2012/05 Western USA trip - Olympic Mountains |
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Thursday May 17th
Amazingly, we were off early next morning, leaving the house in Jim’s care. There was a long queue at the border at Sumas, but we got through quite quickly. I’d expected some problems because of our mix of nationalities and residences but John and Edna’s ESTA was good until August and I still had an I-94 left over from the England trip. I could stay until July 16th.
We had a couple of stops in Sumas, one to pick up my new camera from our American mail drop and one to post the May letter off around the world. We’d left Hope with an empty fridge, to simplify our passage through US Customs, so we stopped too in Bellingham for a massive shopping session and some lunch. The Little Guy’s cuteness was already attracting questions like “Do you have a bathroom in there?”
The mountains around us were still deep in snow, but the local weather forecast for the weekend was quite good, so we were heading for the beach, or at least for the parts of Olympic national park that are close to sea level. Although the Olympics are quite close to Hope as the crow flies, Puget Sound is in the way, and driving around it requires dealing with Seattle’s traffic, something we wanted to avoid. So we took a new route for us, crossing the bridge to Whidbey Island and taking the short ferry trip from Coupeville across Puget Sound to Port Townsend. It was a great day for a ferry trip, calm and sunny.
We soon found we had communication problems. John’s hearing has been damaged by years of working in furniture factories, so he can’t hear much above the noise of driving: wind and engine and tyres. Sandie was still recovering from an ear infection and couldn’t hear John. Edna speaks very clearly but quietly, as does our little lady in the GPS giving us directions. I could hear them all, but not when they were all talking over each other, which happened all too often. We were often at cross-purposes.
I’d originally planned to camp on the cliff tops at Kalaloch, but they’re on the other side of the park. By the time we’d finished the twisty drive around Lake Crescent, we’d had enough of driving for the day and we pulled into an odd little private campground at Forks, just ouside the park. It was more central than 
Kalaloch, but not as scenic. It was also supposed to have more facilities, but the showers weren’t working and the Wi-Fi was intermittent; this would be a recurring theme for the entire trip! All of us campers shared just two sinks, so it was just as well that there was only one other occupant.
Friday May 18th
Friday was our first day of exploring the parks, in this case the Olympics’ Hoh River Trail, famous for its temperate rain forest. It was a safe choice as it’s at its most beautiful on a soft, drizzly day, but we had bright sunshine, not as photogenic but kinder to the visitors.
We goggled at the massive trees, spruce and hemlock, some over 300 feet high, but all the rocks and the older trees are smothered in 
mosses and ferns and young trees growing out of any crevice, so the main impression is that the world has gone green. We walked through the Hall of Mosses under the canopy of big-leaf maples and took most of the shorter trails round the visitor’s centre.
Our afternoon stop was at Ruby Beach, a short drive past the Hoh. A trail leads from the headland’s parking lot down to the beach with its massive pile of driftwood logs and collection of sea stacks, remnants of earlier cliffs and islands. Abbey Island dominates the view from the sands and Cedar Creek carves a path across the beach. This is one of the most scenic beaches on the northwest
coast. There are some good hikes along the beach but it was late in the day and 
the tide had turned, not a good time to be walking below cliffs, so we just enjoyed the sunshine and the scenery.
On the way back I saw a signpost for a giant cedar tree, but after bouncing along gravel roads for a while I realized it wasn’t the cedar I remembered and I gave up before we were totally lost.