Road Trip – Omaha to Seattle – Day 12 – Seattle-Olympic NP – September 22, 2010

Woke up in the Motel 6 this morning and started getting everything together to pack up the car and get on our way to Olympic National Park. Went outside to start loading and I see that the back tire on the driver's side was flat. Whatever. Can't hold me down. We pumped up the tire with the handy dandy jump box we had on us, drove down the road to where Tom's iPhone told us to go. There was a little tire place like 3 miles away, the mexican guys working there barely spoke any english, but they got to work right away. Tom noticed a little coffee stand across the street and said that he thought a girl was serving coffee in a bikini top. Of course he had to check it out and I, thirsty for a smoothie, decided to tag along. It was a weird little sexy coffee shop where the girl wore lingerie and served you coffee. Pretty weird, I knew it was gonna be a good day when these things were already going on and it was only the first 30 minutes on the road. We crossed the street back to the tire shop, they were finishing up, we paid them $15 for the patch and were on our way again. After some breakfast at McD's, we hit the interstate.
After about 2 hours drive, we arrived at the ferry. It was a car ferry, $21 for two people. We lined up on the street, waited about 10 minutes and drove onto the ferry. This was my first car ferrym I was on a bicycle and person ferry in San Francisco a few years ago, but never a car one. It was really cool. There were a couple levels above the parking area to go sit, get food, play video games, etc. I went outside on the deck and took a bunch of pictures, and just really enjoyed the ride. It took about 30 minutes to get to Kingston, WA and from there we had about a two hour drive up a couple different highways and finally onto where the 101 begins. The 101 runs down the whole west coast to Mexico and is one of the most beautiful drives in the country. We turned off into the visitor center to get some advice as to a good day hike to do. The park ranger, who kinda looked like Angelina Jolie to me, suggested a route and the other ranger did also.
So we set off for a 30 minute drive to the trailhead at Hurricane Ridge. Got ourselves all geared up and set out on the hike. We were very disappointed. Evidently, they had not understood us or something, but we asked for a 3 hour, semi-challenging hike, and what we got was an asphalt covered path up a ridge for about .5 miles. There were 80 year olds and 3 year olds doing this hike, and they were currently constructing a new asphalt path, so it was loud and smelly, too. The one positive of the hike was the deer were almost tame enough to go touch, and since the hike was so short, we had a good amount of time where we didn't have to rush to get to our campsite before sundown.
Continued on the 101, stopped a few times for pictures and a gas station stop or two. We passed through the town of Forks, where they just shot the Twilight movie, and about 25 minutes later we come around the bend and the Pacific Ocean is staring us down. It was gorgeous. Expansive and rocky and just beautiful and calming. Our campsite was only another 20 miles, so we pulled into the Kalaloch campground and began driving through their lots to see if we could find a campsite next to the water. They were basically all taken, but there was one, E3, that was pretty darn close and we snagged that before anyone else could get their grubby little paws on it. We walked around the site and after setting up camp, it was about sundown, so we went down the road a bit to a lodge and took some sundown pictures and then high-tailed it back to the campsite and got some more from there.
Got back and started a fire and I cooked myself a couple brats on a skewer over the fire. Had a couple beers, sat by the fire, went down to the beach real quick and then went to bed.