| Vikram and Noella's Olympic Dream |
| 19 July 04: Ferry from Edmonds to Kingston |
Contents
Vikram has known for the a long time that I have been eager to visit
the Olympic Mountains. While I worked at the University of Washington,
I could see these mountains from my office window. Of course, one
can get great mountain and water views from all over Seattle, but
for me these mountains are special.
My main interests in going to the Olympic Peninsula were twofold:
to see the temperate rain forest and the Pacific coast. Besides these,
there are plenty of other things to see on this huge peninsula, such
as the snow covered mountains, historic Port Townsend, the Dungeness
Spit, Neah Bay and the Makah Cultural Center, etc.
The reason this trip went from "a dream" to a "dream come true"
can be explained in a few sentences. Vikram was making a trip to
Seattle to attend a conference. Because of my teaching commitments I
couldn't accompany him while the conference was in session. We had to
pursue the only option left: we would spend time together in
Washington state after the conference. And we decided to grab this
opportunity to visit the Olympic Peninsula before I picked out
something else from my list of things to do in Washington state. Our
vacation on the peninsula was to be three days long, which meant doing
just a few of the aforementioned things.
Vikram usually defers to my judgement of where to visit as long as
he gets to eat tasty vegetarian food and has a comfortable bed to
sleep in. With that in mind, I decide that we should base ourselves in
Port Angeles, WA, the largest city on the north side of the
Peninsula. I did debate endlessly about whether we should stay a night
in Forks, WA on the western side of the Olympic Peninsula, and decided
to stick with Port Angeles because I felt that the food choices would
be better in Port Angeles, and because we wouldn't have to clear out
of our motel room after one night.
We spent two days with relatives in Redmond (Vinoo, who is Mummy's
first cousin, and his wife, Gillian and their three children Gina,
Anthea and Dylan) before leaving for the peninsula. During this time
we picked up our rental car, walked around Bellevue Botanical Gardens
and visited one of our IIT friends who also lives in Redmond.
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On 19 July 04, we took the ferry from
Edmonds to Kingston. This was the first time we travelled on a
Washington State ferry despite having lived in Seattle before. The
ferry required barely 20 mins to cross the Puget Sound to the Kitsap
peninsula, much too short to enjoy the scenery and watch the gulls. It
seemed that loading the cars on the boat took just as long!
The photo to the left shows Edmonds from the ferry. Edmonds is about 15 mins drive north of Seattle.
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Another view of Edmonds. |
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The Kitsap Peninsula is in the foreground with our destination - the Olympic Mountains - faintly visible in the background. The ferry in the photo was returning from Kingston to Edmonds.
Here's a
link to a view of the Olympic Mountains from Silverdale, WA. These are
the same peaks that are visible from Seattle. (For more views, and
details on which peaks these are see Live Cam by Dale Ireland. |
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The photo is of Kingston, WA where we disembarked.
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The drive to Port Angeles was an easy one, with not much traffic
on the road at all. The road was mostly bordered with tall evergreens
except where the trees were rather short. These short trees have been
replanted to replace of the ones that were logged. Here and there we
saw lavender farms. These are a tourist attraction as they offer a
huge array of lavender products. (There are lavender farms on the
Puget Sound's San Juan Islands too.)
After about 10 miles we reached the Hood Canal, a narrow lengthy
strip of water that separates the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas. The
canal was a fjord carved by glaciers that covered this land mass
thousands of years ago. The bridge across this canal is quite
interesting in itself. It is part floating bridge, part supported by
columns, and it has a section where the traffic in each direction is
separated. The water in the canal was deep blue, much like that of the
Sound.
The remoteness of the Olympic peninsula was easily evident as we
passed a small number of tiny towns till we reached Sequim (pronounced
Skwim). The next big town was Port Angeles and it had the usual share
of car dealerships and retail shopping, though not too extensive given
that its population is barely 18,000. The traffic did get heavy in
Port Angeles, though it was nothing like what one encounters in
Chicago, where it appears that peak hour lasts from 6am to 9pm. Before
long we found our motel, the Aircrest Motel.
All photos and background images copyright 2004 onwards. Please contact Noella D'Cruz (ndcruz at depaul dot edu) or Vikram Dwarkadas (vikram at oddjob dot uchicago dot edu) before using any of them.
