll up…time to wipe the salt
water from your face and keep at it.
My first attempt at climbing a breaking wave to get over it was
disastrous because I had my mouth open.
I must have swallowed a gallon of sea water that was shot into my mouth
with crushing force. I learned that
lesson right quick. From then on, I
made sure my mouth was clamped shut. Right
as we were steeling ourselves for surfing, a couple of porpoises came right
by! Close enough that I would have
gotten Missy and the porpoise in the same picture, if the darn thing hadn’t of
gone under. Swimming with
porpoises! This is the life…
We messed around a bit behind the breaking waves…too nervous
to try to catch one. However, unlike
on a river where the decision to leave calm water and enter a wave is entirely
yours, here the ocean has the final say.
It just randomly broke the wave out behind us. It was most scary. Staring down this massive wall of water that’s
hurling towards you and knowing you have no choice but to try to catch it, or
be trashed. So….we caught them! We were shocked at how easy it was! (Later days and more ocean experience would
show that we had the luck of getting baby waves for our first ocean
surfing). We’d ride the waves to
shore, a short 10 second ride, and then turn around and paddle back for more. I have to say, I was really proud of us for
getting out there and figuring out (sort of) how to surf. (If I’m being honest…if the ocean hadn’t of
forced the issue, we might not have worked up the courage to try a surf.) We stayed out there for 2.5 hours before the
sun started setting and the temp dropping.
That’s the other thing: we had amazing weather! Sunny skies and 70s! We just had drytops and neoprene
shorts. No drysuits needed! Not what I would have guessed for winter surfing. We’re soooooooo lucky.
Friday: We spent the
morning watching the waves and enjoying watching the campground fill up. There were some amusing snafoos with the
crowding and small roads and spots.
After lunch, we suited up for kayaking again. Today’s ocean was a little more challenging. There wasn’t as much powerful foamy
whitewater to push you to shore. This
time, we had to make an effort to paddle to catch the waves and then keep
paddling to stay on them. But once we
figured out the trick, we had some great surfs. Missy really looked like a pro on some of
hers. Sadly, we don’t have any video
from day 2 because we didn’t have anything to clean the camera lens with. Turns out that sea water leaves spots when
it dries. On one of my turns, a sea
lion popped up close by. It seemed very
curious about me. It’s a good thing we’d
already had our wildlife encounter, or I would have been really nervous. I tried kayaking a little closer, but he
just swam away.
Another fantastic hot sunny day. Another great surfing session. When we got back to our rig, we discovered
that our row had filled in completely.
We lost our ocean view out of one window. It’s crazy how close these spots are. If we had an awning, we wouldn’t be able to
use it anyway. Hopefully most people
will leave after the weekend and we’ll get some more space again.
Saturday: This
morning the surf was a lot stronger.
The giant waves were curling and crashing into the ocean with thunderous
noise. The campground filled almost
entirely, with 75% of them being surfers.
As we watched practically every surfer head south for the famous break,
we decided to hike down there and spend the morning watching them. We loaded up chairs and water and took off
with Cassie in tow. It’s about a 20
minute walk to the action.
(We’re getting ready to head to town, so I have to speed
this up. It’s unusual to have so much
awesomeness to report on).
-The waves at the surfing point were awe inspiring. 15 footers (we did ask a surfer for that
figure). Giant crashing sets of monster
wave after monster wave. The surfers
were amazing athletes who apparently had specialized knowledge on how to read
the ocean. It was inspiring to watch
them. However, it was scary too. We saw lots of trashings, and many people
coming back with broken boards or no boards.
-The face of the wave (or trough? I feel stupid for not knowing the parts of a
wave) was crystal clear and steely smooth.
So mesmerizing to watch. But,
also a great magnifying effect. 2 or 3
times, we got to watch pods of porpoises come through, and they would fly
through the water in the glassy trough right
underneath the surfers bobbing on the surface! It was perhaps the most incredible sight I’ve
ever seen. I’d seriously pay money to
watch that again and again.
-The surfers’ dogs: adorable! Waiting on shore for their guy to come
back. One golden retriever literally
went into the surf 10-15 feet to greet each returning surfer to see if it was
his guy. So cute!
-The huge surf didn’t die down through the weekend. In fact, it was so loud through the night
that it kept me up. Sounded like jets
taking off in our backyard every 15 seconds.
So on Sunday, we sat out trying kayaking again. Too scary.
-Monday, we thought the waves looked smaller. Wrong were we. We have a new saying: if there are no sea lions about, it’s not
kayakable. But it was hard to be at the
beach with hot and sunny weather and not be trying to surf.
-I got to go first.
It took us 30 minutes to get me launched. I got swamped several times, and one time
swept embarrassingly off my feet. Missy
finally had a great idea to use her kayak as a launching point. So I finally got out, fought the breakers
and paddled into the deep. And then I
was scared shitless watching the pounding surf slam into the ocean. I eventually decided on a game plan: I
would try riding a biggun, and right before it collapsed and tried to crush me
I would turn and fall off the backside (like the surfers do). But before I could ease up to the break
point, the ocean swelled dramatically behind me. I thought I could catch it, but at the last
second it seemingly doubled in size and speed, and swept my kayak up the face
and toppled me ass-over-head. I was thoroughly ragdolled in the wave, and
after 5 seconds or so, I rolled. It was
really hard to roll, and it was really hard to steer to deal with the next
wave. I didn’t even realize it right
away…my skirt had imploded. I was full
of water. I had a mini-panic. I knew I was going to have to pull because
there was still 30 seconds or so of the rough surf set left. I know no one would be able to assist
me. Missy couldn’t even get launched on
her own, not that she could do anything for me if she could. So, I pulled on the next launch and ducked
the onslaught. I was scared…but then I
touched the ground! I’d forgotten how
shallow it was! So between poundings, I
could stand and point my swamped yak towards shore. The ocean, after meanly pulling my skirt,
was nice enough to help me push my kayak back.
So that was it. We
didn’t try again. Need a better/tighter
skirt rand to combat roll. Will wait
for the surf to lower again. I really
wish we had someone to teach us, because it feels like if we just knew where to
go or how to read the water then we’d have awesome results. Hopefully we’ll get a chance at the baby
waves again before we have to leave.
-We’re headed to town now, where I’ll get a chance to post
this. Then we’re coming back for another
week at Jalama Beach!
