Olympic National Park, WA

Another month done and dusted here in Canada, and another long weekend has come by! It is the Canadian Thanksgiving day which lands on my birthday this year, October the 14th.

As we have no Canadian family who is willing to take us in (yet!) we had no thanksgivings festivities planned. So we decided to cross the border for the weekend and head into the USA and across to the Olympic National Park.

Ellen & I, Kellie & Aaron, & two other Aussies from Sydney, Alex & Harriet, all headed off bright and early Saturday morning at 4am!!! Who’s idea was that – it was mine, but whatever is was a great idea. Bleary eyed, we drove about an hour South from Vancouver and arrived at the border crossing into the states. There wasn’t a car in sight! Alex & Harriet have gone through this border a few times and they said the waits were horrendous previously. After a few nervous answers to some non-enthusiastic questions, we had our passports stamped and off we went into the US&A.

We drove for around about 2 hours, to a little town called Edmonds which is north of Seattle where we were catching a ferry and also meeting with Kellie & Aaron who were in a seperate car. We arrived, bought our tickets and were in the line to board the ferry ok, but there was no Kellie & Aaron in sight! We got the green light and followed the convoy of cars to get on the ferry, then we saw way ahead of us, a little black car was half turned around on the port entry getting a talking to from the officials – it was Aaron & Kellie. They accidentally tried to sneak on the boat! lol Sooo – they got asked to go back, pay for the ticket and they had to wait for the next ferry which was due to leave in an hour.

We got the Ferry across to Kingston with no dramas and drove to Port Angeles, which is the main hub of the Olympic National Park area. Here we waited until Kellie & Aaron arrived before driving up to the top of Hurricane ridge. The road literally took us all the way to the top – the view point was spectacular with many glacier peaked mountains in the distance.

Feeling like we needed to stretch our legs after 6 hours of driving, we went for 12km hike to the very top of the ridge to try escape the flocks of tourists. It is a very stunning area, with lots of wildlife and greenery. I think we are one weekend late, all the smaller grassland has started to die due to the cold – winter in coming.

We also came across some bear prints! Uh oh…

Absolutely exhausted, we then headed back down in the cars and found a campsite just outside of Port Angeles. We had a quick dinner, few red wines and were all in bed by 8:30 – a very big day it was indeed!

We woke bright and early, packed the Echo’s and took off towards a small town called Forks. On the drive there, Alex & I were treated to the life changing story line of Twilight from Ellen & Harriet. It turns out, the writer plagiarized the town names and set the twilight series here in Forks. Come on, she could have gotten a bit more creative than just using the town name of ‘Forks’. We took a bit of a de-tour to a place called La Push. This is apparently where the werewolves in Twilight live – and there is a treaty line which is the limit of the wolves and vampires territory.  I am really moved by this story line, life changing stuff!

We went and found a beach and had a bit of a walk around. Unfortunately the tide was up high so we couldn’t do a big hike, but there was some cool rocks out in the ocean in the distance, it looked similar to the 12 apostles in Victoria.

We zipped back into the town of Forks to get some food. When we arrived we again lost Kellie & Aaron. Bit of a long story how we found them but, their car had broken down. The car kept falling out of gear so they were driving back into town very slowly. This changed our plans a little! It was a Sunday so no car mechanics are open for the day.

We ended up dividing forces and leaving Kellie in the town of Forks at a small campsite. She had some schoolwork or something to do anyway so we didn’t feel too bad leaving her behind. So now there was 5 of us squeezed into our little Echo, we drove to the Hoh rain forest and did a couple of short walks there for the afternoon. It was very nice scenery, the fall colours are out and about now!

We then went back to the campsite, had some dinner along with some red wino and a cracking fire. The next day I was treated to a nice surprise for my birthday – a cake made out of 8 cookies that are from the bakery where we live. Ellen somehow managed not to tell me about them, she said it was hard!

We packed up camp and headed back into town to find Aaron & Kellie. No good news for the car, the transmission needed to be replaced and was going to cost them $2500 US!! So instead they got a tow back to Port Angeles and then a Ferry over to Victoria to get the car back in Canada so they can try sell it! We ended up leaving them and drove all the way home with a few stop offs along the way at a nice waterfall and a pumpkin patch.

It was a great weekend down in the states! More photos here.