“Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps.”---Frank Herbert
“We don’t stop hiking because we grow old---we grow old because we stop hiking.”---Finis Mitchell
A Ferry Tale
On the third morning of their pilgrimage, a cheery jacket-demanding Saturday, Bill and Siobhan taxied to surburban Bellevue, Washington to pick up their rental-car at a tiny Enterprise facility, a lot no bigger than your thumb, but one buzzing with activity as the hustling car-cleaners applied spit and polish to their charges, then zipped them forward to waiting customers.
We had asked for a full-sized Buick when we ordered via Orbitz, but Mick Jagger warned us long ago you don’t always get what you want, you get what you need. Apparently what we needed was a Ford Flex, a snub-nosed, hatchet-backed vehicle of little distinction but plenty of luggage room. Our choices would expand if we chose to wait an hour. On reflection, the Flex seemed just fine. Bill would not wait in line for The Second Coming of The Messiah, although Red Sox World Series tickets might be tempting. We loaded up and headed for someplace called Edmonds where a car-ferry (capacity 203) was waiting to take us to Kingston on chummy Bainbridge Island. This is where we learned once again that you can’t cheat Fate. The wait for the ferry would be one hour.
The ferry was imposing, but not enormous, hardly giving the appearance of a 203-seater. The able crew loaded up in no time and we were quickly off to Kingston, humming along at a healthy pace, several of the customers at the fore quickly snapping photos of the oncoming coast before a stiff breeze drove them back. Siobhan spent the half-hour trip on her cell, putting out fires back home where it was three hours later. Our Flex was near the front of the ferry and upon landing we leapt off in jig time to inspect the alleged charms of Bainbridge Island.
Very nice place. Islands have vast appeal, particularly to those who have never experienced island life. Things are expensive on islands, slow to arrive. The days are quiet and nights are moreso. After awhile, cabin fever can raise its bumpy noggin. But for a certain kind of individual, islands are perfect, serene, lovely to look at, populated by neighbors of a similar ilk. In July of 2005, Money magazine named Bainbridge the second-best place to live in the United States. The island is hilly and characterized by an irregular coastline of approximately 53 miles with numerous bays and inlets and a significant diversity of other coastal land forms, including bluffs, dunes, lagoons, streams and rocky outcrops. The high point is 435-foot Toe Jam Hill, which may or may not have been named for stumbling drunkards. If so, it just goes to reinforce the notion that there is no desultory condition on Earth ultimately unworthy of celebration.
Lavender Blue, Dilly Dilly
To leave Bainbridge Island to the west, you have to exit via the world’s longest floating bridge over tidal salt water, a contraption called the Hood Canal Bridge. We don’t know about you but a floating bridge sounds a little suspect us landlubbers. What if it floats off with us on it? How does one lasso a runaway bridge and put it back where it belongs? Nobody wants to be like Charley On The MTA, doomed to float forever through the straits of Washington, a man who never returns. We made an emergency call to our Floating Bridge Advisor and learned the things are made of large water-tight concrete pontoons, connected rigidly end-to-end, upon which a roadway is built. Um, did you say concrete? Yes, but despite their heavy composition, the weight of the water displaced by the pontoons is equal to the weight of the structure (including traffic), which allows the bridge to float. Okay, we feel better now.
Once back on solid land, the road to our eventual destination, Port Angeles, wound through sparsely populated backwaters with barely a filling-station or convenience store in sight. We eventually found a place calling itself an organic food market and deli connected to a raffish looking bar near the metropolis of Blyn. Over lunch, the chatty barmaid advised us we dared not miss the colorful lakeshore drive near the town of “Squim,” just ahead. The map properly added a vowel, making the correct name Sequim. We chuckled at the woman’s careless use of the language but it turns out all the locals call the place Squim (home of the Fighting Fins, no doubt). We returned there from Port Angeles the next night to have dinner at the exotic Black Bear diner. When Bill is at a diner, he has the meatloaf, knowing full well the diner meatloaf is never made correctly, always suffering from a deficiency of tomato sauce. The ultimate authority on meatloaf was Bill’s grandmother, Celia, who made it perfectly. If Celia was alive today, she would trounce these “celebrity chefs” in food preparation. The Black Bear offered no tomato sauce and sordid brown gravy. Phooey.
A word about lavender farms. Approaching Sequim from the East, they pop up everywhere. Naturally, Siobhan could not resist the orchid fields and we were cajoled into a gift shop full of exciting purple creations like calming lilac therapy candles, amethyst eye masks and psoriasis-killing natural grape body scrub. There was even lavender lemonade and lavender ice cream, for crying out loud. You could wash it all down with a large splash of delicious lavender tea were you so inclined. We weren’t.
Lavender fields forever. I feel a song coming on.
The cannabis train in Jefferson County.
Comin’ In To Port Angeles. Bringin’ In A Couple Of Keys. Or Not.
Port Angeles is a city of 20,000 contented souls, more or less, the largest city and county seat of Clallam County. More important, it’s the gateway city and headquarters location for Olympic National Park, just down the road, and offers ferry service across the Straight of Juan de Fuca to Victoria, British Columbia. Port Angeles is located in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, which means the city gets significantly less rain than other areas of western Washington, about 25 inches annually compared to Seattle’s 38. We were booked into the Red Lion Inn there, the largest hotel/motel in the area, for three nights, the longest stop on our trip. The Inn is downtown and virtually on the water. The rooms are comfortable and spacious. It was from there we would launch our invasion of Olympic the next morning. But first we bowed to the blowing winds and brisk temperatures and picked up a couple of warmer shirts at Brown’s, the local outfitter. Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Florida any more.
Hardy mountaineer contemplates her quest.
Views from Hurricane Ridge.
Mountain Music
It was a cool and windy morn as we began the steep ascent of Hurricane Hill and the extra gear was appreciated. As always, of course, the effort of the climb and the rising sun soon relegated shirts to the backpacks, temperatures eventually creeping up into the mid-seventies. We struggled with the grade for awhile, eventually got used to it and moved up steadily to the snow levels. We stopped for lunch in a rare shady glade, surrounded by bushes. Nearly finished, I heard a rustling in the greenery very close and I stood up. It was one of those magic moments you luck into on rare occasions. A sizeable female deer was standing there not twenty feet away. She saw me, but didn’t start, probably used to people on the trail. She did move gradually to the edge of the rim as I raised my iPhone and got two shots, one of them as she gave a last look back. There was no time to reach the camera, but the cell photos were exceptional. We used the better of the two for the header of this column. Then, in a poof, she was over the ridge and gone. I could almost hear her say, “Come on, Tonto….our work here is done.”
Who says the Abominable Snowman is extinct?
Life at the heights.
Over The Meadow And Through The Woods….
To Marymere Falls we go. Subscribers to the philosophy you can’t see too many waterfalls, Bill and Siobhan debarked for the Marymere Falls Trail later in the afternoon of the Hurricane Hill hike. The 90-foot cascade at the end of a trail with little altitude is predictably popular with visitors to Olympic, many of whom are not in condition to negotiate the tougher hikes, but the wide, generally level trail can accomodate the traffic. The path to the falls leads through a typical Northwestern understory of ferns, moss, devil’s club and vine maples, with impressive old-growth cedar and western hemlock forming the canopy. The area near the waterfall offers two viewpoints, high and low, positioned perfectly for photographers to capture the waters of Fall Creek rushing through a gap in the cliff and tumbling down a two-stage drop. We were a smidge legweary from the trip up Hurricane Hill but Marymere was a breeze, and a nice one.
Nonhikers often ask why we do it, what is the lure of a physically demanding trek through the woods, an exhausting trip up a mountain, where the air gets thinner and the trail often transmogrifies into a vague path. For some, it is the acceptance of a challenge to body and soul, an affirmation we are still strong and able. To others, a respite from the slings and arrows of outrageous daily life and all its urban ills. And to most, a rare opportunity to commune with nature, to spend unstructured hours in some small manner as our ancient ancestors did, incorporating the hills and forests into their daily existence, walking through these vast natural chambers, sleeping with their sounds and scents.
For us, I guess, it’s all of these bundled with a lust for adventure, perhaps a spirit kindred with that of the old explorers, who plunged westward with moribund vehicles and primitive watercraft, slogging through swamps, hacking through underbrush, searching for wonders around every new corner, sometimes exulting in magical discoveries, other times perishing in the process. In our case, of course, with a heavy dose of exulting and a lot less hacking through the underbrush.
On the Marymere Falls Trail.
That’s all, folks….
