Jeff’s Blog

Normally, I wouldn’t even consider driving out to the Olympic peninsula for camping after work on a Friday before a busy Seattle summer weekend. However, we were going to meet friends who were leaving earlier in the day. The plan was for them to snag a campsite earlier in the day, then Justin and I would meet them later. We were on the road by 5:30 or so, stocked the cooler with ice and headed toward Edmonds. The traffic wasn’t bad. In total, we probably had to wait about 2 hours to board the ferry. From the looks of the markings on the road for ferry lines, the wait could have been much, much longer.

In this age of cell phones, we’ve become dependent on just in time planning. Hard plans are not made, but rather soft plans made with planned follow up phone calls. Arthur called us as we were waiting for the ferry in Edmonds to say that they still hadn’t found a site and that a lot of places were full closer to Port Angeles. Next, they were going to try Klahowya in the national forest followed by Bear Creek. We never got any phone calls after that one. They almost certainly found a site out of cell coverage or they would have called again once back on the road.

By the time Justin and I got to Klahowya, it was late. We drove through the campground, looking for a brown Ford Explorer with Arizona plates. No dice and no available spots at that hour anymore anyways. After that we were unable to find Bear Creek at all since there appeared to be no signage from the road. Fearing that we’d be stuck, we booked it to Mora to desperately find something on our own. The ranger at REI had assured us the campground was the least likely one to fill up, presumably since it was so far away and had such a large number of sites. As we got near the end of the road, the lights on my car illuminated the “campground full” sign. Before either Justin or I could react, the dog let out an uncharacteristic whine. The timing was perfect, but the situation was bad news.

In yet another last ditch effort, we tried to check out Klahanie. After driving down the forest road that goes by a giant lumber mill with giant lights and a billow of steam pouring out, we never really found any sites or campground. Looking at the forest service website now, it appears there were only 8 primitive campsites anyways, so those people parked on the side of the road were probably campers in sites. At this point, we were pretty over the whole ordeal. It was sometime between 10:30 and 11, I think. We decided we had to drive back to Seattle since any local hotel rooms were certain to be booked at this point of the evening. On the way back, we tried to find Bear Creek campground again, but were successful this time (the signage is marked as a recreation area instead of a campground). The weren’t there either, although by this point in the night it was dark, campfires had been extinguished and it was difficult to identify cars parked in the campground. Some teenager with a lantern walked up to our car as we drove through, telling us that there was an available site nearby. Once we drove by it, it looked occupied with a tent. Hopes dashed again.

From there, it was a long, long haul back to Seattle. We stopped in a Lake Crescent day use area to feed the dog and stretch our legs around midnight. Because it was so late, we weren’t able to take the ferry back and had to drive around the sound through Kitsap County and Tacoma. We got home by 3:30am. As Justin observed, in the time we spent (10 hours), we could have flown to Amsterdam.

Morale #1: We’ve all become far too dependent on mobile phones for doing anything.
Morale #2: Trust your instincts. See the first sentence of this post.

P.S. Observation: I could not believe how many references to Twilight I saw in and around Forks and even Port Angeles. Businesses had clearly been hastily renamed to monopolize on places or characters in the books. I saw at least one sign on US101 near forks welcoming Twilight tourists. Bizarre.