Places You Never Thought You’d Be

We left Tacoma this morning in the drizzle.  We avoided the freeway and drove through the city.  Again I was struck by what they call “hills”.   These are not hills.  These are like giant carnival rides in cars.  I’m really convinced I hate San Francisco.

Taking far less time then we anticipated, we headed out to the peninsula, and the Olympic National Park, home of Mt Olympus.  It felt like we were entering wilderness and back into lumber jack territory.  This made me even more nervous about our unknown hotel reservations for the night.

After a few stops for rest rooms and Native American gift shops, we arrived in Port Angeles, the main town at the north end of the peninsula. It’s a port town - obviously - with ferry service to Canada.  It is pretty big for the area.  It is a very weird mix of lumberjack, ocean and town. We found the motel - it wasn’t too scary from the outside, and decided we should eat something to give them time to clean rooms.

This resulted in our visit to down town proper. We ate at a seafood place looking out at the sound and the boats, very nice.  We then walked over the marine life center, it looked tiny.  Walking around it, we peered into see the five year olds at the four touch tanks, and decided we didn’t actually need to go in.  Instead, we opted for the local bookstore.

It was a real local bookstore, don’t see that much any more.  I found a good local cookbook (one of our traditions.)  I was starting to wonder if that was going to happen this trip.  At check out, I was chatting with the man whom I think was probably the owner.  He was from NJ, originally.  He told us, we needed to drive up hurricane ridge.  They had snow there this morning.

So we officially checked into the motel, The Riviera Inn.  Thankfully it is not like the Rainbow Motel.  It is mid century modern and vintage, but its clean - and not in a scary place.  I’m perfectly happy.  And it’s keys are on those groovy plastic diamond with the room number on it.  I so love those.

We me not having room stress, we headed off to hurricane ridge.  I know how previously on this trip I was a little, say overwhelmed by the narrow windy road with no guardrail on the side of a mountain?  Much like I was in the Needle Mt drive in SD?  Nothing compares to this drive.  We got half way up, and entered the clouds.  A mix bag, the fog was a little scary, but not seeing over the side of the road was helpful.  Then we climbed higher, entering switch backs, and then tunnels.  And then we went higher.  Where we could see down … onto the cloud and the tops of trees.  The wildflowers were beautiful.  Then there was the view… amazing view, and then we went higher, and higher still, until with me a little green we reached the visitors station at the top.  The view was amazing.  A whole series of snow topped mountains.  Snow topped mountains.  Not even just one, but several.  And whole areas that I would have called mountains, but I was looking at the tops of trees.  Trees that I knew from the drive up, are 100+ feet.  (The official elevations of these mts were 6-8k.)

We also passed a dear or elk driving up.  Just hanging out on the side of the road.  And then at the top, two dear were roaming thru the parking lot. Mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, being less than 2 feet from a wild animal was kind of cool, on the other hand, that the wild animal didn't mind being two feet from lots of people and cars, is not so good. 

The ride down was not as scary as the ride up.  It was a little less foggy and I had some sense of where the road was going to go.  Fright factor included, it was all well worth it.

Back in town we stopped at the local Art Center, a tiny little place with a show up in which the woman dips cloth in wax, forms it, then pieces it together with screws.  It a little odd, but it actually looked better than it sounds.  We got the grand tour by a delightful elderly lady who wanted to talk to someone.  I suspect as a volunteer there, they don’t see a lot of people.  (She used to teach 3rd grade.)  The location also has a sculpture walk through the woods.  It was not raining, which was a plus, but the bonsai trees, were better.  The sculpture just wasn’t that interesting.

Tomorrow will be another drive day - through more of Olympic Park and out to the Indian reservation.  The plan is also to see Forks, famous only as the setting of Twilight.  (We did walk past the restaurant here in town  which served as the location for Bella and Edward’s first date.  It was kind of neat to see the reference, but we didn’t feel the need to eat there.)