Guarding maple syrup

Day 35

Morning: travel prep.

Afternoon: travel.

Evening: dinner in Port Townsend for Micah’s “second” birthday dinner. This one was pretty good - seafood stuffs at Cafe Fountain. Expensive, but delicious. I got chipotle prawns on fettucini, and Micah got this big bowl of dead ocean animals. I got to try some of said animals, and they were pretty good. We got into Port Townsend late though, and we didn’t really have a solid plan of attack, so we ended up driving out of town to a state park (I think it was called Port Townsend Fort or some such nonsense), where we camped for an outrageous $19. PLUS! Since there was no way to get change, and literally no one on the planet has exact change for $19, they received a “donation” of $1. As much as I love state parks, I hate state parks. Such outrageous prices. In one night we more that doubled our camping expenditure for the entire first month. Weak. But the campsite was nice, and it provided a good night’s sleep. Sometimes it’s worth being comfortable.

Day 36

Time for Olympic to wow the pants off me! Our first objective: Hurricane Ridge. After proceeding past the gate without paying (NPP strikes again!) we crawl up the mountain 17 miles to Hurricane ridge to get a gander at the rest of Olympic National Park and beyond. But it’s cloudy, so we can’t see the whole park. Luckily, the side facing north is relatively clear, and we can see Canada and Mt. Garibaldi, which is sweet. Also incredibly sweet: we see a brand new kind of mammal. We don’t know what it is though, so we just watch as it sits there. It kind of looks like a furry beaver. Or a large prairie dog. So we go into the visitor center and ask the girl behind the counter. She decides to come out and look. She tells us that beavers can be furry like that, so it could be a beaver. I know she’s wrong though; her explanation makes so little sense. So we head back into the gift shop and found a postcard, which confirmed our suspicions that it was a marmot. We bring the postcard up the counter to show the girl that it was in fact a marmot. She then looks at the postcard, and says, “no, that’s a bear.” Keep in mind that on the back of the postcard it says that it’s a picture of a marmot. We tell her that, no, the postcard says explicitly that it’s a marmot. She says, “no, it’s a bear.” We decide that she needs a little proof. So we show her that it says “marmot” on the back of the card. She then says, “well, someone told me it was a bear.” Well, someone told you something very stupid and you bought it. I felt a little bad for her, so we just bought the postcard and left. Before leaving I watched the marmots a bit more. The only thing not awesome about marmots (which hibernate for 8 months out of the year) is that they do very little, so watching them isn’t exactly captivating enough to even make it on the extended footage of any wildlife program. Still, marmots!

We then camped by the Elwah River, which was beautiful. My mood was not. I found out that my camera had managed to erase all my photos, and I hadn’t uploaded any for like 3 weeks. I was super bummed. Hopefully I’ll be able to recover them, but I haven’t yet, so we’ll see. I may have no photos of my first backpacking adventure! So I sulked for a bit until Micah made me go for a walk to clear my head. We went down to the river and threw rocks at other rocks, and I smashed some sticks against rocks too. One of the sticks fought back and hit me in the head when I smashed it. I didn’t like that. Then we walked along the river, and I slammed my head against an uprooted tree that I was supposed to duck under and cut my head. That was hurty, and I didn’t like that either. Then we threw some large pieces of wood into the water, which went *sploosh!*. And then I felt a little better.

Day 37

We drove over to Rialto Beach all the way over on the west coast where there was supposed to be some great tide-pooling. But we got there too late. No tide-pools. It was still overcast and looking like it could be rainy, so we were starting to get bummed out. Then a minor miracle happened. An omen from across the water flew right past us. A huge bald eagle carrying an amazingly huge fish flew right in front of us and landed on driftwood less than 40 feet away. Micah took a ton of photos, and got some amazing shots of it in flight - which wasn’t very high off the ground because the fish was so heavy, but still really, really awesome. We actually saw a second bald eagle on our walk back, but it wasn’t as big and had no fish. Having now seen how huge eagles are I’m no longer as impressed when I see red-tails. I still like them and all, but they’re now runner-ups.

We drove through Forks, which is now the nuttiest place I’ve ever seen. They are the “home” of the Twilight Saga, so everything has Twilight something or other. The store we went in sold “Bella’s first aid kits.” Bella is a character in the books/movies. So what is her first aid kit comprised of? Exactly what a Johnson and Johnson first aid kit contains with the added bonus of a piece of paper taped over the front that says “Bella’s first aid kit.” Wow. The whole town is overrun with Twilight tours and other horrible things. So we left.

We went to the Hoh Rainforest, which was both confusing and somewhat underwhelming. It was one of the only places on our trip so far that didn’t have any rain, and while the hiking was nice, it seemed exactly the same as the place we camped in the night before. And we never solved the riddle of why it’s a rainforest. It just looks like a forest. It’s really pretty, but I think Micah and I are just a little bit burned out on the Pacific Northwest. It’s all very lush and beautiful, but we’re ready to move on.

Day 38

We take a ferry from Kingsly back toward the Seattle area and head north into Vancouver. Or so we thought! The border guards thought that letting two unemployed VW hippies into their country would be a bad idea, so they had us pull over and go inside for questioning. I got such insightful questions as “when was the last time you did drugs, and have you had anything to drink today?” I laughed at this last question, and since the guards are paid to never crack a smile, he then asked me why I thought this was funny, and then told me this was a serious matter because if I was drunk they would send me back to America. Keep in mind, it’s the early afternoon. But I played along and told him that I would never do such naughty things. He said my eyes looked glazed. So I said, OK. Anyway, the reason we got pulled over and all that was that I had been too honest and said that I don’t have to be back in California ever if I don’t want to be, so they were under the impression that I was planning on moving into Canada and becoming a burden on their economy/society. I assured him that I didn’t want to live in Canada, and that I have enough money to support myself, so I won’t be a burden. Little did he know that I would in fact burden his economy later that evening by flushing one of their toilets containing foreign toxins that expelled from my body! Take that Canada. Don’t want me here? Too bad. Watch as I sleep on your streets, eat your food, take up room on your buses. Try to stop me!

We find an awesome vegetarian restaurant after abandoning the downtown area. (Side note: we parked in an underground garage and my van barely, barely scraped through. I was nervous the whole time, and actually managed to hit a bit of sign with my skylight. Scary stuff indeed!). At the restaurant we shared a huge plate of nachos and a satay salad, which was fantastic, and a pitcher of Storm IPA, which was the special that day and only $13.

We found a great neighborhood to covertly sleep in, and our first day in Canada, which started roughly, successfully ended.