A first week

To paraphrase Jeremy Clarkson, we Did Camping ™️

Happy Monday!

Check out the insane view of Mt Rainier National Park we had our first night of this insane trip. I hope it sets the tone for the whole thing.

(If you’re reading via email, you can click through to the website for the high res treatment. All of these photos and more are viewable in this album as well.)

Before we left Tacoma on Sunday we decided to take it easy this first week - we’ve had low-grade colds and are generally worn out from getting our lives into a car. For us, that meant staying in Washington instead of immediately heading to Canada. See places we’re familiar with, take a breath, keep it low key. So we camped a few miles into Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest near Greenwater.

“Low key”. Right.

The next morning we drove into the park proper to do some exploring and find a campsite. Unfortunately, Stevens Canyon Road - Mt Rainier’s main drag - is currently closed during the week for construction. The ranger told us Ohanapecosh Campground (“Ohana”) is still open and we managed to snag two nights in the first come first serve loop.

It was a great spot. Steady river white noise, swaying trees, a campfire. Not a single cell signal to be found. Lovely! A 3-mile loop out of the campsite takes you to Silver Falls, which is absolutely worth the hike. (It’s hard to see scale here; the logs to the right are full-size Douglas fir. Maybe 50 feet long.)

After an overnight stop in Olympia, we headed toward the west coast of Washington for the weekend. About halfway out along state highway 12 you can see a couple of nuclear draft cooling towers. I’ve been riding and driving by them for years and have always wanted to see them up close…no better time than now! It turns out the towers were part of a planned nuclear facility but they were abandoned in the 70s…today, it’s just an industrial business park. It reminded me of that HBO show Chernobyl.

Out of the nuclear wastes we we headed on to Ocean City State Park for two nights. Originally we were going to visit the Hoh Rainforest…but we’ve been there before and the lines get huge on holiday weekends. Instead, we went in search for a lighthouse we had heard about.

This particular lighthouse - the Grays Harbor Light - is the tallest in Washington at 107 feet. It was in service from 1898 until 1992, but still operates as a Coast Guard signal tower. It is not close to the water - over half a mile to the ocean. Apparently coastlines can and do move. We also wandered around Westport for a bit, checked out a museum and brewery, did the usual Saturday afternoon thing. The weather was terrible but it was good to do some walking. We had dinner - mac and cheese - at the world famous Galway Bay in Ocean Shores. The food is great, the live music was great, it’s worth checking out if you’re in the area.

We learned a new game this week: which campsite is the best? It turns out it’s hard to win. The next day was a whirlwind tour of our storage locker - a final gear exchange before heading to Canada - and ended up on the north end of the peninsula near Port Angeles at a ridiculous beachside camping spot.

And that’s about all for now. We’re currently in line to get on the ferry to take us across to Vancouver Island. We’re gonna do the loop for a week or so before heading across to mainland BC! See y’all out there.

ps. I’ll probably do two of these posts next week - this one got really long.