Wednesday - Sunday, August 25-29, 2013 (Elma, WA)

Wednesday
During the night it rained hard, so much for the clean 5er and truck. We got up and skipped our jogging routine – I think I was too sore from the trampoline jumping to even jog, for some reason my right hip was just killing me.

After breakfast we started our pack up routine – boy it’s been awhile, hopefully we don’t forget something important. Kris and the boys came by to say goodbye since they were headed into town for errands, one of them being getting their school supplies. I remember those days, how exciting it was to have your new pencils/pens and peechee folders.

It took us longer than normal to get packed up, we just had more things to put away since we had been in one location for so long. We had planned to leave by 10:00 a.m. but didn’t pull out until about 11:00 a.m. One nice thing about the rain, at least it settled the dust on the gravel road. We said our good-bye’s to Brandon and headed out.

Now the big thing is we are traveling down I-5 to Olympia before we head west toward the coast and you know us and traffic. Well I’m glad to report, that other than just a few minutes of stop and go in the Seattle area, we did not have any traffic issues. We missed being able to use the Express Lanes that run through Seattle but it still wasn’t too bad.

We arrived at Elma RV Park around 2:00 p.m. after a nice comfortable drive with no rain. It appears to be a pretty nice park and we were able to get into our back in site easily. We plan on being here through the Labor Day weekend. Because our plans were so up in the air while we were waiting for our BANKS and camera replacements to arrive, we weren’t able to find anything on the coast over the holiday weekend. We are about 20 miles from the coast and just south of the Olympics.  We sure got spoiled at Brandon & Kris' as far as a nice private setting.

After we got set up, we took a walk around the park. It appears that part of the park has some year round residents, but the part we are camped in looks to be the "traveling" folks. We met one of the campground hosts while we were setting up. They have only been on the road since May and will be camp hosting here until the end of September. Hopefully we’ll get to chat some more while we are here and take a tour of their "home on wheels".

We just kicked back the rest of the afternoon and had a relaxing evening watching a movie. We’ll see what tomorrow will bring.

Thursday
Boy during the night we sure got some heavy rain. This morning it was raining and the forecast is for rain all day….yuck. We didn’t have much incentive to get up early and when we did, we decided to go out for breakfast at one of the local restaurants.

We ate at the Rusty Tractor. They had "yak" meat on the menu which is a healthy alternative to beef with less fat, so I gave their yak sausage omelet a try. Rich had "cowpie" biscuits and gravy. The yak sausage was good and my breakfast was OK, just too much food. Rich was disappointed with his biscuits and gravy, there was too much biscuit and not enough gravy. I guess that’s why it was called "cowpie" biscuits, it was one huge blob of a biscuit. On our value meter, the restaurant scored low because the prices were quite high and the food was just OK.
We have some places we’d like to visit, but with all the rain forecast today, it may just be a kick back day at home in the 5er.
Friday
Today our plan was to head north.  We had our breakfast and packed up a lunch and headed out for our days adventure.  We were headed as far north as Forks, yes I have to admit it, I'm a Twilight fan and since we were in the neighborhood......

We stopped for lunch along the part of Hwy 101 that actually goes by the beach and was only about 11 miles worth, definitely different than the Oregon Hwy 101.

Our lunch spot, as you can see it was pretty foggy out, the ocean doesn't really show up in this picture

I will have to admit, our drive to Forks was not impressive.  I thought being in the Olympic National Rainforest it would be more picturesque, but most of the drive was through land that had been logged and replanted.  I would not take that long drive again for the scenery, that's for sure.  

We finally made it to Forks and the first stop was the Chamber of Commerce/Visitor Info which has definitely taken advantage of the Twilight saga.  In talking with the lady at the front desk, in 2005 Forks Chamber/Visitor Info saw approximately 5,000 folks.  In 2010 they had 75,000 folks stop in.  Since 2010 the visits have started dropping off from that 75,000 mark but are still extremely high.  You leave the visitor Center with a "Forks Twilight Map" which has the different locations from the book/movie.  We didn't go to all the locations, just a few....

Welcome to Forks

63 Chevy Truck Bella drove in the movie

Chamber - notice sign above the doors

Bella's house

Sign at the hospital - the original sign didn't have "vampire", that was added later

The filming of the Twilight movie took place mostly around Northwest Oregon, even though the story takes place in Forks.  Would I ever have to go back to Forks - nope.  It was fun to see Forks from the books perspective, but if you were going to see what you saw in the movies, you'd be disappointed but I'm glad we went the once.    We did see a large herd of elk which was more elk than we saw when we were in Yellowstone earlier this summer.  We didn't take a picture though. 

After our trip through Forks we turned around and headed back south instead of making the whole Hwy 101 loop through the Olympics.  We stopped and saw this large cedar tree - it really was quite huge.

Rich & Gracie in front of the big cedar tree



Big Cedar Tree



The next stop on the way home was Lake Quinault.  They had a waterfall trail that I had read about and thought would make a nice hike.  Because it has been a dry summer, even up here in the Olympics, the waterfalls were not that spectacular, but they were pretty and it was a nice 2 mile hike and the lodge and lake were beautiful. 

Falls Creek Falls

Cascade Falls

Not sure of the name of this falls

View of Lake Quinault from the resort

Lake Quinault Lodge - it was pretty

We had quite a long day for us - we didn't make it back to the 5er until after 7:00 p.m.  It was a good exploring day and we saw a lot of sights.

Saturday

Today our plan was to go explore the other side of the Olympics.  We got an earlier start to our day.  We stopped in Shelton and grabbed a quick bit of breakfast - McDonalds and then Starbucks for our lattes.  Shelton had a farmer's market so we decided to check it out.  What a disappointment - I don't know if it was because of the holiday weekend, or they just didn't have alot of vendors, but it was nothing to write home about.  We walked away with no purchases, maybe we'll find another one later today.

We didn't really have any activities in mind today, we were just mostly out for a drive and to check out the scenery.  We drove through Belfair which was having a Celtic festival this weekend but we decided to pass, the parking alone was $10.00 and who knows what the entrance fee was and if they would allow dogs.  We are leary of leaving Gracie in the truck now since our recent break in. 

After we left Belfair we drove through Union which was a very pretty drive and I forgot to take pictures of the pretty water and all the pretty houses.  The only bad thing with all the pretty houses were that they were right next to the road and I mean right next.  We did come across a farm stand so we stopped and got some fresh veggies.   After Union we headed to Hoodsport.  We checked out Hoodsport which Rich was familiar with because his sister Madeline used to live there.  Here is a shot of Hood Canal near Hoodsport.

Hood Canal near Hoodsport

 When the sun is shining, I can see why people like to live up here near all this water, but it's the rest of the time when it's raining that would get to me.  I read that Hoodsport's annual average rainfall is 100 inches per year - yikes, that's too much rain for me. 

After Hoodsport, we drove up to Lake Cushman to have our picnic lunch.  Well that was the plan at least - we could not find a public beach or boat launch at all.  We saw a sign for the dam so we decided they might have a picnic spot - wrong, nothing but pavement.  We were getting hungry so we stopped in the parking lot and ate on the tailgate of the pickup truck.  Our lunch entertainment was watching the neighbor trying to pull his travel trailer out from underneath his garage roof.  You would have had to been there to understand the setup, but needless to say, they weren't having much luck because the trailer air conditioner kept bumping up against the roof.  I'd be curious to see how they ever got that thing in under the garage, let alone how they are going to get it out.  So for us - Lake Cushman was a big disappointment, I had visions of having our picnic lunch and spending some time with my toes in the water, but it wasn't going to be today.  We decided to head back to the 5er and sit in our lounge chairs with our books, so that's what we did.

We had an enjoyable afternoon just kicking back doing some reading and watching the comings and goings of the other campers.  The only bummer is all the smokers.  We have noticed since we left the Bend area, that a lot of people still smoke. 

Sunday

Today we were visiting the Grace Community Church in Elma.  I have to say, this has been the most friendly church we have visited yet. We sure enjoyed our visit and got to meet most of the congregation of about 40 folks. 

After church we came back to the 5er and had some lunch and then headed to the beach.  We were going to go visit Ocean Shores.  I don't know what we were thinking, what with the beautiful sunshine and a holiday weekend, but the beach was crazy busy, I've never seen a beach with so many people and cars on it.  We spent a little bit of time on the beach with Gracie and her ball, she loves to play fetch before we decided to head back home before these hordes of people decided to go home also.  One thing I have to say we noticed, the crowds seemed very well behaved and there was no visible police patrols. 

Cars & people for as far as the eye could see - they don't really show up that well in this picture, you just have to take our word for it.  =)

Looking the other direction and again cars & people for as far as the eye could see

Our drive back to the 5er was uneventful and the traffic was still pretty light, thank goodness.  Once we got home, we parked ourselves in our lounge chairs with our books and did some reading. 

Around 6:00 the camphost we met on our first day here came over and invited us to join them for some socializing.  We grabbed some of our smoked kokanee and some Perrier and headed over to the office deck area for some visiting.  We got to meet the managers of the park, another couple that live full time in the park, another work camper and then the work camping couple we met, Jesse & Sherry.  There was a young couple from North Carolina that joined us for awhile, they had just purchased an inflatable kayak from Jesse.  Rats, too bad we didn't realize he had one for sale as we have talked about one, oh well.   We spent a nice hour visiting with folks and hearing some of their stories and experiences.  We've found that people are usually very friendly in the RV parks we've stayed at and always willing to share their stories.