6/7/02 5:56 PM Pacific

It's now Friday afternoon and we're sitting in our tiny, overpriced hotel room in the Westin in Vancouver, B.C., after walking around the city a bit. I'm sure (and I've heard) that Vancouver has some really pretty parts to it, but either we missed those or drove by them to quickly to get a good look. What we have seen is a pretty normal, if interesting, big city. All in all I'd have to say that I liked Seattle a good bit better. But now I'm getting ahead of myself. I haven't even written about Thursday yet.

We got up at our normal time around 8:00 AM to get ourselves checked out of the Inn at the Market. I've never stayed anywhere nicer and I really hope that we get a chance to come back and stay there again. With a little help from the bellhop/valet we were soon in our car and on our way down to the ferry docks (which we had scoped out on Wednesday). Within a few minutes we were through the gate and in line to board the ferry over to Bainbridge Island.

Once off the ferry, 35 minutes later, we drove North across the island. The views were nice and the scenery was quaintly cute. We enjoyed the drive through this nice area. Very soon we crossed the bridge that took us over to the mainland (a peninsula off of the Olympic Peninsula, actually, separated from the rest by the Hood Canal and spanned by the Hood Canal Bridge). This led to another nice bit of driving, though under cloudy skies and later rain. The rain didn't last long, though, and by the time we were on the main peninsula the sky had cleared and the sun was shining down through partly cloudy skies.

I don't remember what time it was when we first saw the Straight of Juan de Fuca, nor do I recall when we saw the mountains up close. By the time we got to those visions we were already lost in the midst of a lot of very beautiful scenery and very nearly overwhelmed by it all. All around us was some of the prettiest land I have ever seen, and I can't wait to go back.

We passed two different coves/bays off of the Straight on our way to Port Angeles and snapped a few pictures around them. Not long after we had reached Port Angeles and turned South to enter Olympic National Park. Going into a National Park has always been a very special thing to me. Throughout my childhood I got to experience some of the best that this land has to offer by visiting our parks with my family. To me they are magickal places where amazing things are seen and done. I can't help but get a tingle when we drive by one of those big, brown signs on our way into a piece of land where man is trying to do better than he has done before. If there was one thing that Theodore Roosevelt did as president that is to be admired then I think it is these parks.

We stopped at the main visitors' center to pick up some maps and souvenirs. We realized while looking over the maps that we wouldn't be able to drive all the way through the park on our way to the coast like we had planned. You see, there are a couple of roads that go all the way around the park on its outskirts, and there are several roads that wind into it like fingers, but none go all the way through. So the entire center of the park is back country, completely inaccessible by car. I have to say that I like that a lot. Because of this we decided that we would drive in on the nearest of these inner roads to another visitors' center and then turn back to the outer road to make our way over to the rest of the park on the coast. This way we would get a decently good look at the park from edge to near the middle before going to experience the coastal rain forest and the Pacific Ocean.

What can I say about Olympic National Park? It was incredible—more spectacular than any other park I have ever been to in my life. The closest thing I can compare it to to is probably Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The Olympics are the youngest mountain range in the country and rise a mere 8,000 feet above sea level, but you get to see every foot of that distance. Compare that to the Rockies where there are dozens of peaks that top 14,000'. Sure, that's nearly twice as high, but you only get to see the top 8,000 or so of that since you are starting from about 5,000 to 6,000 feet up. So really, the Olympics look just as big as the Rockies when you are looking at them. But I digress. The feeling of driving into the Olympics is much like that of driving into the Rockies (same sort of craggy, snow-covered mountains above you), just 40x as lush and green. Like Colorado the dominant tree around here is a conifer, but unlike Colorado it is not the Ponderosa Pine. There are several varieties depending on where you are, but I can't remember what they are right now.

The drive up to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center was great. It took a bit over an hour and the views were better than I could have imagined. The roads were twisty and a little steep and a huge amount of fun to drive in a Mustang. On the way up we saw a deer and were able to stop and get a couple of nice pictures.

Of course it goes without saying that the vistas from the top were fantastic. Just like in the Rockies there is a tree-line and above it a tundra, and that is where we were at. On the way back down we got incredibly lucky and came across a mother and cub black bear. They were right on the side of the mountain beside the road, only about 30 or 40 feet away from us.

We also got to see another deer about three feet from our car. These didn't seem to be the typical Western Mule Deer, so I'm not sure what they were.

The rest of the drive out was without incident. Right after we got out of the park we took a bypass road to catch SR-101 without going into Port Angeles.

This kinda sucks. It's Friday night, time for bed, and I'm still not caught up on Thursday's events. Time for bed, you ask? I took a long break in the middle of this entry. It's now 10:30 PM and we are very tired. Good night.