Sequim Washington May 2012 Part 2

 Here is part 2 for the month of May. If you haven't read part 1, you should scroll down and
 do that first. Now on with the tour. We have covered a lot of the Olympic Peninsula, part of which is Hurricane Ridge. This is part of the national park and is a 16 mile drive to the top. When we were there the snow was still 10 feet deep. At the time I am writing this there is still 8 feet of snow. It was a beautiful drive and not too cold. It turns out that even though we thought we made it to the top, we were still a mile short due to the snow.

 


 Not too far from where we are "working" there is a house called the troll house.  You can see from the pictures where the name came from. The house and the grounds are very well maintained and all of the figures around are beautifully carved. These two fellows are only two of the four  that are corner post for a shed covering old buggies and farm equipment. I'm going to have to go back and get some pictures of the fence post which are also carved trolls...very cool stuff.

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That fellow to the right was guarding the drive to the orchards. There were also two beautiful iron gates with dragons on them at the orchard entrance.  This was a nice trip; very quiet and serene area, interesting and close. Right now gas is $4.35 a gallon. I'm told that Washington state has the highest gas taxes in the states. This area is sort of like New Mexico. It is a long way to anywhere. There are no roads across the peninsula. Highway US 101 runs all the way around it with several roads into the interior but none all the way across it. We drove all the way around it the other day and it was 335 miles. We had gone to Pacific Beach which is a town on the south western part of the peninsula. When it was time to head back home it was about the same distance so, we just kept going.

One of our latest trips was to the HOH Rain Forest. This is up on the western part of the Olympic Mountains. There are several trails thru the forest and a nice camp ground. Holly read the sign for one of the trails and said it was 1/2 mile long so I figured that was easy enough. Turns out it was a mile and a half (I'm really going to have to learn to read) but it was easy walking thru the forest and along the HOH river.

I still can not get over how large the trees are. Some of these things are big enough to hide the Jeep behind and are over 200 feet tall. When you're walking thru the rain forest you notice that there is hardly any area on the ground that isn't covered by some sort of plant. Even the tree limbs are covered by different kinds of mosses and lichens. They look like they are wearing sweaters made by some crazy old aunt that is always knitting things for people.

We tried to find a four leaf clover in all of this mess but could only find three's. Holly said she needed Adam along in order to find a four leaf (who's Adam?).  Notice the dime in the picture. I know these weren't clover but when you don't know what they are you just guess, unless it is poison ivy or oak. Sometimes it is good to know some stuff.

The trail we walked ran right between these two trees. Still haven't figured out how they knew those trees were going to fall right there. At least it gives you an idea the size of these things. Now you can see why I am just amazed at the size of them.

This is the HOH River. It's fed from the snows in the Olympic Mountains and it is very cold. The picture of me checking the temperature of the water was not one of the smartest things I've done. The bank was loose stones, the water was very fast, very deep and very cold. I'll have to work on that along with the reading.

No, that's not a spot on my camera lens. Look real close and see if you can tell what it is. OK I'll tell you, it's a quarter. Now you're wondering why I would take a picture of a quarter on the ground. I didn't. I took a picture of a quarter from a bridge looking down through a stream six inches deep. The water was so clear it was like it wasn't there. 

These two pictures were taken on our trip to Pacific Beach. This is on a beach that we could drive right down on. The tide was going out and we had to stay above the high tide mark with the Jeep but we took the dogs out and walked down to the water. The picture of the Jeep is taken from the water and it was still going out. The other picture is of a live sand dollar waiting for the tide to come back in before the birds find it. If you've never been to the ocean and haven't seen how the tides move, it's amazing.

 

That's it for now. I know what you are thinking,,,what are they going to do for the next five months? That's easy to answer,,,REST. No, not really.  There's still a lot of this state to see. In the next couple of weeks we'll take the ferry over to Seattle and spend a few days there. Our friends Jackie and Larry from New Mexico called and are in the state so hopefully we will be able to meet up with them. That's all for now. Look out June, you're next!

Sequim Washington May 2012 Part 1

Well as usual, I am running a little behind on the blog. After a short drive of 2500 miles we arrived in Sequim on May 1st. That's pronounced Squim...just drop the E. As you will find out, there are a lot of strange names for the towns around here. The park here is small with 42 sites. As you can see our site is a little cramped compared to what we had in New Mexico, but our view of the mountains is spectacular. Holly works in the office and I work outside cutting grass and doing minor repairs and odd jobs. We work two days then have four days off to wander and explore, which we've already done a lot of.

Sequim is located on the Olympic Peninsula. Basically the center of the peninsula is the Olympic National Park.  There are so many areas around the coast line that are part of the park. One of the first places we went was to the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. This area combines the rainforest and shoreline of the Straits of Juan De Fuca.                                                                            

After walking thru the rain forest you walk down to the shoreline where there is a spit of land that sticks out in the straits with a light house on the end called the Dungeness Spit Lighthouse.  You can volunteer at this one for $375.00 per week per person. The only way to get there if you want to tour it is to walk along the waters edge, but only at low tide. It is a 5 mile walk one way and you have to go out and back before the tide comes back in. That is one of our goals...to take that walk.  The rain forest is amazing. It is so green and lush and the trees are enormous. It is such a change from the desert.

Our next trip was along the northern shore of the peninsula to all of the little towns such as Joyce, Piller Point, Clallam Bay, Sekiu, Neah Bay and on to Cape Flattery. This is the point where the Pacific Ocean and the Straits of  Juan De Fuca meet. The walk out to the cape is thru the forest and then all of a sudden there you are looking out over the ocean and the view is spectacular. There's an island just off shore that is called Tatoosh Island, named after an Indian chief. There's a lighthouse on the island that is no longer in use.
It has been replaced by a light on a tower that is automated. The island is going to be given back to the Indian tribe that it belonged to before so the fate of the lighthouse and buildings are unknown. It's a hard place to get out to so I think tours are sort of out of the question. There are some great pictures of the lighthouse from early years if you look up Cape Flattery Lighthouse on your computer.

We were on a little road trip when we saw the sign for Duckabush Rec Area. It was up Duckabush Road. Remember what I said in the beginning about strange names. When we got to the end there was a parking area for a water fall so we got out with the dogs and were going to make the hike until we saw the trail. It was narrow, muddy with tree roots and steep. Changed our minds and went to leave when I saw a two track off the end of the parking area. Off we went.  It got narrower and steeper and then around a curve was a large boulder. That ended that fun...now all we had to do was turn around and go back down.

For all of you Twilight fans,  we went to Forks and LaPush. We stopped by this sign and Holly took a picture of me standing by it for the grand kids. We drove around the town of Forks and visited the town of La Push. Very interesting to see all of the "Twilight" related businesses in Forks. The visitor center had maps of all of the Twilight buildings shown on it. The town of LaPush, which is on the Quilleute Reservation (where Jacob is from) is on the ocean and we went and walked on the beach by the bay. It is amazing to see all of the trees that were washed up on shore from the storms over the years. Some of them were larger then a car.

We found a rec area by LaPush that was right on the Pacific Ocean. The dogs loved running on the beach and chasing the waves and investigating all of the new smells. There was also some great places to take pictures.

We toured a Navy destroyer and went to a Navy Museum by the shipyard in Bremerton. We also went to the Navy Underwater Warfare Museum. It was an interesting place, dealing with the evolution of submarines and underwater diving. While we were there they had the change of command for the submarine USS Alabama and we were able to go. There are two complete crews for each sub so that it can spend more time at sea. The command change was for the Blue crew and it was very interesting. Well, I knew this was going to happen. I have run out of room so there will be a part "2" coming up for May. Told you we have been busy. Stay tuned...we have some great troll and rain forest pictures to come ( that's right I said troll).