To the Farthest Corner of the Country

After a botched attempt to go white water rafting, I fell back on my plan to travel to the place few have gone before - the most northwest point of the US! After about an hour on live maps and some more on the internet, I concluded that it would be too expensive to stay overnight at Neah Bay, the last town before the end of USA towards the northwest, and chalked out a day long sojourn via Olympic National Park.

With a tankful of gas and brunch to-go from iHop, I took off towards the Edmonds ferry terminal. It was a beautiful day - sunny, blue skies with a few scattered clouds, temperature hovering in the high 60s or low 70s. It was on reaching about a mile from the terminal that I found there was an hour long wait for the ferry! That preponed my brunch :)

My first stop after landing at Kingston was the bridge at the Hood Canal which connected it to the Olympic peninsula. Following that, I reached a small town that almost seemed like a drama set - all the shops were literally labeled! There was even a post office, a coffee shop and a automobile repair shop!

Traveling via highway 104, I reached the famed highway 101. It's a truly heavenly journey via this highway - lined with trees and flowers on both sides, until it hits the oceanfront that is! Then you have hills on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. A picture is worth a thousand words! :)

Eventually I hit Port Angeles on the northern coast of the peninsula, and drove to Ediz Hook. This is an interesting hook shaped land that creates a bay in which most of the docks of the port are built, on account of the calm waters it inherently results in. One could literally see the difference between that and choppy waters on the other side of the hook.

The next destination was Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park. Traveling on highway 101, it kind-of came suddenly into view - and a breathtaking view it was! It is shaped like the crescent of the moon, and expands across quite a big area. Descending down to the water level, I found a good spot to park my Honda and ate what was left of my brunch (iHop crepes are really big!).

Moving on, I hit the ocean again via Burnt Mountain Rd to smaller roads. This journey just kept getting better - these were lovely winding roads along the coast, but since traffic was minimal and cops were nearly absent, it was a blast to drive! I did stop quite a few times to take snaps, and each time reluctantly got back into the car to continue my quest.

After crossing Neah Bay, however, both my GPS and my Atlas gave up on me, and I was left with nothing but my magnetic compass to navigate to the Cape Trail - the trail that led to the point I was seeking. Eventually I got to a dirt road, but kept heading west (I'm sure I would've scared the crap out of passengers if I'd had any in that section of the drive) - and finally there it was! The mile long trail!

It was quite exhilarating - the view along the trail. It was also a little scary, since I was alone, lost and with no signal on my cellphone. There were a couple of cars in the parking but even at half-way into the trail, I didn't see anyone! Eventually I came across a group of people traveling the other way and felt a bit relieved. A few minutes later, I reached my destination - with a view of Tatoosh Island and its lighthouse - and spent a few minutes listening to the ocean breaking against the rocks a few hundred feet below the cliff I was on.

It was about 8.30pm when I started my journey back to home - and lost my way just after leaving the trail and realized I was going to miss the last ferry to Edmonds. Luckily, losing my way led me to a nice spot overlooking the entire area and therefore I just sat on a rock there eating my orange. Having finished that, I decided to retrace my path rather than trust the GPS maps and eventually found my way back.

En-route, I got hungry and the only thing open at 12pm is McDonalds, so I got a couple of fish sandwiches and some fries. This McD was rather similar to the one we'd stopped at on our way back from the Grand Canyons to Phoenix - reminded me of some good old days :)

I then realized (and confirmed via a phone call to Atul at 12.30am) that the Bainbridge ferry to Seattle left later than the Kingston-Edmonds ferry, and headed to the terminal on Bainbridge Island. It turned out that the ferry was late(!) and I had to wait for nearly 30 minutes before I could board it. Oh well, at least it saved me the trip around the southern tip of the Puget Sound Bay!

I finally got home at 3am and tossed my Red Bull can into the trash, had a shower, checked out my snaps, and traveled into the world of dreams.