Fairholme

Our next stop in Olympic National Park is in on the northern region, at Lake Crescent. Richard scored a cancellation reservation in probably the best site in the campground. There is a view of the lake through the trees, with only a couple of walk in tent sites between you and the water, which is an unreal shade of brilliant turquoise.

I had lunch at the picnic table and spied what I thought might be a jumping spider. There’s a woman on TikTok who makes videos of jumping spiders and gives them adorable little voices and amusing dialogue. It is so stinking cute that it has worn away much of my spider aversion. But only for jumping spiders. I’m sure I’ve encountered tons of them before, but have never noticed. This little guy seemed very curious about me and I imagined him with an adorable voice. I tried to take a close up picture, but then remembered jumping spiders jump. I’m not so over my spider aversion that I would be ok having one land on my face, so I only got a semi focused shot of him before he scurried away.

The blue water was calling to me, and we had plenty of time in the day to get my boat out. This was my first test of whether my patching job worked, and I’m happy to report that I think it did. I enjoyed a nice paddle of a couple of hours, just gently bobbing, surrounded by beautiful blue things. Richard meanwhile explored the Olympic Discovery Trail, which became our primary activity for the next day.

For our first full day, we planned to ride the Discovery Trail to the eastern end of the lake and back. There was information online saying that part of the trail was closed due to a slide, but we would still be able to go pretty far. The other information we stumbled upon online was something about a bridge closure on 101 that was scheduled such that it would cut off our travel route. There was a detour listed, which looked not only a lot longer, but quite twisty. We figured we could spend part of the day after the bike ride driving the road so that we could get a sense of whether it would be ok for towing.

The first part of the plan turned out to be glorious, with the pleasant surprise that the whole trail was open. From the campground, you need to climb up one steep dirt path in order to get to the paved trail. But once you are there, it is a rails to trails, gorgeously flat and smooth surface, all along the lake. We looked at the other possible places you could get up to the trail, but the other options make you traverse a gravel road. You can also climb two miles up 101 from the campground to a staging area.

This trail is just superb. You get tunnels, lake views, incredible scenery, all on an easy pedal. In the middle, there is a foot trail that takes you around an outcropping into the lake and leads to something called Devil’s Punchbowl. This turns out to be an Instagram worthy swimming hole where the water is clear and opalescent. People make it a day trip, bringing floaties and swim suits, and jump off the bridge or nearby rocks into the water. At the end of the trail is the Log Cabin Resort, so probably most of the people we saw were coming from there.

After we got back from the lovely ride, we reconsidered doing the scouting drive. It was already getting late and it seemed like the drive was going to take two and a half hours. That seemed both surprising, and excessively long for a detour, given the 101 route was going to be under an hour. This gave us pause, but we had no cell service and it’s really hard to research things when you can’t Google them. Instead, we got out the Nemo chairs, this being the first time we’ve pulled them out this whole trip. We lazed about and ran the generator in order to charge the bike batteries and the trailer batteries. Napping won, over information gathering.

The next day’s plans kind of all went kablooey. We started out with the plan to ride up Sol Duc road to the resort at the end, do a couple of short hikes along the way, and maybe drive down to the Storm Mountain area and get in the two short trails there. But somewhere in the backs of our minds, we were wondering how bad it was going to be to get detoured onto the much smaller highways 113 and 112 the next day. That was going to be a long day, with a ferry to catch at the end. And it was disturbing how few people seemed to know anything about the imminent closure of the only major route through the area. Like, we started to question whether it was a real thing. Again, no service.

We went ahead and got our bikes set up and rode up to the National Park kiosk on Sol Duc road. I asked the ranger, just in case she knew anything. She did not seem to be too aware of the 101 closure, except in an “oh yeah, I think they are going to close the bridge,” kind of way. I asked about 113 and 112 and she was really not encouraging. In fact, she used the phrases “narrow,” “windy,” “steep drop offs,” and “I wouldn’t do it with a trailer,” which got me working on an alternate plan. We found a place on side of the road where we each got one bar of LTE and we both started making calls.

First off, I’m going to give the Washington Department of Transportation a big ol’ thumbs down for their lack of communication around a major road closure. There were no signs anywhere on our way in, warning that this was going to happen. Richard called the phone number and the person who works for the Washington Department of Transportation, for the Olympic region, did not seem to know about the closure. She got his number and had someone call back later who did in fact confirm that as of 6pm, the highway would be closed in both directions to all traffic and would remain closed for two weeks. Yes, the detour routes are two lane roads, one in each direction. Yes, they are windy. Should you take those roads if you are towing? Hmm…. well I guess you could… if it’s not a really big trailer. Yes, there are there some “tricky” drop off sections. Seriously??? This is a fail, people.

So I made a snap decision and got us a reservation for that night at a KOA on the other side of the closure. All we had to do was pack up, hitch up, dump, fill, and drive twenty miles to get past the stupid bridge before 6pm. It was around 1pm when the switcheroo went down.

Richard was reeling after all of this unexpected plan switching. He was also feeling the vast remoteness of Olympic National Park. We cut our bike ride short, but did get in a beautiful hike on the Ancient Grove Trail before turning around and rolling mostly downhill back to the campground. As we were pulling out and enjoying 101 as it skirted the lake, we wondered what people would do after 6pm if they had a big trailer. Or were bicycle touring. But it wasn’t going to be us. We got the hell out of dodge and will (hopefully) never know just how tricky 113 and 112 actually are. Washington needs a GoFundMe for some light up signs.

We have no regrets on the call we made, at all. But we do need to come back some day to do the Sol Duc area properly. The road that we saw was really beautiful, and fabulous to ride. I know there are lots of things we are missing, but we are looking at this trip as a scouting mission to get an idea for what Olympic National Park is all about. It’s huge and there’s a lot to take in. And there is very limited cell service. And sucky road closure signage. But worth it.

Total miles from Kalaloch: 64.3, 16.0, 2 hours 10 min. Site 53. Great site. Nice and big with lake view. No hookups. No cell service. You can hit service on 101 at Sol Duc road. Good dump with potable water. Boat launch.