The route we had planned for The Big One, that enormous map I shared a ways back, had been officially abandoned: we needed to avoid the heat waves and fires inland this summer. Since fleeing to the Oregon Coast when we were ambushed by the Shasta fire, we slowly and steadily worked our way north, hugging the ocean.
Leaving Oregon’s charms reluctantly behind, we crossed into the state of Washington. We spent a night hitched up in the rig and parked on the stony bank of the Hoh River at a farmer’s private no-frills campground (Allen’s Bar on Google, highly recommend for a mere $5) and then headed into Olympic National Park.
The trick to getting a spot in a first-come-first-serve campsite (our only hope with the parks so crowded and no reservations available) is to arrive early in the morning with your patience pants on, ready to pounce as soon as anyone vacates their spot.
Stressful spot-nab completed, trailer unhitched and camp set up at South Kalaloch Beach campground, Mike and I decided a treat was in order.
Sitting on the weathered silvery-cedar deck of the nearby Kalaloch Café for breakfast, gazing at an endless beach framed by blooming blackberry, yarrow and foxglove with a surfeit of bees busy among the flowers, I felt a whisper of surprised awe.
I never dreamed that I would return to this corner of the world where I’d felt such wonder and delight when I said goodbye to it at the end of our Open Road trip in 2015. But here we were, and the Olympic Peninsula seemed not to have altered nearly as much in the passing years as many of the other wilderness areas I’d come to love. In these changing times, when every hillside seems scored by fire and beach eroded by rising tides, Olympic’s empty roads lined with flowers and tall lush first-growth forests draped in moss seemed to have been given a reprieve. Olympic’s Hoh Rainforest, perilously dry in 2015, was now lush and flowing with water, every fern and moss replenished, vibrantly green and glorious.
This assessment, cursory as it was on our first day exploring the Park, was confirmed by a couple seated at a table near us. “You’re our neighbors at South Beach Campground,” said a man introducing himself as Paul. “We like your Retro trailer. We have the little vintage one beside you, the 1963 tin can.”
“Yeah, I noticed that!” Mike said. He and Paul swapped stories about trailer restoration while his wife Mary and I chatted and got to know each other. I told her about our road trip, and she told me that she and Paul had been coming to Olympic every summer for years. “What I love about the park is that it stays the same,” she said. “And it isn’t a hectic place like the other national parks; it’s so peaceful.”
“Olympic is so spread out and undeveloped that it absorbs the crowds. It’s like entering a place that hasn’t aged a bit in the years since we were here last. With everything else changing, it’s a comfort,” I said.
Paul and Mary agreed that timelessness is one of the reasons they love Olympic National Park and why they return to it every year.
Later in the day, Mike and I retraced some of our previous explorations by rambling slowly along the Quinalt Lake Loop Drive. This too was unchanged, even down to the Quinalt Mercantile with its battered wooden porch and polyglot mix of foodstuffs, practicalities, and oddball souvenirs. Mike found a lumberjack shirt that was actually big enough for him. Fleece lined, with pockets and a hood, the perfect Pacific North West garment was only twenty-two dollars.
“Are you sure this is priced right?” Mike asked at the checkout counter.
“Sure is.” The cashier pointed to her own version of the shirt in brown plaid, hanging on a nearby hook. “Super deal, aren’t they?”
We stopped frequently for Mike to toss a lure into the clear river, or to take in a view of a waterfall or other vista. I enjoyed every mile of the gravel Loop Drive Road as it bent and curved between giant, first-growth Sitka spruce, incense cedar, Douglas fir, maple and alder, all of them swathed in abundant mosses.
My phone slipped out of my pocket at some point when we stopped at a little waterfall and, miles later when I discovered the loss, a tiny drama ensued as we tore apart the car looking, then drove back to where I last remembered holding it.
I eventually found “My Precious” nestled in a patch of wood sorrel on the shoulder near where we’d parked to view a waterfall. This trip, so far, had been an exercise in accepting a lack of connectivity to the outside world, and that was a relief in many ways. I mainly used the phone for photography, though, and got downright anxious when I couldn’t capture what I was seeing. Pictures had become memory shorthand, especially on days when we are traveling too fast for me to write about our experiences. My phone photos anchored memories to be returned to later, when I had time to process and write about them.
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