New Places

Rick and I have been so busy for the last few months with wedding plans, moving preparation and now fitting everything of Rick's into my house that we haven't had the chance to go play at all. By this time last year we had already gone to the Balloon Stampede at Walla Walla, the Spring opener to Toppenish and a day trip of over 300 miles around Mt. St. Helens and to visit his cousin Melinda in Chehalis on the way home. Well, this weekend was forecast to be hot and even warm on the coast. Rick has been saying that he wanted to take a driving trip around the Peninsula so I suggested we escape and do it. Even the coast was supposed to be warm which is rare here. So on a whim we decided to do it. No reservations, barely any planning at all.

We got up and hit the road by 8 on Saturday morning so reached the coast about 2 hours later. The cloudy, cool coast, as usual. Well, it was only 10 AM, let's give it time.

We continued to drive north up the coast. Still cloudy. But warm enough to wear shorts. We got lots of shots of that cloudy coast, with the interesting driftwood and sea stacks that our coast is know for. But not too many of the latter, they weren't always visible through the fog.

I had planned to try to see some of the sights I've missed in the past due to having too many kids, and some too young to hike very far. One was called "hole in the wall". Ran out of walkable beach, the tide was in and the surf was high. Everyone built little cairns all over, there were nothing but flat rocks everywhere which lent themselves to cairn-building. They were deserving of some photos, but no "hole in the wall". Oh well.

On one of Rick's trips in the past he remembered a forest of burls. There had been a sign on the main road. We got to the place near where he remembered it to be but no sign. But he spotted a little trail and decided we should explore it and guess what? It was the burl forest! Apparently they removed the sign on the main highway, but we found it anyway. It was pretty odd, some of the burls were about oh, I don't know, maybe 6 feet in diameter!

We eventually had to shoot north, to the inlet from the Pacific to the Straight of Juan deFuca. We got to the coast at Clallam Bay. I don't believe I'd been there before. Right next to it was Sekiu, I'd heard of it but never even seen it spelled out. Then we hit the Makah nation and Neah Bay. It was interesting but a typical indian reservation. Actually, for here, it was not typical, it is a poor tribe or reservation and there was no casino.

We just buzzed past it, planning to possibly explore a little more after we reached some more photo destinations. I was hoping to get a sunset on the beach and wanted to see Cape Flattery and the lighthouse. We also had made no rooming arrangements so we wanted to see if there would be any interesting camping or cabins on the coast. Well, the beach up there was even foggier than further south had been and the cabins were all rented. The camping was a joke. So we gave up on the ocean side and headed to Cape Flattery, the northwest most spot in the contiguous 48.

We drove out and found the hike to the actual point to be only a half mile. It was a nice trail, well maintained and about a third of it covered with a boardwalk. We got out there and enjoyed some spectacular views, interesting birds but still fog. Not enough to ruin our photo session, but enough to keep us from seeing the lighthouse. The pictures came out looking like paintings, very colorful but the light fog kinda washing out some of the background. Here, see for yourself:

So after taking way too many pics there at the cape we headed out to go back to trying to find some rooming. We had the tent and sleeping bags in the car but Rick preferred a room. I wanted to get some sunset shots, from somewhere on the shore of the Straight, since the ocean turned out to be a bust.

We were driving, looking for a room and looking for a sunset and a place to get pics of it. We didn't find a room but the sunset started adn we got shots of it back at Clallum Bay. Some really awesome shots.

By the time it was done it was about 9. Rooms were all gone. Restaurants were closing. So we hit a tavern on the far end of town. The dumpiest tavern ever. I ordered the special - shredded beef and cheese chimichangas. Rick ordered egg rolls. The chimichangas were the ones from Costco sold in plastic wrappers. She nuked them, plopped them on a plate, poured on some salsa and shredded cheese. Rick's egg rolls were deep fried. It was awful. But it was food and including our drinks the bill only came to $18.

So now we had full bellies but still needed a place to sleep. I suggested we try just heading out of town, toward our next destination, Port Angeles, and just find a dirt road that we could head down and pitch our tent.

It started raining.

The dirt roads all had gates blocking entrance.

It was about 11 and we'd had a long day.

We used my GPS to find the roads and finally I convinced Rick to just stay at this one where the gate was set back just a little more than some of the others in an area called "Pysht". And the dirt road that we had to set the tent up on wasn't rocky. So we pitched the tent in the rain and crawled in to sleep. It rained at least half the night. One corner of the tent puddled a little and the sleeping bags got a corner wet. My jeans were there and got wet too. But we got some sleep.

We got up and hit the road about 7. We found a pleasant cafe in Joyce, had a nice breakfast, got to use a real toilet and freshen up a little with running water. On to Port Angeles.

There was an art event going on which included a sand sculpting competition. So we enjoyed the sights there in about 2 hours and headed out to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park. Rick has lived here all his life and hasn't been to Hurricane Ridge. The place is renowned for very tame deer.

The weather was perfect so we saw the deer, including a brand new one that was nursing on it's mom about 30 feet from the crowds. We hiked up a hill a bit to see more views and ended up chasing butterflies, trying to out-do each other for the best shot. Back in the parking lot we caught a guy taking his pot-belly pig for a walk. Rick is a sucker for animals. He went to get pictures, then stooped down to meet the piggy face-to-face. His name was Charlie. Rick's a nut.

OK, great weekend. It was about 3 and all that was left was to get on a ferry and get home. Unfortunately everyone else visiting the peninsula decided to do so at that very same time. It took hours in the hot sun to get to the ferry dock, but when we got there we were about 15 cars from the last ones to get on.

It sounds like everything went wrong but we had a great time and didn't let all those little setbacks bother us. I guess that kind of patience and forgiveness for things not going according to plan comes with age, huh? There has to be some advantage to being in our 50's, eh?