The Road Goes Ever On

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Olympic National Park: Sol Duc

From Hurricane Ridge we drove on, around the Strait and down into the peninsula, to the Sol Duc area, a hot springs and rain forest central. There we spent a couple days and nights, resting and then doing the hike to Sol Duc Falls.

Camping among the big trees; mostly Douglas Fir and Sitka Spruce

Trail to Sol Duc Falls

Angel Wings fungi

Angels with dirty faces?

A nice morel pokes through; well, I think it was a morel; maybe I should stick
to Safeway's produce selections...

Rain forest

We poked all around the Park and peninsula and rain forest for a week and never
saw a drop of rain...

Sol Duc River

In a day or two, we'd be visiting Forks, WA, ground zero for Mormon Vampirism;
here, Vicki is reviewing Twilight or one of its sequels

Back on the trail; note interesting change in spelling...

Dry creek

Cleft downstream from the falls

Sole Duck Falls

Certainly among the top 1,000 we've seen recently

More scary mushrooms

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Olympic National Park: Hurricane Ridge

From Patti and Ed's we headed up and around the peninsula, poking in and out of the great Olympic National Park. We had visited before, at the turn of the century/millennium, camping on our way back to Missoula from a professional meeting at Point Reyes in CA. All either of us remember from that visit was the rain forest. This time we vowed to do more justice to this great park, which is easily the most diverse of all our national parks. We stopped first at Hurricane Ridge, 5,000 feet up from the Straits of Juan de Fuca, for a peek at Olympic's alpine environment...relatively high mountains with abundant snow.

Alas, despite the forecast, the mountain views were fairly cloudy, so we settled
instead for visitor center views

Poulsbo and environs, east of the Park

Olympic is diverse for a range of reasons...Alpine country, rain forest, incredible
beaches and coastal scenery...and everywhere, great trees

We were there

Mt. Olympus somewhere out there; not reminiscent of the Mt. Olympus we saw
in Greece in 2010; http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2010/12/olympus.html; nor
the Mt. Olympos in Turkey: http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2010/11/chimaera.html

Across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Victoria, BC, where they are unarmed and
have healthcare; so sad...

Dungeness Spit, from the approach to Hurricane Ridge

High School Reunion In Poulsbo, WA

Our work completed, for now, we departed Missoula October 3rd, heading west on I-90, to Spokane, where we had new house batteries waiting for us at Camping World (Deka AGM 105aH) as well as an appointment with a Dodge dealer there to look into two recalls on our rig. Those things attended to, we carried on under darkening skies and then rain and then more rain until we rounded Seattle and Tacoma and headed up the peninsula to Poulsbo.

Waiting for us in charming Poulsbo were Patti B. and her husband Ed, residents of the area for many years. Vicki and Patti were good friends at Nova high school in the 60s, and had not seen each other since 1970 in Chicago. We spent a couple days, the girls reminiscing and catching up, Ed and I comparing notes on mutual favorites of our generation, old flicks, the Pythons, SNL, the Coen Bros, and much more. Sympaticos. We visited a variety of sites on the peninsula on driving tours and learned a good bit about the area...which we had visited briefly years ago, but never fully appreciated. A beautiful place, within sight of Seattle, but quite rural and coastal.

Patti and Vicki

At Poulsbo, a place we had never heard of before, but which we will not forget;
a setting and culture that reminded us more of BC and Alaska than anywhere
else