The beach yesterday and the mountains today. Ya gotta love this state!
We drove to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center and the sky is clear. Mount Olympus DOES exist!! It’s part of the Olympic Range of several mountains, many with glaciers. Olympus itself has eight glaciers.
We talked to a ranger and found a hike to do. We took a narrow dirt road out to Obstruction Point trailhead. We saw lots of cars and people in the parking lot but once we hit the trail, we saw only a few people.
Our trail went up several hundred feet in elevation, then traversed the ridge. We had incredible views above tree line. We got to a trail junction and turned down to hike into the valley below. for our return. This trail went down 1,700 feet in about one mile. If it was any steeper, we would have been sliding all the way down. We went down, down, down into the valley, passed a couple of marmots peeking out of their holes. The trail then traversed the valley which was full of more beautiful wildflowers and waterfalls. At the end of our hike, we had to climb back up several hundred feet to the trail leading back to our truck. Tough hike, but very beautiful.
We drove into Port Townsend to catch a ferry to Keystone/Whidbey Island. Because we were on a peninsula, we would have a lot of driving south and then north again to do to get to our next destination, to visit Steve and Jeannie on Camano Island, WA, near Seattle.
From Whidbey Island we drove to Camano Island and the location of Nomadic Research Labs. Steve and Jeannie are friends we met thru Chris and we all have some nomadic traveling background. In 1988, Steve biked around America on a recumbent bike outfitted with several computers, a GPS system, ham radio and lots of other technology. He wrote a book on his travels, “Computing Across America: The Bicycling Odyssey of a High-Tech Nomad” and was even featured on the Phil Donahue Show. We got in and chatted briefly with Steve, Jeannie and their friend Ned.
We parked our truck in their yard and camped there.