Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Conquering the wild Olympic Peninsula… in the R!

In the midst of all the recent heavy rains and flooding, I had to take a trip to Port Angeles yesterday, on the Olympic Peninsula. Rain was predicted for most of the day, so I wasn’t expecting much fun. If the weather had been good I wanted to take the 900. But with all of the high water, mudslides, and road closures I decided the R would be the safer bet.

The trip started with a quick run to the Edmonds ferry terminal, where I crossed to Kingston. From there it was about an hour drive to Port Angeles. After meeting with my client in his office, I followed him up to his job site, which is a potable water plant at the head of a stream on Clallam County’s Mt. Pleasant. The plant was at the end of a 2-mile long gravel road with steep inclines and a wooden bridge to cross a stream.

Click on each picture to enlarge it, stupid old blog.com doesn’t support viewing full-size photos in the blog posting.

 

The stream was quite swolen with all of the rain we’ve been getting…

 

 

It was really cool to take the R on those steep gravel roads! Fun that it was a bit mud. I actually had spots of mud on my driver-side windows after going through a particularly muddy spot.

 

By the time I got headed home, the Olympic Peninsula was enjoying a sunny afternoon, though I know that it was still pouring in Seattle. I barely made the 2:15 PM ferry in Port Townsend and crossed to Kingston on Whidbey Island, in glorious sun. I stopped at the beach park just off of the ferry to take a copule more shots of the R in the unexpected sun.

 

That’s the ferry I just got off of… one of the older/smaller boats in the fleet. It was the kind that Erik and I used to ride with Mormor and Papa between Clinton and Mukilteo when we were little kids.  There were pretty significant swells as we came in to this dock, it was a fun ride!

 

After the photos, I drove down to Mormor and Papa’s house, to get Mormor’s lasagna pan, and some jelly. But the jelly was all gone, which was a sad discovery for me. Then I hopped my third ferry of the day from Clinton to Mukilteo, and was home 20 minutes after landing in Mukilteo.

This was a much more fun drive than the typical work commute between Seattle and Portland on I-5. This drive on 2-lanes with three ferry crossings was much more entertaining, and the weather for the drive home was beautiful.

The R will be taking yet another ferry trip on Thursday afternoon, as we take a family weekend away to visit my in-laws on Lopez Island in the San Juans.

On a side note, it’s supposed to be a little sunny today. I’m hoping I can have time to uncover the 900 and take it out for a warming-up spin…

Posted by KR at 15:56:54 | Permalink | Comments (2)