One place I’ve been to several times but never get tired of is Fort Casey on the southern end of the island. We walked the batterys and watched people fly kites. It appears that they’re renovating the area because they’ve started painting the concreate buildings an army green with black lettering and trim and it looks really nice. I hope they continue past the two batterys that they currently have painted.
Leaving the fort, we popped around the corner to get on the ferry. It’s literally around the corner and you can see it from the grounds of the fort. Motorcycle riders always load first and get off first on Washington Ferries – very nice. The couple in front of me had an interesting interaction that I overheard. He handed her a baggie with something white in it, asking if she could hide it. She said she’d put it in her bra and then the guy started getting nervous about her maybe getting caught. 
They don’t seem to check, so it turned out to be no big deal, but it made me chuckle all the same.
Taking the ferry on Puget Sound always feels sort of exotic. We have ferries in eastern Washington, but they’re for crossing bodies of water resulting from dams, so they’re free. Anyways, it’s a 30 minute ride to Port Townsend and cost us $6.40 each. We topped up with gas before leaving town and continued heading west on highway 101 now. It’s a pretty road heading toward Port Angles but there was an unbelievable amount of traffic heading opposite us from what we found out was a lavender festival. Vicki and I saw lavender stuff on Orcas Island too, but this traffic was ridiculous. We were glad we were going the opposite way.
Our hope was to stay at Sol Duc Hot Springs, but they were full and we would have had to buy a national park pass too, so we found Fairholme campground just a hop, skip, and a jump from the entrance to Olympic National Park. Also crowded, there were just two empty spots when we got there. It was a nice place though and we had a nice young couple named Casey and Lynne next to us. They invited us to share their fire, but in the end we were just too tired and conked out. We cut up some beef and cooked some mashed potatoes for a simple, but delicious dinner. 262 miles was the distance covered today.
Monday, July 22 2019
After our normal 5:30am wake up, we got breakfast done and broke camp, leaving around 8am again. Today we'd be along the ocean a lot. We're headed to Cape Flattery which is the northwestern point of the state. After that we'll be heading south and end up along the Pacific for quite a bit of the ride. Getting back on 101, we turn north on 113/112 and head toward Clallam Bay.
Tom Clark
I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Intellitect, living in Spokane, Washington. I also do a little development work on the side. And I love riding motorcycles all over the country with my friends.
