Car Tour

We rented an Oldsmobile Cutlass and did a two day tour around the Olympic peninsula on Thursday and Friday 24-25 September. We did a counter clockwise circumnavigation, starting off by heading west on Hwy 101 from Port Townsend through Port Angeles.

Our first stop was for a cup of coffee at Madison Falls which although is not spectacular this time of the year is in a splendid forest setting. At the Elwha river, a classical trout stream where we had parked the car, Brenda saw an "American Dipper" literally walking along the bottom of the river searching for food.

We then passed Lake Sutherland then enjoyed the spectacular views of Lake Crescent. Western Australians are not accustomed to seeing large fresh water lakes that are 600 ft deep.

We had lunch in a little public park at Lake Pleasant to the sound of the workings of a timber mill. (All morning we had seen a steady stream of logging trucks heading east.)

Then it was on to Ruby Beach which to us looked beautiful but uninviting and wild. It was there that Brenda had her first close look at a chipmunk. We then drove along the coast road and decided to bypass a visit to the Hoh rain forest in order to spend more time in the Quinault area. We checked into the Quinault lodge at about 4.30 PM.

The main building of Quinualt Lodge was built around 1910 and is a large and solid log building typical of the times. We had booked a lakeside room on the top floor of a separate 3 story building built much more recently. We spent several hours that night in the large, stately, and very comfortable guest lounge with the warmth of a wood fire in a large fire place and overlooked by the head of a large elk which the plaque claimed had died of natural causes. There was not a TV in sight. People were chatting, reading, playing board games, or just quitely contemplating the atmosphere. Brenda and I found a quiet corner and did some internet work and spoke with Stephen via Skype. It was during this session that I saw Mark's message that the parts for the SABB diesel had arrived. The good news was that Mark had all of the parts that had been ordered. The bad news was that they had shipped two heads instead of one.

The next morning we went for a short walk along the lake side and soon after checking out visited the world's largest Spruce tree (about 1000 years old). We then drove on to Gray's Harbor in search of a highly recommeded bird sanctuary near the airport. We failed at first and Brenda did about 45 minutes observation along the coast line of Gray's Harbor. We then had a second attempt and found the bird sanctuary well inside the airport grounds. The sanctuary is a large area of mud flats and some higher ground. A long walkway has been built enabling visitors to make a good survey of the area. It was a bit late in the year for seeing migratory (to the southern hemisphere) birds, which Brenda thinks we may have missed by only about two weeks.

On the way back to the car I spotted an small airplane of interest and asked the person working on it if I could take a photo. The man was George Harrington, who owns four airplanes and has a yacht in the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand. He took great interest in our sailing experience between New Zealand and Juan de Fuca. He and his wife have had the boat in NZ for nine years and visit every year for six months. However, he is thinking of sailing on, possibly around around the Horn to Uruguay.

The airplane he was working was a Stinson. Then he took us to another hangar where he showed us the only one of his four air planes that is flying: a Pitts Special that he built himself.

George confirmed our suspicion that the air port had been built by the military during WWII. He said that the mile-long runway was used by B-17's and patrol planes (probably PBY's). I thanked George for the trouble that he had gone to and gave him one of my Pachuca cards. He seemed pleased to be able to get details of our sailing experience from the blog.

We then left Gray's Harbor and drove through some (to us) heavy traffic until we got past Shelton, where the driving got better. We soon found ourselves in one of the delights of the trip: the stretch of HWY 101 along the west side of the Hood Canal. It is a superb road with great views of the water.

Past the Hood Canal near the town of Quilcene Brenda spotted a small herd of Elk in a state reserve. We stopped and she took some photos of her first Elk.

We arrived at Port Townsend Boat Haven at 7.15 PM, just before dark. Although we knew that we had just scratched the surface of what the Olympic peninsula has to offer, we were satisfied with the trip because we felt that we had a good sense of what the area is about.

The top right photo is of Madison Falls. At top left is the Elwha river. (How a bird can walk along the bottom in that current baffles me.)

The next two photos are of Lake Crescent. Zoom in on the information board to get an idea of how high the glacier was.

Then there is a photo of the rocky coast at Ruby Beach.

The next three photos are of Quinault Lodge and Quinault Lake early in the morning.

Then there are two photos of the world's largest spruce tree. (Zoom in with the left mouse button to read its statistics.)

Then there is George with his Stinson and Pitts Special.

Then there are the elk - not quite the moose that Brenda wanted to see but still new and exciting to her.