Happy Place

Well never made it to Craters of the Moon. The weather continued to be rotten so I decided to break for the coast where I've heard the weather has been fabulous for the past month- Seattle here I come. In order to get there drove through even more vast empty expanses of the great west. Trust me, we have room for immigrants. It's so big and wide open out here in southeastern Idaho that you can see the (bad) weather for at least 50 miles in all directions. Ended up in the cool little community of Baker City (they're being optimistic) at a great campsite. Met a bunch of folks from Seattle. Hmmm why are they all going in the opposite direction? While in town visited the nearby Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. Boy those wagons were small; doesn't look like any fun at all. Got a couple of journals written by women who traveled west via the Oregon Trail. And, this is cool, the Hudson Company apparently built a fort because of competition from a trapper named Wyeth. Which makes sense because this was British held territory.

By the way - this is a big moment - the first time things are actually working the way I imagined. I'm sitting in my (freezing) tent blogging. I must be getting closer to civilization as there's actually a broadband connection.

Anyway once I left Baker City drove through the endless, barren, rolling hills of Idaho/W ashington. Eventually ran into Washington wine country. Extensive vineyards which are incredibly gorgeous and some cherry orchards out there. Didn't stop at any wineries; no fun when you're on your own.

Stopped for the night at Issaquah, WA, mainly because I couldn't find a suitable campground. Definitely back in suburbia. Wednesday headed off into Seattle but it turns out the hostels has no beds available so stopped at a Visitors Center and got loaded up with info re Olympic National Park where I've been for the past few days. Found my happy spot at Kalaloch beach campsite. I could see the ocean from my camp. Sweet. OK still grey and rainy but it's all good. I just love the beach; stayed there 2 nights.

While driving around being a tourist I quite innocently came across Fords, Washington (if you're like me and totally uncool, it's apparently the hometown of the heroine of Twilight) so I took some iconic pix. I'm hip, I'm happenin'

Yesterday on the way to the Hoh Rain Forest I just had to stop for lunch at the Hard Rain Cafe. That makes a great addition to visiting the Hard Wok Cafe on a mountain in China. The rain forest is one of my big reasons for coming here. I t is quite different than I imagined, big trees and such, verdant but kind of ummmmmm drier than anticipated, in fact it's not at all drippy.

Today I was planning to move to the Sol Duc hot springs area but didn't like it; drove out toward Neah but didn't like it[but did like the Mahak Tribal Museum] At the museum ran into some folks I met at the tidal pools the other day when she was taking pix with fancy-schmancy camera just as my little camera battery died; drove through Port Angeles but didn't see any place to stay, drove toward Port Townsend and found my current home, Dungeness where I'll be for 2 nights. Basically I'm going clockwise around the Olympic penninsula.