Olympic Peninsula

This morning we decided it would be crazy not to see the Olympic Peninsula while we're here, so we took a ferry over to Bainbridge Island. The ferry system in Seattle is a well-oiled machine! It's a commuter's dream...lots of seats, a restaurant for breakfast or a snack on the way home, and the whole boat is a wi-fi hot spot, so lots of people take advantage of it. For us, it was great! Only $21 to take the car, and we enjoyed having a boat ride. Once we got to Bainbridge Island we meandered along the coastline and both commented on how like Nova Scotia it was. Beautiful countryside, pretty views of the water, lots of farms and forests. Very nice!
Our first stop was Port Townsend, a Victorian Seaport on the National Registry of Places. What a nice town! The buildings really are wonderful, lots of shops & cafes, and a terrific waterfront. Today was the start of their annual wooden boat show, so the harbor was abuzz! So many boats with brightly colored flags and lots of people. I can't imagine how crowded it will be tomorrow, so it was good that we were there today. I'm also pretty sure I enjoyed it better than Rick did, but he's very patient while I poke around the shops...he sits a mean bench! After we left Port Townsend we stopped at a State Park for our picnic lunch. It was nice to have a break and the park was on the water, which is always a bonus.

Next we drove out to Dungeness Spit, the world's longest naturally occurring sand spit. It's 5.5 miles long! There is a lighthouse out at the end that you can hike to, but we opted to just look from shore. It takes us an hour to walk 3 miles, so an 11 mile hike on sand? We just weren't up for it! What a beautiful spot, though. The mountains just loom over everything here, especially the one in this photo. Everywhere we go it just seems to pop out here and there...we thought it might be Mt. Ranier, but today we discovered it's actually Mt. Baker. Pretty spectacular! The picture doesn't do it justice, but it's huge and the summit is completely snow-covered.

Now, on to the most stressful part of today - Hurricane Ridge! Part of the Olympic National Park, Hurrictane Ridge is a 5,242 foot-high mountain area reached by driving up a 17-mile road. Up being the operative word here. What were we thinking?? Anyway, up we started, and what a road! No guard rails and it just keeps going up and there are the most frightening curves. Poor Rick, he was unthrilled to say the least. The views were amazing, but so scary at the same time. There is a visitor's center at the summit and hiking trails that seem to be very popular. Not for us! We still had to face the ride down! I don't think Rick took his eye off the yellow line in the road to avoid looking down over the edge of the road. But, we made it safely, and it really was an incredible experience!

Tonight we're staying in Port Angeles. It's an interesting town. There is a nice waterfront area with restaurants, hotels and shops, but outside of that area there really isn't much to offer in my opinion. There is so much traffic on streets that are mostly one-way that it's hard to figure out how to get anywhere. We ended the night with a visit to a casino like no other we've seen. The drive there took us out on roads that were so remote we almost thought we missed a turn somewhere. We finally got there, and oh, my! It was the smallest casino we've ever been to! I don't think there were more than 100 slot machines, no table or card games and a deli in the back. So all in all, it's been a day! Tomorrow we'll continue along the Peninsula and plan to visit the Hoh Rain Forest and will finish with another drive across the Columbia River. We'll finish our visit to Washington on Sunday with a trip to Mount St. Helen, then on to Oregon.