Snozberry

Well, I've returned from the great northwest. There's so much to say, I don't know whether I'm up for punching it all in. The trip was fantasitc. There were a few snags along the way, but nothing to spend too much time fretting over.

It all started on Tuesday night. We flew over to Seattle and stayed at a Travelodge near the Space Needle. We woke up pretty early and caught a cab to the ferry. The driver dropped us off at the wrong terminal and we ended up missing the passenger only ferry we wanted to catch. That irritated me, because we could've slept for another hour if we'd been aiming for the main ferry (which carries cars and is slower than the PO one).

So, anyhow, we made it over to Bremerton (west of Puget Sound) and got picked up by the car rental place. Of course they only had one car on hand (that wasn't what we wanted), so we took it and ended up exchanging it for a little piece of crap death-trap without power steering up in Port Angeles. The drive up to Port Angeles was without incident and quite easy.

Throughout the trip I kept noticing the contrast between industry and civilization to the natural surrounding. The land is very beautiful, and really enhances the shoddy/dirty appearance of man's presence (by east coast standards most buildings are of Appalachian or rural NY quality). When you're in rural areas (virtually our entire trip) everything looks quite tired or very heavy-duty industrial-like. And when I say industrial, I mean dirty, messy, rusty & functional. There's lots of evidence of logging - not the least of which is huge swaths of young growth where forest has been clear-cut and then seeded (tree farms). Also, down in the industrial portions of Seattle and the west end of Port Angeles the dirty, run-down fishing, shipping and logging bases remind you of what goes into producing that lumber down at your local yard or salmon in the grocery store.

I've skipped the best part, though, the hike through the Olympic National Park! We went in at Sol Duc (pronounced "sole duck") in the early evening and hiked in a few miles to the first campsite along the Sol Duc river. It was just turning dark as we arrived. The next day we broke camp a little late and started our trek up and over to Lunch Lake. We climbed two or three thousand vertical feet through the various stages of the forest up to the ridge that separates the Hoh River valley from the Sol Duc river valley. There was some snow up there and the view was indescribably beautiful. The whole trip was blessed with great weather - and aside from the mosquitos, flies and painful feet, everything was basically perfect. After trekking for 10 hours or so, we finally made it over to Lunch Lake. Just at sunset, walking along a very narrow path on a very steep slope, approaching the junction of the high divide trail with the hoh river trail, we saw a black bear down a bit on the hillside. It was just ambling along the very steep hillside looking for berries, or somesuch. That was a pleasant bonus.

On the third and final day, we made our way across the rest of the ridge and down the mountain to Sol Duck falls. I'm somewhat hazy on a good portion of the descent because the scenery just didn't compare with that of the high divide or the trail on the way in and up. I did finally take off my boots, though, (which gave me some nasty blisters) and hike in my sandals. This is also probably part of the reason I don't remember the trail as much - I was constantly looking down to make sure I didn't twist my ankle or otherwise mis-step. With 50 pounds on your back and zero ankle support, it doesn't take much to do something stupid that will seriously hurt you. I was perfectly willing to trade the extra calf work and attention, however, for relief of the pain my boots were causing. Poor Jenny, who's feet had been fine for the trip, started to seriously hurt on the way down as her toes kept smashing up against the front of the boot. We tried very hard to be sure their fit was good in the store, but I guess we were a fraction of an inch off - and now her big toe is all purple. It'll heal, but I hope the nail doesn't fall off in the mean-time.

That takes us up to Friday afternoon. We were back at the car by the time we had started on Wednesday - thus completing a 20 mile hike in effectively two days of hiking! We kicked ass! Next time, though, I'm going to not schedule such a grueling trip. Everyone has to learn what they're capable of sometime and we did just that. Our speed uphill (jenny w/ a 35-40lb pack and me with a 50lb pack) was about 1 mile per hour. Downhill and on flats was conisderably faster, for me at least mostly hidered only by pain.

Friday night we stayed at a very nice little hotel (cheap, too) called the Waterstreet Inn in a town called Port Townsend. It was a shame we didn't get to stay longer there, but we had to be back to Bremerton by noon on Saturday to return the car. The rest of the day Saturday was spent dropping our bags off in the hotel (by the airport), taking the bus back into Seattle and wandering (gimping) around town. That afternoon was very laid back and quite enjoyable. We hung out around the public market at 3rd & Union - had lunch at a quite good deli that also served Indonesian food, walked down to Freedom Sqaure (or something like that), bought a couple books at a really big, local, awesom bookstore with very friendly and helpful staff (come to think of it, most everyone in Washington was noticeably more friendly than anyone else most everywhere I've been), took the bus back up past Union, ate a small sushi dinner in a modern restaurant with a homeless woman out front (there were homeless people all over the place in Seattle) and then took the bus back to the hotel so I could get up at 5:15 to catch a plan back to Washington.