Sunday, June 3, 2012

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It has been replaced by a light on a tower that is automated.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).


1 comment:

Sara P. said...

So, Marv, I see you are quite knowledgeable in your Twilight facts, and I must ask, Team Jacob or Team Edward???

PS - You are my favorite blogger!