Washington Coast

Time to hit the road again.  We were advised against going around the Olympic Peninsula like I had wanted and going through the rainforest, as it would add half a day to the trip. So instead we caught a ferry across to the peninsula and went straight down the 101,  California here we come!

This is our second ferry of the trip.  There was two lanes for ferry traffic on the road in and quite a backup, so I just got in line and waited.  Meanwhile I saw a few bikes going past now and then along with some cars, I didn’t think anything of it as there’s other businesses down this road by the docks.  After more than a half hour of waiting a guy a few cars back gets out and comes up to talk to us wanting to know where we were from and everything.  Then after a while he mentions You know you don’t have to wait in line with the cars right?   WHAT?

Bikes get preferential treatment on the ferries, they go on first and last and get to go to the front of the line.  Sweet!  It would have been nice to know that ahead of time.  Here we are squeezed on with another bike as the last ones to board.

This ferry was massive!  two decks for cars and another for foot traffic and passengers.  Easily 50 cars on here.   Other than the air craft carrier museum I went to in Corpus Christi TX this is by far the biggest ship I’ve ever been on.  Biggest one that was actually moving.

Upstairs on the passenger deck.  This was so long I couldn’t get a shot of it all with the curvature of the hull.  There was a snack bar, mini restaurant and gift shop on board along with tons of vending machines for anything you could want.

Watching out the windows this thing was booking it, it was faster than all of the smaller private boats and smooth as could be. I could barely feel that it was moving.

All the bikes from the front of the line that got on first. Lots of Victories.

I don’t know how far we went but it was pretty fast maybe 30-40 mins.  The tiny ferry in Utah took almost an hr to get across Lake Powell, and also docked by ramming the pier to line everything up LOL not subtle at all.  When this one docked I didn’t feel a thing and couldn’t tell we had even stopped from the rear of the boat till my GPS read 0. From the GPS we were hanging out in the water a long long ways hehe.

South on 101 we eventually got hungry and stopped for breakfast/lunch here.  I have no idea what town this was in but highly recommended if you are ever on the olympic peninsula

Made it to Oregon and the beach!   Gratuitous V Star Beach shot.

Yep lot of surfers there.

Strange sand.  its kind of like a mixture of light brown and dark grey grains.  Leaves a strange effect like an optical illusion.  Doesn’t show up well in photos.

Thats one well travelled bear heh

Stopped and asked around at the first town we got to for a room.  This was 4th of July weekend and I’d been told everything would be sold out well in advance, so first motel we find we’re staying.  First town $180 for a queen, holy molly..

We kept on and wound up in Seaside Oregon, the major tourist trap from what we had heard..   We were making really slow progress with all the weekend holiday traffic aka morons on the road so we checked out some motels here to get a break from the road.   This was the first one we stopped at,  all they had was a suite with kingsize without a fireplace for $230 or with fireplace $250  Ouch!    The ladies said there’d definitely be cheaper rooms that aren’t sold out in Tillamook if we could hold out that long.  That’s where I really wanted to make this night but it wasn’t going to happen.

After talking to us about our trip a while the lady punches up some stuff in the computer and told us to wait there and went to make a phone call.  She comes back a while later and says she’d give us one of the last suites for $200 and we got one with a gas fireplace. Nice!   We were on the top floor with a balcony looking out over a canal.  This night totally blows my budget but sometimes you have to treat yourself.