Over the Sea and Through the Woods

5:00 a.m. comes early, but we were in the ferry line to cross the inlet from Whidbey Island to Port Townsend at 6:30 a.m. along with about thirty other drivers.

Instead of touring Port Townsend (a place that warrants at least a day of checking out) we headed to Port Angeles to enter Olympic National Park.

The entrance to the park is just a few miles from town and a road leads to Hurricane Ridge, 17 miles from the entrance, for an inside view of the park and outside view of Mt. Rainer, Mt. Baker and the Puget Sound - spectacular. GREEN TREES WITHOUT A BREAK FOR AS FAR AS YOU CAN SEE!

We had flown near the peaks on trips to Whidbey or Friday Harbor or Alaska in the past, and knew the Olympic range must be a wonderland. There are more glaciers there than anyplace in the lower 48 (funny, that was not mentioned at Glacier Park)

Washington is not called the Evergreen State for nothing. We didn't see any signs of the rust beetle disease that is killing the trees in the Rockie Mountain west.

The forest is full of trails - not crowded - not commercial - no inns - The road ends at the vista point - that's it. If you want, and if we had time we would, you can travel 101 around the park making a loop ending at the bottom of the peninsula.

We had a plan to visit three parks: Olympic, Rainier, and Cascade.

Park #2 to Rainier, about a 2 hour drive through the back roads of WA, crossed a toll bridge into Tacoma and headed east through some small towns and into more trees. Rainier National Park is the MOUNTAIN - which you can see better from Puyallup (about 30 miles west of the peak) Mountain climbers love it.

We entered the park through a dark forest of cedars, redwoods, and ferns - a lot like northern CA - the road to Paradise, where the big visitor's center is located was being worked on and there was a notice that the parking lot was full! Remembrance of Glacier Park's parking facilities. I think many, many Americans decided to visit their parks this summer.

Rainier Park bows to the mountain. It feels like an old place with the thousands of years old trees, not much commercial, lots of trails (that's good) - even though it is a short drive from Seattle there isn't much happending outside the park either, a few cafes, a few, very few motels and that's it. Looks like a good place to get away if you are a hiker.

Anyway, we had a short visit - and skedaddled north to get to Cascade National Park - which was closer to Everett where we would be staying the night and catching the train today.

Best laid plans - we should know better than to be marathon visitors, anyway) Rush hour traffic slowed us down and encouraged us to be thankful we don't have to stop and go every day to work and back home again.

We figured it means another trip to Whidbey and a day trip to the Cascades and Port Townsend. I clocked 700 miles on the rental car - so I'd say we got around.