Dear Friends and Family,
“BRRRWWOOOOOOOOMMMGGG” (That’s the sound of the ship’s horn).
I am adding “boat” to the list of transportation modes I’ve enjoyed on this trip, rounding out the list already full of trains, planes, and an automobile (well, two automobiles, but I’ll get to that in another update).
“BRRRWWOOOOOOOOMMMGGG!!!”
After leaving Seattle, I boarded a ship in Edmonds bound for the Olympic Peninsula, at Kingston (I am describing this journey in transatlantic terms when, in fact, these ports are within sight of one another). The Olympic Peninsula is that neck of land between Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean that most people never think about, but ought to:
And why not? The Peninsula is beautiful! Weeeelll it’s beautiful when the weather cooperates, anyhow:
The weather on the Peninsula is highly frenetic and varies considerably over small areas. You may find yourself in an inland town just 10 miles from the coast, and find that the weather is perfect:
Like it is in this gay little town!
But then you go to the coast, and the weather changes to:
It’s an area of haunting coastal fogs and turbid, stoney shores, as seen at these beaches on the Quileute Reservation on the Pacific Coast:
Unusually, the Pacific Beaches of most of the Olympic coast are strewn with driftwood. Well, less driftwood, and more drift forests, given the size of some of the pieces that wash up:
The main recreation on these beaches, aside from fishing, and shivering, and pulling the lapels of your knit sweater together to keep our the chill while you wistfully look into the sea waiting for your husband to return from the war, is building these nice little driftwood forts everywhere:
And I thought this was really cool! We used to do this in the woods around my house growing up, although someone always came and knocked the forts down within the week. Some of these huts are honestly quite elaborate:
Put the word “shiplap” in the Zillow listing for this baby and it’ll pull $2800/month easy!
This one actually has four walls and a roof:
But how to get in?
Is this the front door or the chimney?
I Santa Claused my way in! Very roomy!
And an outdoor fireplace! Bump that rent up to $3500, baby!
Down on Ruby Beach, further south, you could find much of the same:
Ruby Beach was prettier, and eventually the sun did begin to creep out:
I’ll note here that around this time, I caught a wicked infection in my big toe that made it very painful to walk. I got on some strong antibiotics and eventually cleared it, but it somewhat limited my hiking and other activities the week of so I was on the peninsula. But anyways, I was still able to make it to the Hoh Rainforest on another day:
The rainforest was beautiful and brimming with mosses, ferns, huge trees, and all sorts of other plants making for one of the greenest forests I’ve ever seen. Every square inch of every living thing in this forest is covered with some other creature tying to eek out its niche in the ecosystem as well.
Speaking of niches, the nearby town of Forks has certainly embraced its own role in the international media ecosystem:
Now for those of you who don’t immediately recognize the cultural importance this town had in the late 00’s, here are three hints: brooding teenagers, viscous fandom infighting, and sparkles, sparkles everywhere. Come on now, put on your awesomesauce hats and try to think of the epic bacon answer xD xD.
No? Alright, Forks is the setting of the Twilight series, and the town really embraces it:
I mean they REALLY embrace it:
Yeeaaahhh, remember when we all distracted ourselves from the recession by hating on those gaunt and gangly teen hotboys Edward and Jacob? When we gave one last huzzah to making fun of “metrosexuals” in our media before it became just plain cool to be LGBT? Those halcyon and long-ago days when Tumblr was full of fanfiction, and GM was begging for scraps from senators, and all the bacon was epic and awesomesauce? Peppridge Farm remembers. And so does Forks, Washington.
Editor’s note: what the fuck am I talking about? It’s 2:00 AM and I shouldn’t be allowed to be blogging this late. No one should have given me this website.
Anyways, back at the coast, at Cape Flattery, the mood returns to the brooding and melancholic character that suited the Twilight books so well:
Not that anyone told me! Brooding and Melancholic are two things I have never, and could never, be.
Cape Flattery, by the way, is the northwesternmost point in the United States. It’s that corner of land way in the top left of the lower 48.
Towards the end of my time on the Olympic Peninsula, I had recovered enough to put in a hike on Hurricane Ridge, in the part of the park south of Port Angeles:
The views were stunning, especially down and over the harbor from Town Hill:
This is the view to the North and West, down the Straight of Juan De Fuca. You can really see the difference in cloud cover the further you get towards the coast.
Waaaaaay across the water you can just barely make out the Canadian city of Victoria on Vancouver Island. The scale of distance here is a little hard to capture. For example, that small white dot in the foreground in between the jetty and the foreshore, is this ship:
This as seen from the pier in Port Angeles.
Wildflowers abound.
My reaction to the stunning views and scenery.
It was a wonderful hike into a wonderful part of Olympic National Park. After admiring the views, I walked back down the trail towards the parking lot. I was about halfway back when I saw a deer much like this one:
Very much like this one, except that it was tearing ass down the hillside with an enormous cloud of dust behind it. It lept over the trail in a single bound and continued screaming down the mountain full-tilt, to the point where I wanted to yell “hey slow down, you’re gonna hurt yourself!”
What could possibly make a deer run like that?
Then I remembered this sign I saw at the trailhead:
What else can you use a Mountain Lion for, if not a pet and a weapon and a vehicle?
And then I saw the answer:
Ohhhhhh yeah baby!!! It was a freaking mountain lion!
It crossed the path going uphill and hid beneath a tree, presumably to watch for prey and escape the heat. Another wildlife watcher was nearby and let me use his binoculars to take some photos from a safe distance:
He sat there for a long time, grooming and stretching honestly like a normal housecat. It almost made you forget that you were looking at a man-killing machine who would feel no remorse about turning you into the appetizer ahead of a meal of venison. And eventually.he made his presence more known by stalking back across the trail a couple of times:
How freaking cool is that?!?!
But big cats aside, eventually it was time to move on:
Now I had turned east again, and it was time to start meandering my way back home. The second leg of this trip wasn’t quite done yet, but my wandering away from DC was: I’d run out of room to wander down! Any further wandering west and I would have needed a much bigger boat.
And honestly, it felt good to be rambling home again. But I will lay out why, and some of the developments accompanying that, in the final update on Leg 2 of the trip. For now, I am tired, and hope I will not be in the morning.
That’s all for now,
Stay well everyone,
Evan 💙
P.S.:
GAAAAAAAAYYY SLUUUUUUUGS
P.P.S.:
@Dan and Adrian, this is both of you, from the future. Also, congrats again on your engagement!