Beach Hike & Clean Up

On Saturday March 12th the Lopez Community Trails network in conjunction with the annual “Great Islands Cleanup” had its first “Go Take a Hike” of 2016.

This was a beach walk from Odlin County Park to Lopez Village with the intention of both having a good time and doing some good by cleaning up the flotsam and jetsam on the beach.

Ten people participating including: Kirm Taylor, Mike and Taya Higgins, Liz Taylor, Charlie Janeway, Ron and Sheila Metcalf, Mike Moore, Volodymyr Voronov, an exchange student from the Ukraine who is a junior at Lopez High, and Nick Teague, with the San Juan Islands National Monument.

We started at Odlin rather promptly just before noon, as we were concerned about the incoming tide. The walk was both beautiful and a little arduous as there were logs to climb over and a beach full of large rocks to be stumbled over.

We picked up a lot of trash. The most common was styrofoam and bits of plastic in varying sizes. There were also crab pot buoys, an anchor, cans and bottles, ropes and much more. Nick Teague rowed his dory south from Odlin, met us at Flat Point and took aboard much of the trash we had collected up to that point. That was also a good stopping place for lunch. The view was fantastic.

Afterward we soldiered on south, collecting more debris, until we finally arrived at the Haven Kitchen beach stairs, tired but happy. We were especially happy that the weather cooperated and we didn’t get the expected rain. Lopez School will use some of the approximately 200 lbs of collected trash for an Earth Day beach trash sculpture project.