Ferries and Mountains

Our adventure for the day was to ride the Bremerton Ferry from Seattle across Puget Sound to Bremerton (duh) and drive to Olympic National Park to see the Olympic Mountains. Another new experience.

The “Travel Host” magazine provided by our hotel was very informative about the ferry schedules. We timed our departure from the hotel in sufficient time to make the drive once again to downtown Seattle, purchase our passage on the ferry, grab some fast lunch, and eat while we rode across the water.

Mission accomplished with time to spare. There is actually a “terminal” for ferry passengers and it looks like an airline terminal with nearly that much traffic. There are even cabbies standing outside the terminal doors asking, “Transportation? You need taxi?” in various dialects and accents. Interesting.

We opted for fast food McD’s. It was our least expensive meal of the trip. And probably my healthiest because I had a normal chicken salad. GASP! I just realized that none of us had seafood for lunch! Shhh, don’t tell the travel agent. Anyway, we headed back to the car that was in line to drive onto the ferry – another first for us.

Big ferry. Not too crowded. Beautiful weather. The ride across the Sound to Bremerton took about an hour, during which we occupied ourselves with eating our lunch, exploring the decks of the ferry and taking pictures. #3 did the “king of the world” pose from Titanic and we tried some cheesecake pix for myspace, but those didn’t turn out very good. They’re there for your enjoyment just the same, though.

The drive from Bremerton to Port Angeles included crossing another of the 3 floating bridges in the area. Ta-DA!! Two down, one to go. We’ll cross the third one on the way back to the hotel tonight.

#3 nearly had a hissy fit when he saw a Dodge Viper on the road with us. He took several pictures of it to remember the moment.

There was a Walmart in Port Angeles, so we stopped there to replenish the cash flow and pick up a couple of souvenirs for our goddaughters. Shhh, don’t tell them – it’ll be a surprise!

Further down the road from Port Angeles was the entrance to Olympic National Park. It’s quite an interesting and diverse topographical area with mountains, grasslands, rain forests, glaciers and beaches. Pretty much everything you can think of right there on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington.

We stopped at the Visitor’s Center to pick up a park map and asked the rangers about a bush with purple flowers that we had seen by the Walmart. They couldn’t identify it, so the picture is out there to see if any of you can do so. Name that plant.

On into the park, pay another entrance fee, watch for falling rocks and aggressive wildlife, and have a nice day! Our destination was Hurricane Ridge – a panoramic vantage point at 6,000 ft. The Ridge is reported to have hurricane-force winds year round, thus the name. The drive up was slow because of the road work going on, but the views reminded us a lot of Colorado. Lots of evergreen trees and impressive snow-capped mountains. We saw snow on the mountains across the way, but there was none on the road we were on.

The view from the Ridge was breathtaking. It really was a 360-degree view of the Olympic Mountains, including Mount Olympus, Mount Anderson and Mount Cameron. There wasn’t an actual Mount Donovan, but Dear found an unnamed peak and dubbed it for #1.

There were deer grazing on the hillside just outside the Visitor’s Center and we took pictures of them. You’d have thought we’d never seen deer before! They weren’t skittish at all, so I guess they were used to having people photograph them. There were several other deer sauntering around the area and munching on the wildflowers, so we took pictures of them, too, just for good measure.

There was quite a bit of snow on the ground around the trails at the Ridge and this time I scrunched a snowball for the photo op. #3 wanted to climb up the snow bank and see how far he could slide, but Mama said I don’t think so. Once that slide started, he wouldn’t have a prayer of stopping except when he slid into a tree about 200 feet down the mountain. Unh-uh. Nope.

We started back down the mountain about 5:30 because we’d planned to have dinner in Port Angeles at The Bushwhacker. That should give us plenty of time to make the 9:00 ferry back to Seattle from Bremerton. The AAA website had recommended this restaurant as a GEM for members, so we stopped in to see if AAA knows their stuff.

Dear had seafood pasta, I had their “award winning” salad bar and clam chowder, and #3 had a cheeseburger. Dear said that the sauce was the best he’s ever had anywhere and I thoroughly enjoyed the clam chowder. It was very light and the clams were tender rather than chewy. #3 said the cheeseburger was good, but definitely not Rockett. The waitress or server or whatever you call them these days was kind of slow with the service. By the time we finished our meal and paid the bill, Maggs told us that our estimated arrival time at Bremerton for the 9:00 ferry to Seattle was 9:03! Oops.

Dear put on his TX driver hat and headed us toward Bremerton. Unfortunately, every pokey driver in the area was in front of us and Maggs kept pushing back our arrival time. We finally got to a point in the road where Dear could rev up the Altima’s 6 cylinders and pass the snaily drivers. He made up for lost time (within 5 miles of the posted speed limit) and we made it to the ferry dock at 8:50. Yay, Dear!

The ride back across the Sound to Seattle was a lot more breezy since it was so late in the day and the sun was down. We stood at the back of the boat (I guess that would be the stern? Except that this ferry was a pushme-pullyou kind of vessel…) for a while and then went to the bow to see where we were going rather than where we’d been. It was blooming cold standing facing the wind and we kept going inside the cabin to warm up and then back outside to brave the breezes.

I took several photos of the Seattle skyline as we approached, but none of them were very good. I kept a few just for documentation purposes. I also got some shots of the boys shivering, but you can’t really see their goosebumps. Trust me. It was cold.

We got back to Seattle about the time the Mariners game was over and the police and traffic handlers had the downtown streets blocked off and/or marked for one-way ballgame traffic. Consequently, we missed our turn to drive across the I-90 floating bridge. Oh well, we hit 2 out of the 3 floaters.

Another thing I’ve noticed about this west coast experience is that highways are referred to as “the” instead of “I” or “highway.” Like in TX, we say 35 north or 20 west or 67 south. Out here it’s “north on the 101” or “east on the 405” or “south on the 5.” It sounds very east coast to me. Maybe I’ll carry over the terminology when we get back home. Then I’ll tell you to drive ”south on the 35E from Dallas” to get to our house. Nah. It just doesn’t sound right.

Back in the room by 10:30 and we caught the last few minutes of “America’s Got Talent” where the little 9-year-old autistic boy sang “Ben.” What a heart-wrencher that was. We also saw the burlesque guy with the animal print speedo and the giant boob lady squashing cans between the girls. Gross. I tried to upload photos while the boys watched “Deadliest Catch,” but the Internet kept locking up on me. I think there are a few photos out there from the Olympic Mountain excursion. I’ll fix on them when we reach our next destination and actually have wifi again.

ttfn