Olympic Peninsula

We left our Seattle campground and drove south for just an hour to visit the Olympic Peninsula.  We have a campground at Gig Harbor that's all right but not nearly as nice as the one near Seattle.

We got here in the late morning, and after lunch, started on a trip around the peninsula.  There are no roads that go through this huge area, so you have to go around the edges.  You can take some back roads toward the center, but then you have to come back out to the perimeter road.  We knew it was big, but didn't realize just HOW big until we started driving!  The rain forests are on the western edge of the park, which is a LONG way from where we are!

We drove to Port Orchard, out to the ferry at Bainbridge Island and then up to Port Angeles, where you can look over to Canada.  Then we took one of the roads into the park at Elwaha Valley, and then started back.  We rode on some different roads on the return trip and came by lots of nice waterfront homes on the Hood Canal.

I got really tired of driving on this 300 mile trip!

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge
I can never hear about this bridge without thinking about the collapse of the
original bridge in 1940.  There's a famous video of the violent vibrations before the collapse,
and there was a cocker spaniel left in the car on the bridge when it went down.

Port Orchard

This guy was looking for dinner along the rocks at Port Angeles...
not the place I would have expected to see a raccoon!

Looking at Vancouver Island from Port Angeles

Port Angeles pier

Deep woods at Elwha campground

There were lots of trees with huge amounts of moss on them.

We saw lots of these beside the road