Jan and Anya’s Puget Sound Welcome Home Tour, Day 1. Anya comes back from Taiwan today — but both Bree and Liya’s schools have policies in place that will force them to self-quarantine for a week if someone comes straight to our house from overseas.
To avoid that, and to allow sufficient time to pass for Anya to get a meaningful covid test, we’ve decided that Jan will pick up Anya and the two of them will hole up somewhere for a week. Anya wants to go somewhere, so Jan’s put together a week-long road trip loop around the Olympic Peninsula and Puget Sound.
Jan picks up Anya at SeaTac without any trouble. She’s surprisingly well-rested, having been bumped up to business class on the long leg of her flight back. They head towards Olympic National Park, but bad traffic adds an extra hour to the drive.
During the trip, Anya has lots of energy, and shares stories about her three months in Taiwan. It sounds like she had a good cohort of fellow students, a couple of fun residential advisors, and many adventures. She’s eager to study abroad again at some point.
We arrive at Lake Quinault Lodge and check into a nice room looking out at the lake. The lodge has a decent dining room, but with the pandemic they’re only doing takeout. Anya manages to stay up until 10:00 pm before finally crashing.
Jan and Anya’s Puget Sound Welcome Home Tour, Day 2. The weather at Lake Quinault starts out cloudy, but the forecast promises sun later, so we make the 40 minutes drive to the small town of Pacific Beach on the coast. We explore a used goods store called The Wacky Warehouse, which is also home to a radio station 98.1 FM (“Your Host on the Coast”). We both pick out books. After picking up lunch from a cafe, we park at the state park and walk out onto the beach. We set up small camping chairs and eat while watching the surf. The beach has a surprising number of cars driving on it.
On our way back inland, the sun finally comes out. Anya wants to read in the room, so Jan goes for a walk on a wonderful loop that starts just steps away from the lodge. The trail passes through a lush temperate rainforest (but no rain today!), along a walkway through a boggy cedar grove, and across several creeks before returning down a scenic gully to the lake.
We have a take-out dinner on the lodge’s terrace. When it gets dark, we go back outside to stargaze for a while. Last summer Anya watched a number of constellation-finding videos, so she can now point out a fair number of constellations. When we walk back to our room, we discover we’ve locked ourselves out — without masks to boot. A trip to the front desk sorts us out.
Jan and Anya’s Puget Sound Welcome Home Tour, Day 3. Anya’s slowly shifting to her preferred nocturnal existence, so she sleeps in. When she finally wakes up in the late morning, we go for a short drive along the lake to a small park that’s home to the world’s tallest Sitka Spruce tree. After lunch at the lodge, we repeat the same nice loop trail Jan did the day before.
By now, we’re getting tired of the dining room’s take-out offerings, so we get dinner from the nearby Salmon House instead. We make a picnic dinner on the large green lawn between the restaurant building and the lake.
Afterwards, Anya’s not quite ready to go back to the lodge, and proposes that we drive around Lake Quinault. It’s a nice evening, with plenty of daylight left, so Jan agrees. The lake’s south side is settled, but the north side sits inside Olympic National Park and is nearly deserted. Bumping along a gravel stretch of road, we come out from the dense forest into a large meadow where a herd of elk are grazing. We stop to watch them for a while before continuing the drive, crossing back to the south side and to the lodge.
Jan and Anya’s Puget Sound Welcome Home Tour, Day 4. We leave Lake Quinault behind and continue clockwise around the Olympic Peninsula.
We stop at the Kalaloch Lodge to pick up lunch. While we’re waiting, Jan overhears someone asking about a tourist attraction called “The Tree of Life”. Jan’s heard of it: it’s a Sitka Spruce on a coastal bluff. A stream running underneath the tree has completely eroded the ground directly beneath the tree — but the tree’s roots to the side hold up the tree in position. Jan had known the tree was somewhere on the coast, but apparently it’s just up the road, so we stop to see it. Even knowing what we’ll see doesn’t make it any less remarkable. It looks implausible that the tree can hold itself up there, especially in the face of the coast’s intense winter storms.
A short while later, we stop at Ruby Beach and walk out onto the beach to look at the pine-covered sea stacks.
On the way to the next stop, the Hoh River Visitor Center, Anya falls soundly asleep. When we finally arrive, Jan has to cajole her awake and out of the car. We make a slow circuit around the short Spruce Trail, an easy trail through spectacular forest.
We arrive at Lake Crescent Lodge in the mid-afternoon. Anya’s again content to read inside while Jan goes for a walk north along the lakeshore, then south past the lodge to Barnes Creek. The creek isn’t particularly big, but that little creek is apparently responsible for depositing all the soil and rock that make up the large peninsula on which Lake Crescent Lodge stands.
After dinner (more lodge dining room take-out), the weather finally turns. Rain blows across the lake, followed by strong winds all night long.
Jan and Anya’s Puget Sound Welcome Home Tour, Day 5. We head east, stopping to hike up a short trail to a viewpoint above a former dam on the Elwha River. That dam and another was removed a few years ago — they were quite old, and restoring the salmon habitat eventually became more important than the modest electricity the dams provided. We’re interested in seeing the river flowing through the remnants of the dam, but when we get to the viewpoint, we can’t see a thing. A stand of aspen trees has sprung up below the viewpoint, completely blocking any view of the river. Anya gazes out and gestures in the vague direction of the river, stating, “Ah, the mighty Elwha!”
We have lunch in Port Angeles, then go a bit further to Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. Yesterday’s storm has dissipated, and the weather is getting nice again, so we decide to go for a hike along the long, thin Dungeness Spit that sticks far out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The entire spit is 5 miles long, so we just hike out a mile or so before turning back. It’s a beautiful afternoon for a walk.
We finish the day’s drive at Port Townsend, checking into the Ravenscroft Inn B&B. We’ve lucked out: the inn is really quite nice, and we’ve got two connecting rooms on the top floor that have views out to Puget Sound. We make a short walk into downtown Port Townsend. We get pizza from a small oceanside pizzeria and eat it in the adjacent plaza that opens out towards the water.
Jan and Anya’s Puget Sound Welcome Home Tour, Day 6. We check out in the late morning and walk around downtown Port Townsend for a while. We stop for coffee at Velocity, a small cafe by the marina where Jan stayed a couple of years ago on a sailing trip.
We make our way to the terminal for the ferry across the sound to Whidbey Island. It’s 12:00, so we’re hopeful that we can make the 12:30 ferry. Sadly, when the tollbooth operator hears we don’t have a reservation, he expresses doubt that we’ll make it. “You’ll probably have to wait for the 2:00 crossing.” The terminal crew gives a couple of lanes of cars permission to drive on, but they stop when they get our lane. Then they let a huge truck board the ferry — maybe they were just waiting for that truck to get on? They let the cars in front of us board, but a crew member holds up a hand to tell us to stop. He mumbles something. What? “We need to wait to see what the situation on the ferry is.” Someone radios to him, asking about the size of the next car that would board (that is, our car). “It’s small,” he says. “Okay, let ‘em on.” The crew squeezes us into the back of the ferry. The back of our car is sticking far out beyond a yellow line painted on the deck, but the crew says it’s fine. Whew!
Arriving on Whidbey Island, we drive into Coupeville for lunch at the Front Street Grill. There’s a wait for a table, so we kill time at the nearby bookstore. After lunch we drive up to Oak Harbor to see if we can get a covid test for Anya — enough time has passed since her trip that a test will be able to detect if she picked up the virus on her way back to the States — but we’re unable to get a test. We’ll have to wait until Anya’s back in Seattle.
We drive to the charming town of Langley where we’ll spend the final two nights of this tour. We pick up ramen for dinner from Ultra House.
Jan and Anya’s Puget Sound Welcome Home Tour, Day 7. While Anya sleeps in as usual, Jan heads out for breakfast at a new cafe in town, Langley Kitchen. The owner, Jim, started Madison Kitchen, a similar cafe in our Madison Park neighborhood. Jan’s interested in stopping by to say hello and see Jim’s new place. When Jan walks in, he’s surprised to also see Patricia, one of the baristas that used to work at Madison Kitchen. Patricia’s happy to see Jan, then Jim comes over to say hello as well. It’s nice to see the two of them again.
Afterwards Jan walks around the town for a bit, then along the beach back to the hotel. After waking up Anya, we head out for lunch. The good weather is holding, so in the afternoon, Jan makes a short drive to South Whidbey State Park for a nice loop through the forest and down to the ocean.
Although Anya’s been in Taiwan for several months and eaten many great meals, she’s nevertheless happy at the prospect of eating Chinese-American food for dinner, so Jan picks up food from China City in Freeland. The restaurant is surprisingly upscale, and the food is quite good.
Jan and Anya’s Puget Sound Welcome Home Tour, Day 8. Jan has breakfast at Langley Kitchen again. Today he’s surprised to see Rita, another person who used to work at Madison Kitchen.
Later in the morning, Jan and Anya walk around town a bit, then pack up for the trip home. They drive to the Clinton ferry terminal, and this time have no trouble making the next ferry. Back on the mainland, it’s a quick drive home.
When everyone comes back home later in the day, everyone’s happy to see Anya again. Anya had said that there was no Mexican food to be had in Taiwan, so we have yummy takeout from El Gallito for dinner to celebrate Anya’s return.
Liya joins a small school group on a bikepacking trip in Eastern Oregon. Two teachers, Jay and Christine, lead the group on a 4-night backpacking trip, loosely following the dirt roads and country roads that form a biking route called the Oregon Stampede. Liya and her classmates have a great trip, with generally good weather and conditions that are challenging enough to be interesting but not grueling.
Bree and Jan rescue a tiny bunny from the jaws of Mojo the predator. For such a dumb cat, Mojo is frustratingly good at killing small birds and rodents. In the late afternoon, Bree and Jan happen to be outside when Bree sees that Mojo is toying with a very small rabbit kit. It could easily fit in a person’s hand. Moxie is watching from nearby. Mojo grabs the kit in his jaws, and the kit begins to scream “Meep! Meep!” in terror. Jan gets Mojo to drop the bunny and he and Bree put both cats indoors. The bunny seems unharmed, and eventually disappears.
After dinner, we let the cats out again, and Mojo quickly finds the bunny again. We once again free the bunny from the jaws of death, and put both cats inside for the evening. In the morning, there’s no sign of the bunny, which is a relief.
Angela attends Evrim’s graduation at Choate. Our summer houseguest, Evrim, will be returning to us this summer. Unlike Anya’s graduation last year, the Choate class of 2021 gets to have an in-person graduation. Evrim’s family in Turkey can’t attend, so Angela flies out to help Evrim celebrate before bringing her back home.
The Memorial Day weekend weather is terribly cold and wet. While Choate’s graduation is in person, they don’t want to hold it indoors either, so the ceremony ends up being held outside in the cold rain.
Congratulations, Evrim!
Seattle, meanwhile, is enjoying a spectacular sunny weekend. Anya plans to bike to Stanford from Seattle for the start of school in September. As a training ride, she and Jan bike some 19 miles over I-90 to the Eastside and back over SR 520. The lake is full of boats, and the bike trails are full of bikes, as everyone shakes off both the winter weather and the pandemic.
Mojo hangs out in the little “cat chalet” on the back deck. We set it up for the cats last fall when Moxie started staying out late, sometimes all night. We were afraid he’d get caught outside on a cold night, so we assembled a kit to produce a tiny house for them. They hardly ever use it, but on a warm afternoon, Mojo decides it’s a perfect shady spot for a nap. (Or, given the bunny incident earlier, the perfect hunter’s blind.)