I had the room all to myself and I slept pretty well.  The sound of the water rushing in against the rocks was quite nice.  I talked with Kaci, the hostel manager, last night to get hiking recommendations, she gave me several and a map.  I drove north, back into the Redwoods about four miles and pulled over at the Damnation Creek trail head.  I got my coats and gloves and scarf and pack and myself all in order and headed up the trail.  I was immediately amazed at the trees, how big around and how tall they were.  Read Full Article & Comments…

Around 6:00am, an alarm went off.  Viola turned it off and I went back to sleep.  At 6:30, it went off again and she turned it off again.  I asked her if she was getting up or what and she said she didn’t know how to turn it off.  I asked her to either get up and unplug the damn thing.  She didn’t seem to have any consideration for others.  I dunno.

When I finally got up, I was stunned to see about four or five more inches of snow outside.  I don’t know why I was so stunned, it seems to be an ongoing theme.  It was very pretty though.

Well, I listed my ASUS computer on eBay last week and it sold last night.  I brought it along all packed up and ready to go, so I dropped it off at the Seaside Post Office this morning and then headed for the beach again.

Wow, this is one wild scene man.  The high white caps of the surf rolling into the snowy beach.  Lots more snow than last night, it was hard to walk.  Lots of locals were out this morning to see this oddity, some of them with kids who had never seen snow before.  As I walked toward the water, there was a group of four or five teens I guess and as I walked by I could smell pot, they asked me if I wanted a hit.  “No thanks” said I, but thought how kind of them to ask.  Geez, what is this world coming to?  I walked around a bit and got some neat pictures of people and their kids playing in the snow, building snowmen and sledding down the dunes. Read Full Article & Comments…

In the morning Lloyd took me into town to show me around Westport.  He has big plans for the place.  I love his house, it’s right on the beach and the view from his living room windows is awesome.  We had a nice lunch together and then I was on my way heading south.  I turned right on a road south of Westport that led to the beach, right onto the beach.  So, I drove around on the beach for a little while and admired the view.  It was sunny and it had warmed up a bit, but I had to get back on the road, I had a long way to go.

Read Full Article & Comments…

I slept in a little here at the Olympic Hostel and so did Joy.  We finally awoke and looked outside and discovered another two or three inches of snow and it was still coming down.  This ought to be interesting.  After breakfast, Joy and I swapped contact info and I was on my way.

Once I had reached Port Angeles, I called Lloyd, my dear friend from Intermec and Ryzex who now lives a right and proper retired life on the Washington coast, to let him know where I was.  He had invited me to stop by.  The snow was still coming down, pretty hard in some places and the road was completely covered and fairly well packed with snow.  What wasn’t white was green.  That’s something I’ve always loved about the Pacific Northwest, the winters are not as barren and brown as they are back east.

Some of this day’s drive took me through the Olympic Mountains and national forest and some rain forest on the coast, so it was quite lush.  Read Full Article & Comments…

Got up at 6:45 to shower and dress and catch the 8:00 ferry back to Coupeville.  I was greeted with fresh snow on the ground.  I made the 30 minute ferry crossing just fine followed by a 90 minute drive to Burlington.  They had a look at my car and said somehow a rubber boot in my steering column had become dislodged and something dried out so all they had to do was re-lubricate it and re-seal the boot.  But, there were a couple of other issues that they found, which I would not have wanted to discover the hard way on the road.  So, four hours and four hundred dollars later, I was on my way back to Port Townsend.

Got back about 3:00 and took a hike around Port Townsend while I still had some daylight left.  Just as I was heading back to the hostel, I bumped into Joy.  We had dinner together and then played Scattegories later and she crushed me.  Then we watched a movie later on my little PC.  I loaded it up with movies and tv shows for times just like this.  It was a pleasant relaxing evening.

Woke up at 7:30 here in the Olympic Hostel and looked outside and discovered an absolutely beautiful day, blue sky, no clouds and the sun was just coming up over the Cascade Mountains. I slept like a baby, the bed was quite comfortable.

I put on my boots and coat and walked around outside for a few minutes and snapped some pictures.  It was cold out;  exhilarating.  I headed upstairs for breaky and picked up a jar of peanut butter by the lid and the jar fell over spilling its contents all over the table.  Someone had forgotten to screw the lid on tight and that’s the runniest peanut butter I’ve ever seen.  I thought the day was off to a bad start.

I got everything cleaned up and had some cereal and bread and then set out for my hike.  I had been looking forward to this.  Dottie helped me with trail suggestions and a map and I was off.  I headed up the hill and found a network of trails.  It was cold and breezy but I was bundled up pretty good.  It felt so good to be on real trails again, unknown trails, something new.  Fort Worden was built in the late 1800s and early 1900s, prior to WWI.  The hills are littered with old bunkers and gun emplacements that once protected the harbor. Read Full Article & Comments…