So the plan, Olympic National Park and Seattle. Why you say? Well first of all, why not, but really how it came about was one of the artists I like, ZZ Ward – who is kinda bluesy alternative indie artist, was going on tour and coming through town. I reached out to my friend Megan, who I know likes her as well, to see if she wanted to go see her. Megan said yes, but why don’t we pick one of her other tour dates and go see her in another city and go exploring and shooting. What a great idea. Travel, exploring, photography, and music; can’t beat that.
So we narrowed down a few cities we both agreed on and then I had Megan surprise me and go from there and since she is obsessed with coffee she picked Seattle. Now I haven’t been to Seattle yet, well the airport yes, but never outside of the airport.
So this is how we have come to this trip. We scheduled our flights and planned to spend 2.5 days in Olympic National Park and 1.5 days in Seattle. Now Megan is a talented photographer herself, actually she is the one who reignited my passion for photography since I stepped away from it for a few years beyond just some travel snaps. Although she and I are both photographers, we differ greatly, as my interest lie in more the nature, landscape, travel photography standpoint. She is a people photographer, lifestyle, weddings, etc. She recently rebranded her company to fit her growing point of view and can be found at Beyond the Pines Photography.
So while I was planning out some of the things I was thinking of getting for photos, she warned me – I’m a people photographer, so you’re going to have to be in the photos. Um, okay, and her style is more dramatic flowy wind in the fabric kinda thing. So she said I would need to get a few flowy dresses. This isn’t my style but I picked up a few things that would work but not as flowy as I know she was looking for, but if I’m going to be in front of the camera I would do something that wasn’t 100% outside of my comfort zone so I pushed it to maybe 50-75%. Hahaha
If you are in need of a photographer in the MN area or elsewhere (they travel) for events, family portraits, etc. go Check out Megan’s work at Beyond the Pines Photography. http://beyondthepinesphotography.com/
Olympic National Park
So the time has come and we are off, on an early 7 AM flight out to Seattle. I don’t know why I was slow pokey this am but I was running us a few minutes behind. Once we got to the airport the lines were insanely long but I flubbed us to get nearer to the front of the line. We get on the plane and we are off, Seattle coming soon into view on an uneventful flight, or so we thought.
Megan went up to the front to use the restroom, a minute or so later, the flight attendant comes over the loudspeaker asking if there were any medical personnel on board. I look up front and wondered what was going on, thinking Megan was in the restroom that soon she’ll emerge and see what the fuss is about to give me the scoop. Then I noticed she was standing near the restroom and they were talking to her and she ducked into the bathroom. I went up to investigate. Sounded like she was waiting for the restroom and she fainted. Just thunk down on the ground. So I jumped into the bathroom with her to check her out. Listen folks, if you ever have ideas on joining the mile high club, take it from me, domestic flight bathrooms are not the place to do it. It was so cramped with the two of us in there. She was a little overheated, clammy and a little shaky but overall okay. So we went back to our seats, where a doctor who was on flight checked her over and her vitals were okay so they documented a few things, gave her a makeshift icepack and returned to her seat as we were already in decent to Seattle.
Due to this excitement we were informed we would be escorted off the plane by paramedics who were waiting for us, so that’s one way to get off the plane first as no one was allowed to get up until we got off. The paramedics checked her out and again everything looked okay, they had her standup and when she stood up they rechecked her again and found that her blood pressure did drop significantly but it was borderline okay so they said if it was lower we would take you to the hospital but you should be okay to go. Just take it easy and rehydrate.
So she was wheeled through the airport to our shuttle to the rental cars. We finish up our paperwork and try hunting for the car but the escalator situation reminded me of the staircases ala M.C. Escher. Soon enough we found our way down and got our vehicle and were off. So first thing first, we decided after all of the medical excitement it would be best to start with a hearty breakfast, so we stop at the Pancake Chef who had an old school diner feel and fueled up with some german pancakes.
Fueled up and ready to go we were off to the park and decided to take the southern route in. Now I should mention Megan has the bladder the size of a pea so there may have been some timed restroom stops along the way.
Eventually we landed upon the Quinault area of the park and took a drive in to see their claimed large tree, which we didn’t find but we did have a greeting with some of the local elk. Continuing on we arrived at the Hoh Rainforest, where the trees and moss are unreal. I had figured we would get to the rainforest around 1 PM when I was planning this in my head but with the delays out of the airport, stopping for breakfast, etc it was more around 4 PM by the time we arrived. Now this is our first real stop to take pictures and explore the area. When I got some of my shots done, it was time for Megan. Nothing like stripping down layers when its nice and chilly out upper 30’s low 40’s to put a dress on to run around barefoot through the moss and streams. Ah, I’m a Minnesotan – we are hearty, its okay.
The light was fading and we still had a long way to go to get to Port Angeles, it was about 10 miles or so as the crow flies but since the roads and the crows don’t follow the same path we still had about 80 miles or so of driving before we got to our end destination.
We did have a wonderful full moon this evening, and while driving Megan was able to do grab some quick shots as there was a whisp of cloud going through the moon which seemed to scream for a witch flying around on her broom in the shot.
It is dark, it is late, we have arrived in Port Angeles. What to eat? Well I was told about this fast food joint, that supposedly has the best burgers, and is a drive through only, Frugals. Well this place must be good, as the line of cars was way down the main road before you could even pull into their lot to go through the drivethru to order. We get our food and continue on to our place for the night. Megan was a little concern that I was taking her to murder palace as the area we were driving around seemed a little sketchy, but in the midst of darkness everything looks sketchy.
I booked us at a bed and breakfast and in the Hoh Rainforest room at the Domaine Madeline in Port Angeles. This is the cutest little place ever. The room has a full wall of windows that overlooks the water and a large painting of the Hall of Mosses in the Hoh Rainforest (which unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to see as we didn’t have the time).
Hunt for Beaches
Friday morning had us off to find a few beaches that Megan wanted to shoot at with a few stops along the way. While driving out, we made a few stops to chase clouds. I absolutely love when clouds get stuck on the mountains. While winding through a path that seemed inviting Megan and I found a few ducks. I had to chase down the lady duck to help her out, as she had some fishing wire stuck to her leg and she was dragging that around. Thankfully she didn’t run away too much from me so I was able to pull it off of her so she could live a tangle free life.
Jumping back into the car we were off to our first adventure Sol Duc Falls, quickly though my little sniffer was picking up a rather unpleasant aroma. I ask Megan, she doesn’t smell anything. Really? I smell it, do a shoe check, did we step in anything? Unfortunately, as I was driving I wasn’t able to check my shoes. The turn off for Sol Duc is just ahead, this is where we start to see some snow, continuing to drive up, up, up we get to the base of the initial trailhead and we see doh doh doh, the road and trail are closed. Boo! Pulling over briefly I decide we need to find the source of this stench. Argh!!!! I stepped in it, really stepped in it… I have Shit Shoes (Think Data from Goonies), and now due to the cold it is completely frozen onto the bottom of my shoe. I am not certain as to the origin (dog or human) but it’s not good. I find a random stick to start the scraping and about 10 mins later I think I have cleaned my shoes off and have removed the source of the smell and now we can continue on.
So our waterfall plan has been thwarted so off we go to find those beaches. We stopped by Rialto beach to see all of the driftwood and surging waves but we wanted more of a sandy beach rather than a rock beach so we continued onwards. Megan had heard of La Push beaches so we drove out to the area where we thought the beach would be in a small coastal town near Forks. We opted to grab a quick lunch. We had a nice oceanside table and we had some exciting luncheon companions of this little otter family coming up taking a break from the water before they bobbed back in again.
As we were leaving we asked the lady if the town we were in is Forks (GPS was not our friend out in this area), she laughed and said no, that’s where the white people are. Gulp. Okay. So anyway, back to the beach hunt.
We couldn’t quite find the beaches we were looking for, so a quick search had us going north to the most northwestern point of this section of Washington on the hunt for the Point of Arches. We had obtained cell coverage again and put in the general coordinates towards our destination. Thankfully along our route we had a random waterfall alongside the road that we stopped for but getting back into the car I accidentally closed the app that was giving us directions and we didn’t have coverage here so loading the map back again we lost the actual directions but had most of the map loaded so we continued forward into parts unknown to see if we could find our final destination.
We drove and drove on these narrow, twisty, windy roads, having moments of spotty cell coverage (Canadian cell coverage) mind you as we could see Canada just off to our right as we continued west. Now we hit a snag at one point in time as the road we needed to continue on before we were to park/hike to our end destination had a sign that the road closes at 4 PM and we would not be able to get back out, considering the time and all we elected to not continue forward but along the path we did find a beach that looked interesting in Makah Bay.
We had some lovely moody clouds flowing in, and lovely reflections off of the beach with some of the water that was flowing down from a small stream into the bay. Now I just recently had gotten a drone. I hadn’t had a chance to take it out yet so we decided this was the best place to try it out. I didn’t take it up for very long and was mostly getting used to the controls but had my inaugural flight done. Once that was over it was time for me to don another dress and let Megan do her thing and capture a few photos.
Once we were wrapped up we got back on the road. We were commenting on this was a very remote area, I wonder what would happen if there was a medical emergency, thinking this as people seemed to drive crazy fast around a lot of these narrow hairpin turns, let alone the constant say no to drugs signs. We didn’t see any hospitals (well we did see a H road sign but it was a H? sign. Not sure what to think about when the H has a question mark behind it). Sure enough just minutes after this conversation we come to a halt. A car accident was ahead of us. Someone had flipped their car upside down. Now we were about to jump out of the car to see if any medical attention was needed (we don’t have any experience in this field but any help is better than no help and with some basic knowledge we could maybe be useful). Thankfully the person didn’t have but a scratch on them and an ambulance/police were already called and on their way. So we continued on, it took about 20 mins of our drive from that point for us to pass the ambulance. That means from when we left the ambulance wouldn’t arrive for about 40 mins, let alone how long it was before we got there that the services were called. Kinda scary to think if you had a serious need for help that you would be left with no support for quite some period of time.
Birds, did I mention the birds? Naturally being near the water we spotted quite a few on our drive and there was even a birding reserve on our way out to Makah Bay. On our way back I saw a group of 4 eagles (including eaglets) soaring through the air so naturally I had to stop for some photos. We wanted to make it back before dark, no need to be driving around twisty roads and no real map to how to get back in the dark, but along our drive being twilightish we had to keep an eye out for animals emerging and sure enough we had a herd of elk pass by us (with way wrong settings on my camera I didn’t get a decent capture – I have to work on being a better boy scout and always be prepared).
Off to the City
Saturday Morning comes and we both enjoyed a quiet moment watching the sun come up from our view of our lovely little room. I would definitely return to this place and would recommend it if ever you are traveling through the area.
We grabbed breakfast at The Oak Table in Sequim (pronounced Squim) and it did not disappoint. Portions were huge and everything was freshly homemade. Yum!
We left the park area with enough time to get into the city and to explore before the night’s activities. We took the ferry over, which for both of us was a first time experience (well to ferry across with a vehicle that is), and while cold out there enjoyed some nice views of Seattle from the bay, or sound whichever you want to call it.
Now I chose a hotel that was in thick of it all, so we could walk to most of the places, and when I say in the thick of it all, I do mean the thick of it all. The hotel was called the Inn at the Market, and you guessed it, its at the famous Pikes/Public Market. So once we figured out where to park and got all settled into the hotel, we took off on foot to explore the city.
While we didn’t get to see any flying fishes we did enjoy strolling through the market, Post Alley, stopped for a bite to eat at Pikes Brewery (which was playing fantastic music overhead (80’s) and had Goonies playing on some of the tvs around the place. After lunch we stopped at the Gum wall, which is both gross and pretty at the same time. We swung through the waterfront to see Seattle’s Great Wheel and their carousel then committed to doing all of the stairs at Pike’s Hill Climb.
After a bit of a break it was time to head off to the show. First we scourged for dinner finding most places nearby were closed so we just grabbed an appetizer at the local Irish pub next to the ShowBox. So ZZ Ward, she’s a fantastic performer. A bit bluesy, alternative, pop, rockish. It was a great show but Megan and had to chuckle as it was a standing room only kinda show and the ladies in front of us were bobbing and weaving the whole night so we always had to adjust accordingly to be able to continue to see.
Sunday morning rolled in and we had time to grab brunch at Bucco before we had to head back to the airport. All in all a good trip!
Trip Details:
What did we do/stay?
- In Olympic National Park
- We stayed in Port Angeles at Domaine Madeline B&B
- We visited
- Quinnalt
- Hoh Rainforest
- Rialto Beach
- La Push
- Makah Bay
- We ate
- Pancake Chef (Seattle)
- Frugal’s (Port Angeles)
- River’s Edge (Quileute)
- Bella Italia (Port Angeles)
- In Seattle
- We stayed right near the market at Inn at the Market
- We visited
- The Public/Pikes Place Market
- Gum Wall
- Post Alley
- Waterfront Park
- Seattle Great Wheel
- The Showbox
- We ate
- Pikes Brewery
- The Blarney Stone (Irish Pub – Do not recommend for food)
- Bucca Café
Recommendations, if we had more time/things to do again:
- Olympic National Park
- Hoh Rainforest (I would have like to spend more time here hiking more)
- Sol Duc Falls
- Hurricane Ridge
- Beaches (Ruby Beach, any of the numbered beaches) and Point of Arches
- Wildlife Refuge
- Stairway
- Seattle
- Seattle Underground
- Space Needle