Western Washington

We went to Hoodsport. It's on the Hood canal, which is the only true fjord in the Lower-48 states. As Debbie and John continue to be fascinated by this planet, we learned a fjord is a body of water that intrudes into a steeply sided, narrow glacial valley, usually deeper at the farther end.

The entire Puget Sound technically is a fjord. John's brother, Bill, says part of the Hood Canal is used to test submarines. He would know, being a retired Captain from the US Navy.

Bill and his wife, Alex, are the reason that we spent an entire week in the area. The remnants of the Bry family are scattered across the continent. Next year, we plan to visit sister Marilyn and her family back east. We found Bill and Alex at their summer home along the Hood Canal, but as we learned, more than an hour's drive from our RV park. We spent a night in their home just south of the bridge at the top of the canal watching the boats below, including one Navy ship that Bill identified as a Tender, a floating repair shop (John intriguingly saw through his binoculars that it carried a stretch limo on the deck between the cranes; hopefully a justifiable use of our tax dollars). We also visited the attractive Norwegian heritage of Poulsbo and spent many enjoyable hours just talking, catching up. Because of the physical distance between Michigan and the west coast, Debbie hadn't come to know either person very well.  

 Also it's more than a decade since John last visited here. Debbie thoroughly enjoyed getting to know both...and getting to explore the marine life on their low-tide beach a hundred feet under their house along the cliff (remember steeply sided, above?).

While Bill and John watched, the two women picked through the oysters that grow abundantly there with plans for tonight's dinner. Driving back to our coach with half a dozen extra in a cooler, Debbie researched how to cook these things. Even though John's not much of a shellfish fan, Debbie is, and declared that these were the best ever she'd tasted. And huge!

We'd ended up parked so far from their home because we just hadn't realized that everything in this area is separated by water. What would've been a fifteen- or twenty-minute drive in “normal” circumstances turned into a circumnavigating tour of the Canal, which is lined by small waterfront towns with 25mph speed limits. We had an Amazon order shipped to a Locker in Belfair, being the closest sizable town, only to find that was an hour away, as well.

Among our housekeeping chores, we'd had to stop by the Post Office General Delivery because we'd ordered a giant hub “cap” (more like a bowl) for one of our rear double-wheeled axles. We'd discovered a week ago that it was missing and cannot bring ourselves to believe that it simply fell off. Unlike a car's, these things are screwed on with a wrench.  But we cannot prove we were victims of a thief, either. Live and Learn. And spend.

Our RV park billed itself as a “Canal Resort” and was among the nicer of our “glamps” despite the proximity of the neighbors. It featured a dock right on the canal, too. Debbie and I would take our before-dinner nosh and drinks or a bottle of wine across the road just to sit and look at it. The weather was perfectly bright, if not blue, and comfortable the entire time.

Actually this picture is from John's visit in April 2007.
Free free to blame us for the 2019 failure.

The only problem is, facing the canal, our backs were to the Olympic mountains. From the other Brys' deck, the snow-capped mountains were a prominent feature in the setting sun.

The Olympic Mountains are huge, green, and wet. They also act as a rain shield for some areas inland. One town along the eastern Juan de Fuca Strait claims only eight inches annual rainfall, despite the larger area being so constantly damp that moss and mold thrive on everything. Lewis and Clark, the explorers who found the inland route to the Pacific during Jefferson's presidency, had complained that all their canvas and leather equipment quickly rotted to threads in that environment. It was unfortunate that this sort of information was not to be learned here, however.

Instead, we were hugely disappointed that the National Park Service chose to focus on the paranormal Native American spirits that it claimed still inhabit the place. The visitors' center introductory video was disappointing for its ignorance of the physics of the range and its dwelling on the spiritual feeling of it all, full of fall-asleep tuneless music and a voice talent who was paid to talk you insensible: too damn much New Age California Thoughtlessness to be of any value to even a high school graduate. Even the Ranger Program Talk that generally is so educational at any National Park, here was glossy Environmentalist propaganda about why we need to spend our tax money to preserve this wilderness. John kept looking around, but didn't see any obvious Congressional Appropriations Committee members in the audience. Aside from a scattering of Midwesterners, the rest of the crowd was from this part of the country. When the Ranger asked for suggestions as to Why We Must Preserve, the first two shouted out were “Loggers” and “Monetization”.  Seriously?! “Monetization” is so Liberally new it's not even in our spellchecker. And we didn't notice any of them wearing handmade clothing....

Mt. Rainier lords over the
Hood Canal in this view
east from Mount Walker.

The Olympic range is huge. We found our home base was almost two hours away from the National Park visitors' center, in Port Angeles. So the drive north to there and back, including the viewpoints on Mount Walker, consumed an entire day.

From Hurricane Ridge in the Olympics

 The views from Hurricane Ridge were awesome, but after seeing this sort of thing for the past two-plus months, we were less than overawed. We realize this is a bias, but added to the gigantic disappointment of the NPS's spirituality of the Olympics, we won't be back for them.  There are plenty other things we had given up, so our return to the Northwest will be to catch up on only those.

The next day, we were thinking the southern part of the range would be more of the same, so then decided to satisfied ourselves with a drive to see the ocean west of Aberdeen.

With the two siblings' visits accomplished, the rest of our summer is wide open. We want to get back to visit the Oregon coast next.  

Foreshadow:  “Seastack” is a new word in our lexicon.