A lap around the Olympic Peninsula on the Yamaha has been on my list of things to do for a couple of years. With a long weekend on the calendar and sunshine in the forecast, I decided to spend Labor Day doing the deed.
In order to complete the trip during daylight hours, I skipped some of
the slower‐speed scenic roads on the Kitsap Peninsula
west of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
in favor of slabbing it through Olympia,
and as a native with the experience of many years dealing with people leaving the Peninsula after a summer holiday,
I decided to go counter‐clockwise around in order to
avoid as much homeward‐bound traffic as possible. As it happened, there were many lengthy lines of cars backed up
behind RVs along Hood Canal and again between Sequim
and the Canal, all moving in the direction opposite mine. Once I was west of Port Angeles,
I increasingly had the roads
to myself. It is very much as if someone pulls a plug in Seattle, draining everything eastward from some high
water moment at Cape Alava.
There was a solid layer of clouds overhead as I left home, but they were really just elevated fog and were going to burn off. As I arrived south of Auburn, the serrated edge of the clouds hove into view, with Mount Rainier beyond wreathed in blue sky. I rode back under the marine layer in Shelton, and it finally cleared for good about the time I was crossing the Hama Hama River.
One amusing contribution the weather made to the day had to do with my determination to get a photo of the bike with the Pacific Ocean lit up behind it. Recall that the western coastline of Washington is the longest stretch of undeveloped coastline in the contiguous United States; there are few places where the highway emerges from the trees and runs adjacent to the beach. All day long as I knew the road was swinging toward the ocean, I would look up over the trees at about a quarter‐mile distance and see the fogline, and every time I reached the shoreline it was buried in fog. The best photo I got is the lousy photo above, and even though it is lousy, I have included it because I rode 517 miles in a single day to get it and bring it home with me.
In Forks,
which has become a popular tourist destination because of its association with the Twilight books and movies,
there is a sandwich board sign propped on the shoulder of the road next to a stack of cut timber
that reads Twilight cord wood.
What?
Just off the highway in Humptulips
is a run down early twentieth century building with 2–3 even more run down old yachts
on blocks out front. This part of the world is littered with boats just like them that have been left to rot
in the yard.
Spray painted in red under the eaves over the boats? Redneck Yacht Club.
Priceless.
Now that it is off my list, it is a trip I am sure I will not make again. I knew before I started that a considerable
number of the miles were going to bore the everlovin’ shit out of me, and the stretch from
Hoquiam to home did not
disappoint. There are some lesser‐traveled byways starting at Satsop that would have been interesting to incorporate
as part of the route home, but my all‐in‐one‐day objective did not allow for the more twisty paths. That said, on balance, it was
a great ride circumnavigating one of Washington’s three National Parks on a beautiful day, and I was home in time to
watch the sun set over the mountains around which I had just completed a lap.