johnboystravelblog

Friday, as I drove north and then east along Highway 101 towards Port Angeles, Washington, I went in the westernmost north entrance of the Park.  This road would end at the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort.  There are two western entrance to the Park much further south which lead to the Quinault and Hoh Rain Forests respectively, but I did not go to either of them.  I had been to the Hoh Rain Forest when I visited Seattle 20 years ago and had no particular desire to return there.  I had driven up to Quinault Lake, and the Lodge which is on the entrance road, earlier in the week when I was staying in Hoquiam but it was an overcast day and the few pictures I took weren’t blogworthy.

My first stop when I went in the Sol Duc entrance on Friday was at the Salmon Cascades.  This is a spot along the Sol Duc River where, at the right time of year, one can watch the salmon jumping over the rock “ladders” as they swim upstream to spawn.  Of course this wasn’t the right time of year so all I could see was the river and a portion of the falls, but the water was incredibly clear and it was a very pleasant place to spend some time.

Next I headed deeper into the Park to visit the Hot Springs Resort.  A huge hotel and Spa first opened here in 1912 and attracted visitors from far away places.

Unfortunately, much of that building burned only four years later.  A much smaller resort opened in 1920 and operated until a problem developed with the water source and it was forced to close.  The modern facility which exists today opened in 1980.  In includes a (much smaller) main building with a restaurant and gift shop, and there are many cabins on the property which may be rented, as well as a campground.

Next I drove about two miles further to the trailhead where the road ended and walked down to see the Sol Duc waterfall, which was .8 miles away.  Along the way I saw this tree base which I found interesting:

I’m not quite sure why it grew that way, but there it is.

I finally made it to the falls, which were definitely worth the walk:

On the way back to the car I spotted a small Douglas’ Squirrel, like the one I had seen briefly in Oregon.  You can see the progress it was making on what it was eating by the outer casing which was discarded on the rock it was sitting on.

 

I have decided this is my new favorite place in Washington.  It isn’t even a town, it is a CDP – Census Designated Place.

When a local man saw me taking a picture of the Post Office window he explained, and I later confirmed, that Humptulips is derived from an Indian phrase meaning “hard to pole”.  What that means is that in the Humptulips River, in some places narrow and clogged with tree limbs and other debris, it may be impossible to propel a boat with conventional oars and even using a pole to move the boat forward by pushing against the river floor may be hard.

Sorry, Twisp.  You had a good run for the past year….

Thursday I went to two salmon hatcheries, one federal and one state.

These consist of large, rectangular concrete pools which can be filled with constantly changing water and in which fish are raised from a very small size.  Tracking chips are put in them and one non-essential fin is removed so fisherman and wildlife officials can later tell which fish came from hatcheries and which ones were bred and raised in the wild.

There was a Visitor Center at the federal hatchery and I learned there what the six species of salmon are and how to tell them apart.  Not all are raised in this hatchery.

As I was returning to Hoquiam I saw a sign for a state hatchery and it was virtually identical to the first one I saw.

Wednesday was a travel day as I traversed the short distance between Grayland and Hoquiam, where I would be spending two nights before heading up to the Olympic Peninsula.  I first returned to Westport, which I had spent most of my time in on Tuesday.  It is on a small peninsula at the southern mouth of Grays Harbor, a large body of water about a third of the way up the Washington coast.  The day started out with a heavy overcast and it ended up staying that way all day.

Here is another fishing boat headed out to round up the “catch of the day”

I then drove counter-clockwise around the Harbor through Aberdeen and Hoquiam and went out on the peninsula which stretches down to form the northern mouth of the Harbor entrance.  The southernmost town there is Ocean Shores.  Before reaching Aberdeen I saw another famous Ocean:

I was told when I stayed in Coos Bay, Oregon a while back that as I proceeded north I would start seeing cranberry bogs.  I have seen them in New England, where Ocean Spray is based, but never thought I’d find them on the west coast.  Well, I have seen lots of cranberry bogs, and two cranberry museums!  There was a small Ocean Spray facility down near Grayland but it seemed to be a gathering spot for crews harvesting berries.  This plant, near Aberdeen, was much larger and given it’s proximity to the Harbor is probably for processing and shipping cranberries.

After I visited the Coastal Interpretive Center in Ocean Shores I drove north on the highway which took me there as far north as I could, to the little town of Taholah.  The last 8 miles of that drive was on the Quinault Indian Reservation.  Highway 101, which I have used all the way up the coast from Los Angeles, stays pretty far inland once it gets past Grays Harbor in order to get around the Quinault Reservation which is quite large.

I have noticed that beach access is much more limited in Washington than it was in Oregon, and that the State Parks in this state are much quicker to charge entry fees.  Most of the State Parks in Oregon were free (and ALL beach access is) but the more popular ones tended to have a modest $5 fee.  The beaches I have see so far have been more ordinary (not that there’s anything wrong with that) than the rocky, picturesque beaches further south.  And the highways in Washington are mainly lined with trees so while it is harder to get to the beach is it also more difficult to even see it!  Who knows, when I get north of the Reservation tomorrow I may find more interesting scenery….

After my nice drive I returned to Hoquiam, met and visited with my Airbnb hostess and had a yummy taco dinner in town.

Wednesday I visited this facility in Ocean Shores, Washington.  Here are some interesting things I saw:

This is an Ocean Sunfish:

This particular specimen isn’t very big (the main body was maybe the size of a large frying pan) but according to some photos I have seen online recently these fish can grow to be grotesquely large.

Next, a Green Sea Turtle:

Remember “Crush” in the movie Finding Nemo?

Next, a very ornate Hawksbill Sea Turtle:

And a little bit closer look at it’s shell, head and flipper:

And finally, a red-tailed hawk.  I just love watching these fly….

Unfortunately this guy’s flying days are over.

The Japanese God of Fisherman, God of Luck or the Laughing God.  Take your pick.

I learned about this while I was at the Coastal Interpretive Center in Ocean Shores, Washington on Wednesday.  Back in 2013, Nick Sparagno, his wife, daughter, grandson and their dogs were walking on the beach in Ocean Shores when their dog Annie uncovered something in the surf.  Turns out it was a wooden statue of the Japanese God Edisu which is believed to have been carried out to sea by the massive tsunami which struck Japan in 2011 (they found other debris from Japan on the beach as well).

I tried taking a picture looking straight at it but it is in a glass case and the sliding doors created 2 unattractive lines right down the center!

Here is a photo which appeared in the local newspaper back in 2013.  As you can see, the statue is just as tall as the Sparagno’s two-year old grandson, Noah.

(Photo credit: The Ocean Observer)

And here is a photo Alison Nelson, Noah’s mother, took the day of the discovery:

(Photo credit: Alison Nelson)

As of Tuesday night I have been on the road 14 weeks.  In that time I have put 17,231 miles on my car, compared with 30,686 miles in the first 14 weeks of my “Northwest” trip last year.

 

No photo.

I have been keeping an eye on wildfire activity and there is still no immediate threat to my journey.  In two days I am heading up to the northern end of the Olympic Peninsula and will spend some time there visiting Olympic National Park.  There is a fire there in the southeast part of the Park, but the roads I will be on are in the extreme northern part so while there may be some visibility and air quality issues, I don’t expect any problems.

Tuesday, when I was away from the water, the visibility in southwest Washington was noticeably worse than it was the day before.  There are two fires east of Portland, near the Columbia River and I thought maybe it was coming up from there (they are not very far away from where I am) but a couple visiting the area told me yesterday that they saw on the TV news that this smoke is coming down from Canada, as it did when I visited Oregon last year.

The Carr Fire near Redding California is now at 211,038 acres but is growing very slowly and the city appears to be out of danger.  The Mendocino Complex, down near Ukiah, CA where I spent a few nights, is still growing and is now the largest fire in California history.  Largely rural, there haven’t been nearly as many homes lost as there were with the Carr Fire.

And Yosemite has reopened to visitors.  I looked at their webcams yesterday and while still not ideal, visibility is much better than when that fire first started.

Looking forward, there is a fire in Glacier National Park in northwest Montana but while I will be passing by near there I don’t think it will affect me.  There are lots of smaller fires in northern Idaho and western Montana and while I won’t be there until early September I will continue to keep an eye on things.

Tuesday I drove up and spent a good part of the day in this harbor town a short distance from where I’m staying in Grayland, Washington.  As I determined shortly after I arrived, it is a big fishing port.  This was the part of the harbor I saw first, with almost all the boats docked being fishing boats of various sizes.

One of the largest I saw was the Sea Clipper, which appeared to be unloading it’s bounty.

It appeared that large conveyor belts were moving the fish to a series of red and blue plastic containers:

Of course when I took that the flow of fish had stopped.  There was a guy shoveling huge amounts of ice into the containers to keep the fish cold, and another guy was driving a forklift, moving the, then very heavy, containers to a warehouse.  Here come more fish…

Near where I was watching all this, these guys were putting their private fishing boat back on it’s trailer:

The name of their boat?

And I saw this makeshift sign near the boat ramp:

After spending a little more time watching the activity in that part of the harbor I drove out to the main part of town where there are some small motels and several restaurants.  I learned that that is where personal pleasure boats are docked and the harbor was much bigger than I first thought.  This is from a 3-story tall observation platform located at the end of the main street through town:

That platform also gave me a great view of Grays Harbor, and all the fishing boats coming and going.  There was also a huge cargo ship, the Longview Logger, anchored out in the harbor.  It looked very much like the ship I saw being loaded with logs down in Coos Bay, Oregon.

And I saw this tugboat, pulling a barge:

There is a Maritime Museum in town:

And of course there were shorebirds:

There were a few seagulls in the mix but these were mostly Brandt’s cormorants (with black bills) and Double-Crested cormorants (with yellow bills).

Wednesday I will be driving around to the northeast side of Grays Harbor and will be staying near the town of Hoquiam.

 

Tuesday I drove up towards Westport, Washington and stopped at this lighthouse a short distance south of town.  When it was built in 1898 it was only 400 feet from the ocean but the coastline has been built up as part of a jetty to protect Grays Harbor (one of the few outer-coast harbors in Washington) so it is now about 3,000 feet from the water.  At 107 feet in height it is the tallest lighthouse in the state and the third tallest on the west coast.

In 1992 the original light and lens inside the tower was replaced with another type of light (which you can see at the left, near the top of the tower in the second photo above) which only utilizes a 35 watt bulb but, with magnification, can be seen 19 miles out at sea!  The original lens is still inside the tower and in 2004 the lighthouse ownership was handed over to a local historical society.  They open the facility for tours on weekends.