Grayland Beach 2010

At 9am on Saturday, March 27th, 7 Scouts and 6 adults left for Grayland Beach. The drive was just under 3 hours, and we all stopped to get clamming licenses and gear on the way there at the Big 5 in Aberdeen. We were lucky enough to have the outing be on one of the few weekends a year that people are allowed to clam in Washington. We bought clam guns, clam shovels, and a couple of licenses for the adults, the Scout under the age of 15 didn't need licenses. We arrived at Grayland Beach State Park, campsites 110 to 113, and parked our cars at around 11:45am.

When we got out, there were still a few campers in our site from the night before, so we ate lunch on the beach, and waited until they had left. While we were on the beach, it was sunny and around 62 degrees so we took off our coats and shoes. A few Scouts played football and monkey in the middle, and others dug holes with clam shovels. We also found out that check-in time was at 2:30 pm. Once we had finished with lunch, we went back to camp and set up our tents along with a few dining-flies around the cooking area. We also got out our food and put our stoves up for later that night. The area surrounding the camp-site had small pools of horrible gunky water that made mosquitos every few seconds. Next time we might try new sites, but other than that the sites were great.

We went back to the beach a while later when the tide was low, and it was still light out to clam. We went out to the beach again to find around 1,000 people clamming on the beach, and tearing it up in the process. Most of the Scouts went clamming, but a few also flew kites. We caught around 20 razor clams between all of us, but most of them were scared off because there were so many people. That night, we took the clams we had caught, cleaned them, dipped them in raw egg, and then cooked them. We crushed up ritz, mixed the crackers with garlic and a bit of butter and covered the clams with that. They were delicious.

The next morning we woke up and ate breakfast. After breakfast we cleaned up the rest of the cooking gear, and worked on skills including knots and the Totin' Chip and Firem'n Chit. After we had finished with the skills, we tore down camp, and a few people left early for sports. The people who were left stayed a bit later and did a trash sweep. On the ride home it rained so hard that we could hardly see out of the car. We were very lucky to avoid the rain while we were camping. Definitely one of the best car camping trips our Troop does. - AMG

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