You can follow along on the maps here.
First we drove up and over the Hood Canal Floating Bridge, per usual, and then hit the 101 westbound to Port Angeles. There, I deposited some money in the bank (hadn't had time during finals), and we ate breakfast at around 10 AM on what was an incredible day for December: Sunny, dry, and on the verge of a huge rainforest, no less! it was picture-perfect made for a winter hike. Which was exactly what we were intending to do. Breakfast was very nice down in Port Angeles, and again we set out at about 11 AM. Now, Marina is somewhat known for driving aggressively on abandoned backroads like the ones on this extremely underpopulated segment of the globe, and I managed to make Lake Ozette, after passing through Sekiu and Clallam Bay (responsibly, at the speed limit, I assure), dodging a light delivery truck, and merrily making our way passed the many trucks of fishermen on the river, we delivered ourselves to Lake Ozette. The ranger's station was boarded up for the winter, money was still required.. And Amy and I didn't have any cash. We needed water, anyway (though the emergency kit had purifying tablets, it would be dumb to use those except in an emergency), so we dodged back to The Lost Resort, where the kindly owner met us and, after confirming that he didn't have an ATM machine, we despaired, since we wanted to responsibly pay for the park experience. And then DR mentioned that he had a wad of twenties in his wallet. Durh.
We bought the water, made the payment for the park, packed up our emergency pack (emergency blanket, flares, emergency rations, purification tablets, hand crank flashlight/radio, first aid gear), as well as another flashlight, a normal blanket, the water bottles, and three tins of nuts into a single pack to be shifted 'round the three of us in a system of relay, and set out on our way. The first part of the trip involved the hike out to Cape Alava, a distance of 3.3 miles over rolling, undulating terrain, rather a rough go, particularly when my schedule required we make it in one hour; which we did, in fact, do, though after this Amy and Nate impressed on me that they'd just rather go back that way rather than walk the other six miles of the loop, three on the coast and three back. So we resolved to approach as close as the law, and respect, allowed us to approach to Cannonball Island, which is a very prominent and beautiful spot. Well, the first sentence is retroactive; since I'd been dragged to this area by crazy militia types in the mid-90's to be trained in survivalism on the behest of my parents, I knew exactly where to go, and we didn't bother to read the introductions to anything, so it later turned out that Cannonball Island is sacred to the Makah people. Thankfully for us, the Makah are kind enough (and wise enough, when dealing with frenetics like me!--but mostly kind enough, because I genuinely fell in love with the people and their brave stance to hold their land at the top of America and defend their traditional rights, and I would not wish to cause them offense) to also put up a no trespassing sign on the island, which can be hiked to at low tide, informing people it is sacred ground and climbing on it or otherwise disturbing it is not permitted. So, after a walk of about a mile on rocks and kelp beaches, observing the marine life, the huge amount of rotting kelp on the beach covered in flies and other bugs, and the marvels of the marine tidal life, and the islands and sea stacks in the distance, we arrived at Cannonball Island, noted the sign, and on reading it, we respectfully left as quickly as possible--but we couldn't help but notice as we'd gotten up to the sign that the ground in our vicinity was scattered with whale bones and baleen, which was a very sombre find (which we didn't disturb at all--I'd feel terrible to do that)--the origin of which I do not know, though I postulate the death was either natural, or else the bones are the remnants of a whale that the Makah tribe took in a fair hunt and then respectfully interred on this sacred isle.
Well, anyway, to avoid the horrible stench of rotting kelp on the beach, we tried to hike back through the forrest, only to find the route quite impassible. Amy accidentally touched this enormous, and very dead plant, which turned out to be poisonous of the sort that getting its sap on your skin is bad, while trying to figure out what it was; fortunately, it was so dead that it didn't burn her at all. After that we endured the stench of the kelp to get back to the trailhead, though, and thence proceeded back along the route we'd come, though it later turned out that the Cape Alava portion of the trail was by far the hardest, so the 3.3 miles covered on the return very much exhausted my companions, who were not used to the exertions of the route-march, and it took 1 hour and 30 minutes, thereabouts, and perhaps a bit less, or a bit more, to return (as we'd spent at least an hour on the beach and, liably, more). Perhaps noticably less; we were not marking time, and the great rainforest made it a deep gloom long before the sun had set, though not gloomy enough to hinder our passage through the last few tenths of a mile and back out to open ground. There, we unpacked, I used the sanican (one of the few genuinely clean ones I've ever seen--probably because it was the off-season), and we nipped back to The Lost Resort, where the kind fellow who runs the place made me a triple shot latte for The Run to the South despite his being closed, and sold DR more water, which he mostly chugged out of a jug, though he refilled waterbottles for Amy and I as well, which were quickly consumed. No pictures from this segment; I forgot to take them.
Thus began the Run to the South, with the Run To the Northeast, i.e., the drive along the 21-mile long deadend highway from Ozette back to Sekiu. Thence we drove through Sekiu and Clallam Bay and turned south, driving hard until we left the secondary highway and reached the main 101 about the village of Sappho, which is located slightly north of the village of Beaver. I am not making that up.
Proceeding hence south, the trip to Forks, which had been proclaimed to take about 1 hour and 30 minutes, was executed with my usual precision in 1 hour and 5 minutes, and now with the night coming down all around us--for we are at high latitudes, and arriving back to the car at 4:45 PM from the hike, and leaving the Lost Resort at 5:15 PM, we nonetheless quickly exhausted all of our daylight even before we'd left the road to Sekiu--and the radio endlessly spinning on seek until we picked up the Forks stations, we duly arrived in Forks, which is reputed to be inhabited by large numbers of teenage emo vampires and Stereotypical Native American Werewolves. "emo vampire" by definition including the word stereotypical. It is also the rainiest city in America, naturally, as it is on the verge of the great Hoh Rainforest, which gets up to 146 inches of rain yearly. We had half a tank at this brief pause in the Run to the South, and we refilled the car and then beat our way south on the 101 once more. It took about another two hours for us to reach Hoquiam, Washington, driving all-out in the Run to the South along the great distance, passed the Hoh River, Ruby Beach, through the Olympic National Park and Forrest, past the Queets and Lake Quinalt. Arriving thus at about 8:15 PM in Hoquiam, population 9,000 (the population of Aberdeen, the city just across the river, being 16,000), we ate an excellent repast at a Chinese restaurant in the town, during which I suffered a terrific nosebleed, which was my only real ill other than a single blister during the entire trip. Despite that, the food, potstickers, BBQ pork, and Mu Shu Pork in my case, was very excellent, and the tea good. Amy had a clay pot dish, and DR, something generic.
We finished our dinner (only the second meal of the day, we being hardy folks!), and the Run to the South began once again. Crossing the river, heading briefly east, we passed through Aberdeen and then, dodging a few deer, passed through Cosmopolis, reputedly the centre of the universe, which in this case is a town with a population of 1,595, a Weyrhauser factory, deer in the streets, and a combined city hall/police station in an old bank branch building where they've never bothered to remove the drive-thru window. Truly the centre of the universe! And thus we left the grand Grays Harbour Metropolitan Area. Hee. I said Metropolitan.
The Run to the South was thus completed at around 10:20 PM as we arrived into another set of twin cities, these even smaller than the last, and off the provided maps, called Raymond and South Bend, and located on the shores of the Willapa Bay, larger but shallower than Grays Harbour to the right north. There we stayed in the excellent SeaQuest Inn, where I also stayed with my girlfriend and general partner in sundry immoralities (the redoubtable philosopher, Eris!) when she was here in August. This beautiful and very well maintained hotel offers a suite with a full kitchen, living room, cable, internet, bathroom, and TWO SEPERATE BEDROOMS for only $90.00 after taxes! And that price held constant in both August and December. Naturally we showered and soaked our sore bodies here and then variously went to sleep, woke up, and enjoyed tea and coffee and hot chocolate before changing to clothes less suited to hiking and more suited to our ultimate destination, and after checking out, we struck off again, at about 10:15 AM, having spent on about 12 hours at the hotel and being much refreshed.
Proceeding southwards we skirted continuously the fringe of Willapa Bay on the 101, while the wind grew to the point of making driving precarious and the rain lashed us, for you see, a great storm had come upon us--which I had understood would be the case all along. So much the better! Though the last bit of the drive, running along the shore of Willapa Bay and on causeways over backish estauries, was made only in great difficulty from the heavy wind gusts buffeting the car, we lately arrived in the town of Long Beach, WA, both a thousand times smaller and a thousand times better than Long Beach, California. Well, not literally, but close. There we ate at a restaurant which Eris and I had in August found excellent (though we had not visited Ozette, this segment of the trip DID closely match our own; my only regret from August was that the Chinese restaurant on this December trip that we enjoyed so much, I had dismissed due to the lack of windows as a whorehouse of some sort on the first trip. But on this trip, I was in a closer lane of the highway, and concluded it really did have windows and didn't seem to be a strip club, so we stopped. The regret comes from the fact that not eating there left me so desperate that I ended up eating a small fry at McDonalds in Raymond that night, which could have been avoided. Alas. But no trip is perfect). After enjoying our excellent all-organic food, such as fresh Willapa Bay oysters, organic meat on burgers with handmade buns and swiss cheese, traditional chips in the English fashion for our "fries", well drizzled with malt vinegar, and for Amy, the incredible repast of cranberry and grains as a cereal--she actually ate more than I did!--followed by rockfish tacos with rice, of which I was allowed to try a piece of the rockfish, which was VERY TENDER AND EXCELLENT, may the arrogant scuts at the table next to us who were chidingly talking about how tough it was in response to the waitress explaining it was the special BURN IN HELL. *clears throat* Uh-humh.
Oh, and a map of our southerly coastal travels! : There you go!
At any rate, after this very, very excellent meal (ice-tea with a mint flavour caused by placing mint leaves in the tea glass! Splendid!), we drove north along the immense Sand Bar which is the Long Beach area--one of the largest and bars in the world, and turned into a vast spit, or peninsula even, by trees and grasses growing along it, and now inhabited by some thousands of people and even more of vacation homes--until we got to an area rather north where I decided to drive out to the beach. The wind was now easily blowing at 40 - 50 kts, and a huge sandstorm was essentially engulfing the open beach. In the midst of this, I thought there was a parking lot, somewhat covered in the sand carried by the tremendous winds.. Which was in fact soft sand. Oops; the car got stuck, nothing would initially extricate it, the chaps nearby in a truck didn't have towing gear, so we were alone, with the gathering surf pushed by the storm into the beach and the tide rapidly coming up to our position.
Well, fuck, at that point, if I can't use my engineering training to save the car, I don't deserve to live. So in my black skirt and stockings and everything I just open the door of the car--barely possible, it's being pushed on by the wind so hard--and in short order locate a couple reasonably flat pieces of wood, and this one long half-round of bark. Digging out the left front tire, I wedge one of the pieces of wood deep under it in the sand, and then add the second as a trailer to pick up the wheel behind it; I repeat the process on the right wheel, but use the half round of bark after the first piece of wood, instead. Then, ordering Amy and DR out into the sandstorm, worthy of the worst that the Arabian desert could frankly produce, I set the car in reverse and accelerate as they push, with the car lightened altogether by 350lbs, or more. The result is brilliant; the wheels catch the wood under them, the weight is appropriately distributed by the rail, or track, that the wood forms, the bark serves is purpose; these surfaces provide traction, and, in general, the car smoothly rolls backwards onto the pavement. I was a dumb enough blonde to get us into the fix, but a smart enough budding little junior engineer to immediately think of how to get the car out (in seconds, actually). The only casualty was mine, and fittingly so for my miscalculation--the wind was so powerful that it sandblasted my sunglasses into a fuzzy uselessness, so Marina the Vampire's eyes were in no small amount of pain from the sun that ducked through the fast moving clouds between squalls (seriously). Now you can see where there's no pictures of this, either--I'd have lost the camera lens. Now we hung around for 15 minutes, watching the surf pound in rhythmically, and the sand blowing around, while we shook the sand out of our clothing, readjusted shoes and so on, an congratulated ourselves on the brilliant adrenaline rush of a near miss. Then we drove off, ironically just as someone had fetched an end-loader to pull us out. We left quickly at that, since we didn't want them to try and charge us for going to get it when we had, in fact, extricated ourselves, and so off we headed to our next destination (after a brief detouring through two shops for me to buy new sunglasses), and thus we arrived, after passing through the Columbia River port of Ilwaco, at the southernmost point on the Washington Coast, of North Head and Cape Ddisappointment.
And here are the pictures from where we ascended first to the North Head light, built after the wreck of many ships, such as the one for which the land feature called Beard's Hollow just to the north is named--for that is where the last evidence of the ship, the Captain's body--was found many months later, for the depression there could be mistaken for the Columbia River Bar, and the Cape Disappointment light was obscured by a point called North Head, where the light of that name was thus built. I simply adore North Head--it has the Assistant Keeper's and Keeper's houses for rent as fully functional, modern homes inside, for vacations and so on--and is thus the most perfect honeymoon spot imaginable on the planet, at least in my view, especially in winter, where, being one of the windiest places in America, curling up before the roaring fireplace with hot chocolate and under a blanket is one of the most excellently romantic things to be imagined and indulged in, whilst the rain beats off the windows in sheets.
Arriving when there was no rain, we proceeded out beyond the Keepers' houses, and toward the light:
-- Beach south of North Head on the walk from the Keeper's House to the Light, the bar being the northern jetty covering the Columbia River Bar.
-- First glimpse of the light as we dashed out between squall lines in the 60-knot gusts (North Head is one of the windiest places in America).
-- The waves below the North Head Light where numerous ships have foundered when blown northwards from the bar in rough weather like this. Note approaching squall line.
And another such shot.
-- First full view of the lighthouse, but it turns out we didn't have as much time as I'd hoped, for...
-- Just as I was taking this beautiful shot of the lighthouse--you can see part of my finger guarding the lens--that squall line hit us with such incredible force, the water (the rain) blowing literally horizontal in the wind, that when I got back to the car the right side of my body was soaking wet and the left side still dry. We ran about as fast as we could, there, having been properly chastised by the storm.
So we drove a bit further south, and soon, found ourselves the vantage point of Cape Disappointment to see the light there, which Eris and I had been denied the right to view doubtless due to the name and reputation of the Cape of Disappointment--also because we didn't drive into the state park area, where we would have found.. this:
-- View of the Cape Disappointment Light on the headland defining the northern shore of the Columbia River mouth.
-- Same view panned further out to show the driftwood on the beach with the lighthouse in the distance from my vantage point quite close to the water, this time.
-- A closer view with the waves rolling in; we elected not to make the hike up to the lighthouse, considering the squalls and wind were still very severe. This is surely one of the most incredible pictures I've ever taken, though.
-- We take rules and regulations at our State Parks seriously, and preventing people from burning driftwood on the beach is one of them. ..Err, yeah, that's the real purpose of this picture, not poor focus and my just getting the sign in the way like an airhead! Seriously!
-- Marvel at the waves pounding into the heavily eroded cliffs, an action which over thousands of years has hewed them to their present shapes.
-- Further breakers along the small cove between us and the light.
-- Beach and Light.
A final shot as breakers smash up into the little, jagged inlet directly below the light and appear above it, visible to us, at great height, whilst the headland is all the while surrounded by churning seas, and the lighthouse stands, rusty but defiantly operational, above it all in the midst of the great gale.
And so, after that, we drove away from North Head and Cape Disappointment, back through Ilwaco, and inland along the Columbia River, until we came to the great crossing of the Columbia River by Highway 101 at Astoria, Oregon (there's nothing on the Washington side at the point of the bridge), which is almost three miles in width by nonetheless spanned by a bridge, visible heah:
(not taken by me)
Proceeding into Oregon, the Land Where You Can't Pump Your Own Motherfucking Gas (WHAT THE FUCK? SERIOUSLY PEOPLE!), we drove through Astoria and then briefly west on the 101 across the bay to the west, on another substantial bridge. There we visited Fort Clatsop, where the Clark and Lewis expedition overwintered, and then headed somewhat north, to the southern side of the Columbia River Mouth, where we explored the defensive battery emplacements of Fort Stevens, and then drove to the pacific beach just outside the bar, where I proved to be the only person willing to get out of the car into the 40 - 50kt winds and another raging sandstorm to see the wreck of the Peter Iredale on the bridge, of which only these sad remnants stand:
(not taken by me)
Then an SUV showed up, drove on what I--in a fit of paranoia--thought was soft sand and proved it was in fact, this time, ACTUALLY concrete covered in blown sand. Heh. So we drove on it, and DR and Amy were very much underwhelmed by the remaining wreckage. We thus headed south, next, on the 101, along the coast and through Seaside, until we reached the junction with the US 26 eastbound. There we drove over the Coastal Range passes, wherein the rain and other treacherous conditions turned to very wet snow, made worse by the fact we didn't have studded tires on the car. Oops. Well, white-knuckle drive it was, but we got down without even a risk of a crash due to my usual fanatical attention I pay to the science of driving, and we stopped for me to rest and let the pain in my arms dissipate at a gas station where the low price cajoled us into getting gas despite the attendant--and then regret it when we realized we had to tip him, so we ended up paying more than if we'd waited. Oh well. Having been recharged with coffee, we attempted to drive into Portland to meet friends, but here were nearly foiled as the roads proved impossibly backed up; in frustration I got off the carriageway to try and find a light rail station we could park at, and just take the damn thing in. Instead, by following traffic, we got on the US 26 further up ahead, and with this cheating in the line of traffic, arrived in Portland more than soon enough to park, for me to get to lost, for Amy to rescue us, and for us to find out the restaurant we had planned to eat at was way to expensive. So we met with DR's friends, who by the end of the night had become mine and Amy's too, at a Thai place across the street which was really excellent, though for some reason I was the only one to order my curry hot. I met someone there who likes to draw combined Gorgon-Nagas, which are the sexiest thing ever. Err, ignore that.
At any rate, after spending many hours in companionable enjoyment in this restaurant, we packed all five of us into Amy's brave Corolla, who faithfully served us throughout the trip, and got the two of them back to their apartment, at which point we struck out north in a heavy rain on the Five, which was covered in puddles of water, and provided the most terrifying driving, especially with a semi trying to run me off the road in Centralia. Well, I cried uncle, nipped off at the upcoming exit, stretched my legs and got more coffee (of course!), and we thus completed the drive home across the Tacoma Narrows without further event, thus completing the full circle trip in only two days, over a distant of close to seven hundred miles and with innumerable stops, most of them herein covered.
