Pictures from this part of the trip can be found in Gallery, Part 1.
We started our trip around 4:00pm with a cab ride to the airport. We had two bags each — one with our backpacking gear and one carry-on with the rest of our clothes.
The flight was uneventful, except for the landing in Seattle. Ken had developed a huge head cold on Wednesday, and the pressure change made the landing pretty painful.
When we arrived at the Dollar car rental place, it took us a while to get the car. First, there was a big debate about Ken's driver's license: it was set to expire on October 5. He had renewed it, but the new license hadn't arrived yet. Then, they tried to talk us into paying $7/day so Julie could drive, and then tried to talk us into an extra $100 to get an Outback instead of the full-sized car we ordered. Finally, they admitted they didn't have a full-sized car and gave us a "free upgrade" to a Jeep Liberty. We didn't mind the 4-wheel drive, but the Liberty has very little cargo room and gets about 19 MPG.
After finally taking possession of the car, we hopped on the interstate and headed through Tacoma over to Bremerton, where we stayed at a Super 8 for the night. After getting there, we had just enough time to grab a snack at the Dairy Queen in the same parking lot before it closed at 10:30pm.
We also decided that for the remainder of the trip, we'd try to eat only at places we'd never heard of before. We've played this game before, and it usually works out pretty well.
We got a quick breakfast at the hotel, and then drove 15 minutes north to Silverdale to pick up our backpacking stove, which we had mailed to ourselves using General Delivery. (The airlines don't let you put a stove in your checked or carry-on luggage, even if there's no fuel or combustibles.)
After picking up the stove, we stopped at Target to talk to a pharmacist (Ken's ears were still plugged after the landing at SEA), but the pseudoephedrine he had was basically the best he was going to get. Ugh.
We headed into the center of Bremerton (near the waterfront), and spent a few hours on the museum ship U.S.S. Turner Joy. The Turner Joy is a Vientnam-era destroyer. It wasn't very crowded, and they let you poke around a lot, so we really enjoyed ourselves. After finishing up, we got a quick lunch at a BBQ place right near the museum (expensive, mediocre) and then walked over to the Puget Sound Navy Museum. It was interesting enough, but not fantastic.
After that, we headed up U.S. 101 toward Port Angeles, a few hours of driving. When we got to Port Angeles, we made a quick stop at an outfitter to buy some stove fuel, then checked in at our hotel, the Downtown Hotel. This is a cute little place right near the waterfront. We had a "European-style" room, meaning that it came with a sink but we shared a bathroom down the hall. In practice, this worked out fine because it wasn't very crowded. Since the room was on the third floor with no elevator, it was nice that we could leave backpacking gear in the car.
After checking into the hotel, we drove to the National Park Service visitor center in Port Angeles to pick up our backcountry permit. Unfortunately, it had closed just a few minutes before. Aaargh! We stopped around back to use the bathroom and realized that there was a service window that was available just to pick up permits. Good thing we checked! We got our permit and also were able to buy a detailed topographic map of the area, something that was on our list.
After picking up our permit, we wandered around the Port Angeles waterfront and watched the Victoria ferry (and a strange mass baptism — or something? — complete with air horns and shouting every time someone got dunked) before getting dinner.
Dinner was fantastic. We went to a place called Michael's, just a few blocks from our hotel in downtown Port Angles. Our tour book said the paella was great, so we tried it, and were not disappointed. Never mind that Ken was still sick and congested — he thought it was better than the last paella he had in Barcelona last year. We also tried a "cider flight" of 3 local artisan ciders: an Eaglemount ginger apple cider (which had a decidedly Asian taste); an Alpenfire semi-sweet cider; and a Finnriver dry-hopped cider.
After dinner, we wandered some more around the waterfront just to walk off dinner, before heading back to the hotel.
We stopped at the diner attached to the hotel and had a decent breakfast before packing up our stuff and heading out for the day. Although it was nearby, we decided to skip Hurricane Ridge, assuming we'd see alpine meadows on our backcountry hike. First, we headed to the Elwha in the hopes of looking at the dam that's being removed there. However, that wasn't possible. So, we looked briefly at Marymere Falls before heading to the Sol Duc area.
At Sol Duc, we parked and walked a mile or so in to see Sol Duc Falls. After hiking back out, we got lunch at Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort. Unexpectedly — for a national park concessionaire, anyway — they had inexpensive burgers, sandwiches, etc. that were all pretty good. The resort itself doesn't look that exciting: basically a typical-looking pool, but steaming instead of cold.
After leaving Sol Duc, we drove up Hwy 113 and 112 toward Neah Bay. Our whole drive since Bremerton the previous day, we had been seeing a constant stream of trucks towing large pleasure fishing boats. Along this route, we found the place where they all seemed to be coming from or going to: a little fishing village. We stopped to snap a picture, but didn't visit.
In Neah Bay, which is on the Makah Indian reservation, we stopped at the Makah Cultural and Heritage Center. This museum is focused around an archealogical treasure: in the 1970s, erosion exposed a 300-500 year old Makah Village (Ozette) that had been buried by a landslide. The mud preserved the village in an unusual way: within the longhouses, archaeologists found lots of organic material, even blankets, baskets, etc. It was really interesting, although they didn't let us take any pictures of the artifacts, even the big log canoes.
After leaving the museum, we bought a permit from the Makah tribe and headed north to see Cape Flattery, the north-western most point in the continental U.S.
From Cape Flattery, we drove south to Forks, where we planned to stay the night at the Olympic Suites Inn. After getting checked in at the hotel, we went to get dinner at The In Place, a restaurant recommended by the hotel manager (ok, to be fair, when we asked where we could get something good to eat he first said "Seattle", and then said we could try this place). It wasn't very good: the big joke was Julie's sauteed scallops, which came out looking like marshmallows: absolutely no color. It was hard to believe they'd been sauteed.
Based on this dinner experience, we decided to buy a microwavable breakfast for the next morning rather than eating at a restaurant before starting our backpacking trip. We went to the Forks Thriftway and bought ourselves some egg sandwiches and a few other snacks.