Marymere Falls and Lake Crescent

Travis had a flat when we woke up in the Elwha River Valley. The Power of Three Flat Tires.

It's really hard to log lots of miles when there are so many cool sidetrips to delay you. After a morning hike in the Elwha River Valley rainforest, headed out for our major destination for the day: Lake Crescent. 

We're following Highway 101 at this point in the journey, the well-traveled bike tour route from Washington, through Oregon, and down the coast of California. These states advertise specifically to cyclists, encouraging us to take this route, but parts of it are still questionable safety-wise. This section of the route is so narrow, windy, and heavily trafficked that they installed buttons for cyclists to push that signal to cars that there are bikes on the road.

There were a decent amount of turnouts for us to pull over into when there cars behind us, but a road with no shoulder, guardrails, cliffs, and a lake all stuffed into a corridor with speeding cars was still pretty terrifying. Travis said he was impressed with how fast I booked it through that section, and I told him it was because of pure fear. 

The terror was worth it, though. Lake Crescent is a very pretty lake, crystal clear like the springs in Florida with a backdrop of conifer-covered mountains. We stopped to take a look at Marymere falls, which was quite impressive. And Travis couldn't resist doing a cannonball into the blue mountain water. 

With that two hour detour, we were hard pressed to book it to a campground, with the added urgency weekend competition. The first option we came to was already full, which is too bad because it was a really beautiful campsite even if it was filled with screaming brats. The camp host suggested we continue down five more miles to Bear Creek, there wasn't any running water there but there should be less site competition. 

It was 6:30pm when we finally arrived, and unfortunately all the sites were taken. But a nice guy who had taken the bus to the campground (wait, public transportation to the campground??) let us share his site with him because he didn't have a car. Thanks, nice man. We set up camp and fell right asleep. 

Elwha Rainforest

DISCLAIMER: I am typically updating this blog at 9pm in a tent with a headlamp after riding a bicycle for 5 to 7 hours. There will be typos. Please excuse them.

​The road out of Hurricane Ridge spit us out right back out in Port Angeles, where we beelined it to Bike Garage again. My tire had a bubble in it the where the tube was pushing out the sidewall, and to fix it a whole series of frustrating events ensued, including an incorrect tire replacement, a trip to the other bike store, a forgotten wallet and return to the other bike store, the removal of my fender, and FINALLY a functional rear tire. There are two morals of this story: if you're touring on 26" wheels, bring at least one spare, and pray to the Baby Jesus that you can find a bike shop as nice and accommodating as Bike Garage. 

Tom (the Bike Repair Pirate) recommended we stay in the Elwha River Valley, a rainforest area which he described as a "mini Yosemite Valley", a whole 11 miles away. But how can you pass that up? Alright, screw you, Hurricane Ridge Legs, we'll go to the rainforest.

The story of the Elwha River seems pretty incredible. The Elwha, like many other seaward flowing rivers in the Pacific Northwest, is spawning grounds for salmon. It is also an excellent source for cheap hydroelectric power. A dam was built on the Elwha over 100 years ago, which formed two major reservoirs and also drained the river, ending the salmon run. 

These salmon are truly a keystone species: remove them from the picture and the whole ecosystem falls apart. No salmon means no food for orcas in the sea, eagles in the air, otters in the river, bears on the land, and ultimately no food for the forest itself. Salmon spend most of their lives in the ocean, and when they start to swim up river to their spawning grounds to give birth and die, a special kind of ocean nitrogen is returned to the rainforest fertility cycle. On top of all this, there are a half dozen distinct tribes in Washington alone whose culture revolves around the salmon run. When the Elwha was dammed, all that disappeared. 

That all changed in 2011. The Elwha Dam was dynamited and dismantled stone by stone. Slowly, the water began to flow through the river valley for the first time in over 100 years. A massive restoration project is in effect, with hundreds of thousands of native plant transplants, and reintroduction of salmon spawn. The salmon population is expected to grow over the next 20 years from 3000 fish to over 400,000.

So thank you, tireless Native and environmental activists. Your idealist vision has been achieved in some form, and now some balance will be restored to this ecosystem, and these Florida bike tourists can tool around in this foreign landscape with pleasure. 

Trials and Sufferings on Hurricane Ridge

Morning at Heart O' the Hills. The goal: reach the top of Hurricane Ridge. A 5,000 foot climb in 17 miles. We got ourselves all stoked for it by watching a video some road bike riders made, and they kept going on about how daunting and epic it was. It's a local cyclist challenge, and you can't pass up local specialties.

Travis really turned on his Biking Stamina Optimism, saying that the climb would be really easy compared to the ascent into the campground that we made with all our gear. By ditching the gear, he hoped to be at the top in an hour and a half, climbing at 8 mph.  

We started out pretty strong, but it didn't last long. At all. Travis was behind me trying to get me to stay at 5 mph, but even that became really difficult. And it wasn't like I was zoning out, getting lost in the pain of burning muscles or the changing scenery. I was fully concentrating on each pedal stroke, urging my body to move faster but it just wasn't complying. A group road ride passed us one by one, in our line of sight for just a few minutes each before swiftly turning the bend, and I knew Travis could have gone faster and was just waiting around for me. 

I could barely keep pace at even half the speed of what Travis expected out of me, and from there the easy segway was "I'm not in good enough shape for this," to "Holy shit I'm no good at anything." My thoughts spiraled out of control, as the moments of experiencing physical pain in my burned out muscles stretched out into hours of nothing to do but think about all my inadequacies. How my life situation would be cute and understandable if I were 25, but new town, no job and no plan at 30 makes people wince and say, "You'll figure something out." I know they're thinking, "Well bless her heart."

It didn't stop. The climb kept going and going, and my mood kept sinking and sinking. And then I couldn't breathe. I sucked big gulps of air that only rattled my throat. I wheezed and heaved but nothing reached my lungs. I pulled off to the side of the road and closed my eyes while Travis asked what was wrong, thinking I had developed some breathing condition. 

It was a panic attack.

After a few minutes of telling myself to calm down, I was able to breathe normally again. Poor Travis said that the pace didn't matter, we could go as slow as I wanted.  I did my very best to keep my mind off the bleak bigger picture, and instead focus on what was happening right then- the emerging alpine wildflowers, the ridges towering a few thousand feet off the side of the road, the sight of the ocean when I turned around. And then we were at Mile 17, and the snow capped peaks of 5000 foot mountains came into view. I climbed the mountain. Somehow. 

I'd like to say that we had a joyful celebration of some kind, but I was wiped out and the first thing my body screamed for was sugar. I got a Dr. Pepper from the National Park snack bar and drank it furiously, then made lunch with hands shaky from exhaustion and sugar rush. We were too tired to walk on any of the nature trails, so in the end we just took a few pictures and bombed it down the hill.

What took three hours to climb sped by in 45 minutes in descent. We maxed out at 40 mph. Hurricane Ridge was conquered. 

Olympic Discovery Trail

We finally left Port Townsend using the Olympic Discovery Trail to Port Angeles. Travis popped a flat almost immediately.

And we all know that flats happen in threes... Ominous beginning to our foray into the wilderness. So it was no surprise that after lunch on the coast, I also popped a flat on my rear wheel. It was a struggle to change.

Also, for those of you out there reading this because you're planning your own bike tour to the Pacific Northwest (all four of you), I would like to say that the riding from Seattle to Port Townsend to Port Angeles is not that great. Yes, there is the Olympic Discovery Trail which allows you to bypass Highway 101, which gets pretty trafficky in the summer, but the scenery was blah and it wasn't easy to ride. We got a strong headwind and it's so damn hilly so I was changing gears up and down and up and down. I would suggest skipping this part and maybe just starting on the coast. 

That being said... our first night of camping at Dungeness Park was great. We arrived just as the sun was setting over the Strait of Juan de Fuco.

And the park had bike up campsites that were really gorgeous. 

But it got so cold! The fog just blew in up the cliffsides and I got very chilly. I could even see my breath in the morning! Travis wins, he chose a place very unlike Florida. I survived though.

We took a walk down Dungeness Spit, a thin tail of a beach that curls out into the ocean for five miles to form a bay, with a lighthouse at the end. Sometimes baby seal pups hang out on the beach but we didn't see any. But we did see some birds, and some cool eagle breakfast remains. 

On our ride out of there, I noticed that the tube I had just replaced was starting to bust through the sidewall of my tire, making a bump every time I rolled over it. When the Olympic Dicovery Trail popped us out at Port Angeles we stopped at bike garage to buy a new tire, the very last 26"x 1.5 in stock in town. We rolled it up and strapped it on my rack, to change later when we had more time, then continued to our campsite for the night- Heart O' the Hills in Olympic National Park. 

The campground is only a mere seven miles away from Port Angeles... however they are seven miles STRAIGHT UP. You know where you're driving in the mountains and you see those runaway truck signs when you're traveling into the valley? They start putting those up when it's a 5% grade downhill. Parts of our seven mile climb were an 11% grade uphill. ELEVEN PERCENT. WITH ALL OUR GEAR. We stumbled into our campsite at dusk, stuffed food into our mouths and passed out to rest for the next day's climb to Hurricane Ridge.