Traveling with a Friend and the Olympic Peninsula

My good friend, Myra, got in touch with me a few weeks ago. She is someone I traveled with a few years ago to the Modern Elder Academy and had a great experience there, learning and growing. “I feel like I need another retreat!” she said to me. She was feeling a bit stuck with her COVID-19 routine and wanted some inspiration. “Come hang out with me for a week,” I offered. “We’ll make our own retreat.”

That was a few weeks ago. Before our beautiful Oregon caught on fire, before smoke moved in like a toxic ghost, invading every crevice of our lives. I had been planning a trip to the Olympic Peninsula and invited Myra to come along. But smoke and fires had forced me back to Portland a few days before our planned trip to escape inside a friend’s house to save my lungs.

We did a bit of research and learned that the Olympic Peninsula did have some smoke pollution, but nothing like what we were experiencing in Portland. Plus, it was going to get clearer and clearer as the week went on. We decided to go for it!

Originally, we both planned to get a COVID-19 test before setting off together, but neither of us met the criteria of our health plan for testing. Since both of us have been taking all the precautions, we decided that traveling together would probably be safe and a risk we were willing to take.

I left Olive with a friend in Portland, since Squeaky is quite small and dogs are not welcome on some of the trails in the national park. (I think she enjoyed her week indoors.)

When I picked Myra up, it was still quite smoky in Portland, but we headed up Interstate 5 to hopefully escape. We’d made a reservation for our first night at a State Park right on Hood Canal. It was kind of spendy, but we were delighted to see salmon in the river that ran through the park. Rain in the night forced Myra out of her leaky tent and into Squeaky, but the sound of drops on the roof was so welcome after the weeks of fire in the area.

In the morning, we were amazed to look out and see more than 50 elk wandering through the campground. We decided to keep track of all the animals we saw on the journey. The rain stopped and we headed up toward Port Townsend where Myra and her family spent many Thanksgiving holidays at a friend’s house who passed in 2019. She toured me around. We got great coffee at Velocity on the pier and some candy from Elevated Ice Cream shop. The air quality was deemed unhealthy due to the smoke coming in from the Oregon fires, but still was better than what we left. We headed the van West toward Sequim, where we had a reservation to stay with a Harvest Host at a lavender farm.

Harvest Host is a membership program, where you can park your RV for free at hundreds of different farms and wineries across the country. You are expected to buy a little something from the host. We stopped in the cute lavender store in Sequim where I picked up some soaps and a candle. Lavender is one of my favorite scents, so it was not a sacrifice!

I was a bit cranky when we pulled into the farm because I’d started to get a headache, probably from the smoke and then the blower for my air conditioner stopped working. Myra took off for a walk and I soon followed. Within a few minutes, I spotted a cute tree frog sitting on a rock. That’s all it took to shift my mood. Frogs, lavender, and a free spot for the night. We settled in and played two games of Bananagrams and with one win each, decided to stop, since we’re both competitive.

By the next morning, we were ready to explore more of the forested and remote parts of the peninsula. Hurricane Ridge, an overlook with stunning views of the Olympic Range was recommended to us by numerous people, but unfortunately, the wildfire smoke meant nothing was visible. We decided to skip it and instead took a short hike to a waterfall and made ourselves grilled cheese sandwiches next to a rushing river. We drove past a hazy Crescent Lake to our campground deep in the forest on the Klahowya River. I hung my hammock between two trees and took a nap while Myra explored the river for crawdads and water bugs. We drove back up to Crescent Lake for a short hike and a visit to the historic lodge. Our campground was almost deserted, and it got dark quickly in the forest. We fell asleep to the sound of the river.

The next day was the one I was looking forward to the most. I learned about the Hoh Rainforest years ago and always wanted to visit. We headed out early and stopped just to take a photo in front of the sign for the small town of Sappho, (Damn, there was no t-shirt shop!) and a cruise around Forks to see if Myra could recognize any sites from the Twilight movies. We got a creepy vibe and it wasn’t from vampires or werewolves, but rather all the Trump flags and the memory of the multi-racial family chased out of town suspected of being antifa activists, when in fact, they were just camping.

We arrived at Hoh fairly early and found a great campsite with a view of the river and the Olympic Range. After a quick lunch. we set out for a 7-mile hike into the forest, pines, and cedars dripping with moss. The sky was still a bit hazy, but the air in the forest felt fresh and humid. Entire ecosystems seemed to grow out of fallen logs—moss and lichen and mushrooms and maple trees—all springing to life from the fallen trunk of a hundred’s year-old decaying spruce. It all feels very prehistoric and, in fact, the ecosystem has been largely unchanged for hundreds of years.

By this time Myra and I had fallen into a good rhythm navigating around each other in Squeaky’s tiny interior. I cooked us up some vegan red beans and rice and popped a bottle of sparkling wine I’d gotten for the trip and we chatted in the cool evening air. It finally felt like the smoke was clearing.

The next morning, we took another short hike at Hoh and then it was time for a beach day. We stopped at several beaches before settling into our campsite at Kalaloch, a large and crowded National Park campground right on the coast. Walking for a bit together, we saw the most incredible tree on the beach, that seemed to be defying gravity and the ocean as it hung on between two sides of the crevice where it had taken root. The tree is named Curly Tree. Then we took some alone time, and each took our own beach walk. Later, after we both took showers, we learned that RBG had died. I was glad to be with a friend to mourn with. We played a game of catch before taking an evening stroll around the campground. One family had a bonfire going, which alarmed us. We were experiencing our first day without smoky air, and we thought that fires were banned everywhere. We decided to report it to the camp host. Fires were indeed still banned due to the severe forest fire risk. What a relief to see the fire out when we came back around!

The next morning, I was up early and took a long walk on the beach. I came back to Myra making bacon for breakfast. We then set out for our first stop: Quinault Lake, another place that has long been on my to-visit list. We walked around the historic lodge and contemplated renting a canoe, but the day was cloudy and cool, so we decided to drive around and explore instead. We pulled into a few different campgrounds and I kind of wished we had another night, because I would have loved to have stayed around for it to clear up and see the mountains across the way. We visited the largest Sitka spruce (with a greater volume than the one in Oregon) and stopped at a yard sale where I picked up a vintage Big Foot book for 25 cents. The folks running the sale and another woman who was shopping all told me they’d heard Big Foot in the woods around the Peninsula. We spent the rest of the drive listening to Big Foot sounds and interviews from people who claim to have encounters. The drive through the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge was beautiful. It rained on and off and luckily the wind was calm for long bridge crossing into Astoria.

Our last night was spent at another Harvest Host—this one not as nice—at a parking lot at a golf course in Long Beach. But we made the most of it by taking a nice walk along the beachside path and ordering food from the golf course restaurant. Myra wanted to come to Long Beach to redeem a not so great experience she had had there many years ago and we both laughingly agreed this trip did not make that happen.

The drive back to Portland the next morning was smooth. Myra’s family was so happy to see her when I dropped her off and Olive was super waggy and wimpery cute when I pulled up.

Prior to making the trip, Myra suggested we write little six-word poems. Here are two of our favorites.

6-word poems

• Fires rage back home, I’m here – Kathy
• Mighty ocean, Curly Tree hangs tough. – Myra

List of animals:

• Elk
• Geese
• Turkey vultures
• Tree frogs
• Salmon
• Osprey
• Eagle
• Rabbits
• Crab
• Chickens
• Peacocks
• Hawk
• Chipmunk
• Seagulls
• Black squirrels

While driving we had some great chats and got to know a lot more about each other. We shared our favorite music and got into a good discussion about sexism in the music industry. Myra got into a rhythm of daily journaling and I got to talk with her about refining what life on the road might mean now that so much has changed from my original plan. We both deemed the retreat a great success and I felt a little sad knowing that COVID-19 was preventing me from inviting other friends to join me along the way.

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