After a little mix up at the rental car place we ended up in a black chevy impala. With our bellies full of chipolte, we picked up some essentials from REI (TSA doesn't like flying with fuel...) and hit the grocery store. We decided to take a scenic tour to the olympic peninsula to do some camping. After exploring the beach for a while and enjoying a sunset- it was off to find a camp spot. Our lack of planning didn't pay off. Most of the beach campgrounds were full - and the inland ones required some sort of discover pass you could only buy during business hours... plus there was also the bear canister issue...We finally headed to "oil city" which was a primitive camping area about 1 mile from a parking area on the beach. We found it by head lamp - and left all of our food and other bear attractions in the car.
The next morning we realized what an awesome place we'd discovered. It was beautiful. Very different from the carolina coasts - with many large rocks and logs scattering the coast line.
After enjoying the beach a bit we packed up and headed inland to the Hoh Ranger station where we obtained backcountry passes to hike along the hoh river and camp on the gravel bar at the Olympic guard station. Initially we planned to hike in a do a day hike the next day up towards Mt. Olympus. After doing a bit more investigation and realizing how cloudy it was we decided to hike up to a lake instead. The old growth forests were beautiful. The trees made you feel very small and insignificant.
One of the "new" things we were going to try this trip was a steri pen. I'd heard good things - so I convinced Adam to buy one. Hiking it seemed to work well. The water was clean appearing - so we just swirled it around and enjoyed. Unfortunately the second time we tried to use the steripen it stopped working. No warming just wouldn't work. We were then forced to switch to old fashioned iodine tabs. Lesson learned - always bring back up.
So on day 3 of our adventure we hiked up to a lake, which was still mostly frozen and surrounded by snow. While getting ready to enjoy our lunch - we noticed 2 black bears on the other side of the lake. I think they noticed us too - as they looked and started walking our direction. This scared me - I started to head down the trail. Adam wasn't scared - and we ended up continuing to watch them for a bit and they wandered back away from us. We also saw a river otter catching fish on the lake! Very pretty area! Day 4 we packed up and headed back towards the car. My feet were pretty sore - there were not used to walking 10 miles a day or carrying a pack. We finished the loop of the olympic peninsula stopping in Forks - which is now the Twilight capital of the USA. I have to admit I read the books - never realized the town would be somewhere people would visit for a "twilight" tour.
Day 5 - Adam flew back to SLC. I started the DiMM course. More to follow about the course!
Awesome stuff! Sounds great.
ReplyDeleteI have seen folks just using a few drops of bleach per L but I am not so sure. Possible third backup? MSR filters are what you need, spendy but work great forever. Did 200 miles on the AT with one...
I am sure you know the classic joke about bear country:
Bears are generally friendly animals. That being said, you should wear a bear bell and carry bear repellent pepper spray. You can tell black bear territory by the droppings which are typically lumpy and dark brown. Grizzly bear droppings are similar but usually include small bells and smell like pepper spray.