So That Has Us Into America.

We were going to head through Seattle to Olympia and then head out to the coast OFF of the I-5 but realized we were heading right into Seattle rush hour traffic. To avoid the big city mess we headed out to Anacortes and Whidbey Island to catch the ferry to the Olympic Penninsula (we did say we wanted to avoid the I-5).. We spent the night by an old army base beside the ferry to Port Townsend. It was a windy, cold blustery night. We used our Fisherman’s Furnace (an old clay pot turned upside down over the gas stove…yes we had a window open) and put up our new insulated window coverings. We were up at 6 am for the first ferry, drove on with misty windows and did an adjustment of our packing system.









Upon arrival in Port Townsend we found a little ramshackle restaurant open that was right in the heart of the wooden boat area of the port. We spent a good part of the morning wandering around the docks (web port townsend docks.jpg and web port townsend ferry.jpg) and then went in for breakfast beside a warm wood stove. From here we had two options to head south. One was up to Port Angeles and down, the other was down the Hood Canal We got local advice about routes south and headed down the Hood Canal.























What a choice! The fall colours (or, now that we are in the states should I say colors) were awesome (web washington fall colours.jpg). We stopped by Mount Walker (of course) climbing up a 4 mile gravel road gaining 2805 feet to two lookouts. The decent back to the highway was somewhat eventful as we had to rely solely on the brakes and couldn’t use the engine to slow us down as our new engine was still in its 1000 mile break in period and we could gear down to slow down. I ended up having to stop a bunch of times to let the smoking brakes cool down while Maura and Skeya ran on ahead to get part of their daily quota of exercise.