bigmacbear (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bigmacbear) wrote2006-10-28 09:54 pm
bigmacbear) wrote2006-10-28 09:54 pm
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A Visit to the Olympics
...no, not those Olympics... ;-)
This afternoon![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gmjambear and I took a day trip to Olympic National Park, on the Olympic Peninsula near Port Angeles. We left the apartment around noon and took the Seattle-Bainbridge Island ferry.
On the way we stopped at a roadside overlook maintained by the S'Klallam Tribe at the inner end of Sequim Bay. (The original native name would probably be written S'Kwim which is how Sequim is actually pronounced.) We passed the city of Sequim about 2:45 and decided to just keep going to the Park entrance.
It was a little tricky trying to read the signs directing us to the visitor center just south of downtown Port Angeles but we managed to get there. The fellow at the visitor center told us not to worry about getting passes there as a wider variety was available from the ranger station five miles up the road at the park entrance. When we reached the ranger station it occurred to me that I'd misread the information on the web regarding passes -- I'd thought that for twice the price of a single pass (good for one park for one week) I'd get the all-parks annual pass, but that was the price of an annual one-park pass. So I just got the single pass at $15. The ranger told us the road to the Hurricane Ridge summit was going to close in about an hour -- this was about 3:15 -- due to anticipated weather conditions. So we decided to make a run for it.
Along the way we saw several overlooks, many full of visitors, and we decided to save those stops for the descent because otherwise we may not make it to the top in time to get any pictures before having to turn around and come down. We were rewarded by a spectacular view of the sunlit top of Hurricane Ridge and the remainder of the Olympic Mountains receding into the haze, and a few fluffy cloudbanks forming above the mountain we'd just climbed (Mount Angeles).
On the descent we chose to stop at the overlook just on the downhill side of the three tunnels the road traverses on its way up. The view from this overlook was also spectacular and we could even see a wispy image of Vancouver Island, BC across the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Another family had stopped to take pictures and the mother offered to take one of us with my camera, and Gary was happy to reciprocate with theirs.
As we passed the ranger station on the descent we saw that indeed they had closed the road to uphill travelers and were merely waiting for all of us to get off the mountain before closing it outright for the night. At a smaller overlook just downhill we met a disappointed family who hadn't arrived in time.
We had an excellent dinner at a Thai restaurant called Sawadee Thai Cuisine in downtown Sequim. Gary had a wide noodle dish with chicken and I had salmon in red curry sauce with coconut milk and bell peppers.
The trip back was relatively uneventful, although we got a bit of a chuckle at the hapless Mercedes owner who had to be told, not once but twice, to turn off the motion sensor in his car alarm as the vibration of the ship's engines was setting it off.
We got home about 9. All in all, a long but pleasant day.
This afternoon
gmjambear and I took a day trip to Olympic National Park, on the Olympic Peninsula near Port Angeles. We left the apartment around noon and took the Seattle-Bainbridge Island ferry.On the way we stopped at a roadside overlook maintained by the S'Klallam Tribe at the inner end of Sequim Bay. (The original native name would probably be written S'Kwim which is how Sequim is actually pronounced.) We passed the city of Sequim about 2:45 and decided to just keep going to the Park entrance.
It was a little tricky trying to read the signs directing us to the visitor center just south of downtown Port Angeles but we managed to get there. The fellow at the visitor center told us not to worry about getting passes there as a wider variety was available from the ranger station five miles up the road at the park entrance. When we reached the ranger station it occurred to me that I'd misread the information on the web regarding passes -- I'd thought that for twice the price of a single pass (good for one park for one week) I'd get the all-parks annual pass, but that was the price of an annual one-park pass. So I just got the single pass at $15. The ranger told us the road to the Hurricane Ridge summit was going to close in about an hour -- this was about 3:15 -- due to anticipated weather conditions. So we decided to make a run for it.
Along the way we saw several overlooks, many full of visitors, and we decided to save those stops for the descent because otherwise we may not make it to the top in time to get any pictures before having to turn around and come down. We were rewarded by a spectacular view of the sunlit top of Hurricane Ridge and the remainder of the Olympic Mountains receding into the haze, and a few fluffy cloudbanks forming above the mountain we'd just climbed (Mount Angeles).
On the descent we chose to stop at the overlook just on the downhill side of the three tunnels the road traverses on its way up. The view from this overlook was also spectacular and we could even see a wispy image of Vancouver Island, BC across the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Another family had stopped to take pictures and the mother offered to take one of us with my camera, and Gary was happy to reciprocate with theirs.
As we passed the ranger station on the descent we saw that indeed they had closed the road to uphill travelers and were merely waiting for all of us to get off the mountain before closing it outright for the night. At a smaller overlook just downhill we met a disappointed family who hadn't arrived in time.
We had an excellent dinner at a Thai restaurant called Sawadee Thai Cuisine in downtown Sequim. Gary had a wide noodle dish with chicken and I had salmon in red curry sauce with coconut milk and bell peppers.
The trip back was relatively uneventful, although we got a bit of a chuckle at the hapless Mercedes owner who had to be told, not once but twice, to turn off the motion sensor in his car alarm as the vibration of the ship's engines was setting it off.
We got home about 9. All in all, a long but pleasant day.