Stop 29: Port Ludlow, WA (Olympic National Park, Seattle)

Concrete to Port Ludlow would have been a 200 mile trip if we had stuck to the roads. We decided that it would be fun to take the ferry from Coupeville to Port Townsend and knock more than a hundred miles off the trip

Waiting for the ferry to arrive.

Baby goes to sea.

View from the "sun deck".

The "sun deck".

Our wake.

Arriving in Port Ludlow, we were again amazed at how green and lush this area is. We are far from alone in this RV park but you'd never know it. We can't see any of our neighbors.

Our lush site.

More of our lush site.

Our first full day: Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park gets more than 12' of rain each year so I expect that our experience was far from unusual. There were patches of blue sky and sunshine outside the park entrance in Port Angeles. After talking to them at the Visitor Center, we decided to take the 45 minute drive up to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center. At the 5242' level, it's supposed to have the best view of the Olympic Range that you can get anywhere (by road).

On the way up we drove up through the drizzle and into the clouds. It was close to zero visibility for long stretches and the drive took much longer than 45 minutes. We finally broke through the top of the clouds but we were still surrounded by clouds.

We saw this pair of deer near the top.

The Visitor Center had this nice graphic under the window to explain what we were looking at.

This is what we were looking at.

Kristen on the way back to the truck.

We did see this lady on the way back down the mountain.

Our second full day: Downtown Seattle

We woke up to rain (not that it ever really stopped). Our plan for days 2 and 3 was to to take the ferry across from Bainbridge Island to Seattle. The iffy part was that we didn't know if parking would be available at the Bainbridge Island Terminal. We could see on the Internet that there's a parking lot but we were worried that the commuters might get there ahead of us and grab all of the spaces. As it ended up, the lot was only about half full.

Out on the Sound, it was pouring and my photos were blurry and unusable (and, if I call them unusable, they must really be unusable). Approaching Seattle, the rain let up and I managed to get this dark image of the skyline.

Approaching the dock, we passed this ferry headed back to Bainbridge Island.

The rain was no where to be seen when we reached Seattle. We had decided in advance that we wanted to have dinner for lunch at one of the wonderful seafood restaurants along the waterfront. It was too early for lunch when we arrived but we walked the waterfront and checked out the menus before we climbed the hill to Pikes Place Public Market.

The famous sign.

Inside the market. I would have loved to catch a picture of the guys flinging fish. They threw a lot of them today but I never had the camera ready.

Ferry boat through the Ferris wheel from Pikes Place

Also from Pikes Place, these are the Mariners and Seahawks stadiums (the Mariner's Safeco Field is the one on the right). Notice that the sky is clearing.

As we were having a wonderful lunch, the sun came out. It was a beautiful thing to see after days of rain. We did a lot more walking and finally headed back to the ferry.

The Space Needle (in the sunshine) from the ferry.

The skyline.

Those stadiums again.

It was sunny all the way across but, as we reached Bainbridge Island, the sky opened up and poured. Fortunately, it stopped by the time that we got back to our trailer and we finished our drive in steamy sunshine.

Third full day: another ferry trip to Seattle

The subheading says it all. Once again, we drove to the Bainbridge Ferry Terminal. We came so close to catching our target ferry that we probably could have jumped across the gap if the barriers weren't in the way. As it was, we missed it and had to wait 65 minutes for the next ferry. On the positive side, we had an easy time finding a parking place. That next ferry arrived at Seattle at noon and a Mariners vs Padres game was starting at Safeco at 12:30 pm. The ferry was packed with Mariners fans and many were complaining about the difficulties that they had encountered finding parking.

The weather today was a bit more cooperative. We didn't see a drop of rain but we didn't see any sunshine either. There was even a ghost of an outline of the Olympic Mountains in the West.

Our first stop was another favorite seafood restaurant along the waterfront. Afterwords, we walked up to Westlake Center and caught the Monorail over to the Space Needle.

Space Needle through the skylights in the Monorail.

Our Monorail sitting in the Seattle Center (Space Needle) Station.

Looking up at the Space Needle.

We had planned to go up in the Space Needle but we had forgotten that it would cost nearly $50 for the 2 of us. Since it's only been a few years since we last went to the top, we decided to skip it. After exploring Seattle Center, we caught the Monorail back to Westlake Center.

Day 2's visit to Pike Place Public Market was a bit of a bust. It was so crowded that we could barely move, let alone see anything. We headed back that direction and found that the crowds were greatly diminished.

This is the famous fish market where they throw large fish long distances to each other. They rarely miss but you don't want to be standing behind the person catching the fish (there's a lot of splatter). That big one hanging out at the bottom is a lung fish. They can manipulate it from under the counter and occasionally make it lunge at an unsuspecting tourist.

This is the shellfish side of the same fish counter.

After some more walking, we made our way back to the Ferry and headed back to the trailer.

Tomorrow, we are off to Ashford, WA.

-JC-