We’ve had a wonderful previous few days, just with poor cell phone reception. We left our campsite at Hoh Rainforest Campground early to try and book it to the Kalaloch Campground in the hope on a campsite ( which we ended up getting!!)

The ride to Kalaloch was nice! Mostly downhill and pretty fast. The last little bit was beautiful. We stopped at Ruby beach (as seen below) and a few times when we got to the coast because it was so beautiful!

Ruby beach!

We made it to the campground by noon and got one of the last available spots! So that was pretty nice. Some of the campsites there have ocean views from the spot, so note to self, next time see if we can get one of those.

Ryan and I relaxed a bit at the site. They don’t have showers at the site, so we left water in the hot sun to warm up for a warm camp shower and then went to go look at some of the local beaches. On our way out we met another biker, Chris, who was also camping in the campground. He biked here from North Carolina! He’s on day 121, and is biking along the coast to San Diego before heading back east to go home. He hopes to do the whole trip in seven months! Good for him!

One of the beaches we stopped at

We also looked for something called the “Tree of Life“ but were not able to find it. (This will come back later!)We did, however, find ice cream, so I’ll take that :).

After a bit of exploring we went back to the campground and used our now warm water to clean off and switch into our evening attire! The warm water worked okay, and we were able to clean up a bit. We had some time to kill before dinner, so decided to walk along the beach! We ended up walking to our dinner spot, so we just popped in for dinner! Very cool that we could just walk along the beach there.

This was the cabins near our dinner spot. The view from the cabins is spectacular. It seemed like someone had them booked for a wedding!

The dinner was probably the best food off the trip so far. We very much enjoyed the food. (We also got cocktails, but those were pretty awful).

To end the night, we sat on the beach to watch the sunset. That was beautiful.

We got up early today and are in the town of Quinualt as I’m writing this. We’ve gone away from the Ocean, so the temperature has picked back up some, but it’s not awful yet. We’re going to go look at Lake Quinault, and then bike to Lake Wynoochee tonight to camp, and then to Potlatch State Park tomorrow. We likely won’t have service until tomorrow night! So posting this at lunch at “Internet Cafe” in Quinault.

We’re sitting at Olympic National Park on the first night where it’s actually cold going to bed. Last night we were sweating just laying (lying?) there. (We were in Sol Duc Hot Springs Campground last night). This post will have no pictures, because my service isn’t good enough for that, sorry!

We slept in Wednesday, recovering from our brutal slog on Tuesday (insert referral link to the previous blog entry here). After our oatmeal, apple, and peanut butter breakfast, we biked along a beautiful trail the approximately 20 miles into the town of Port Angeles. From there we went to Avis, and rented a Subaru Outback. (Testing for Mark and Darragh’s first car purchase in Bellingham). We we’re very excited with the car, fitting both bikes easily in the back, and celebrated by going to the local pizza place for lunch where we ate a LOT of pizza.

We then drove the 40 miles up to Sol Duc Campground, stopping along the way to view the river and other scenic points. We made note of a great cliff jumping spot, and then went up to the campsite! The car registered 95 while we were pulling into the campsite. Woof. Glad we didn’t bike.

We setup our tent and got the campsite setup. It was hot enough out that we were sweating just sitting there. So we biked down to the local “hot springs” to see if they had cold pools. But the hot springs was rather disappointing. It was essentially pools (with tile and everything) and some of them smelled like silver and were warm. So we opted to go back to the place we saw we could go cliff jumping! That was too far to bike, so we went back up to the campground and got the car.

Or attempted to get the car. It failed to start when we turned it on (dead battery). I think we had left a door open for about an hour, and the battery looked a bit corroded, so between that, something caused the car to not start. Thankfully, a guy traveling with his family (who i think was named Jesse) had jumper cables, and helped us out! And was also on a great road trip with his grand kids to all the National parks!

With the car started, we went back to our cliff jumping spot. After waiting a bit for the battery to charge, we went down and cooled off in the river. It felt amazing. We have some great photos we can upload later!

After the cliff jumping and swimming, we went to a restaurant in the park for dinner, and then to bed! We had a westerly morning the next morning to take the bus to Forks. Unfortunately, it was still way too hot out at sun down. Both Ryan and I slept shirtless with no fly on the tent and no sleeping bag over any part of our body. We were still sweating until midnight.

The next morning we woke up at 5:45AM to get to the 7:45 bus to Forks. We were worried about the bikes not fitting on the rack, but everything worked great! And the bus happened to be free today, which was a double bonus! So with the rental car returned, we made it to Forks with just our bikes, and bought food and snacks for the day. By 10 we were happy, cool, and on the road.

The first 10 miles of the ride we powered through. We were on a fairly busy road, and while the scenery was beautiful, we were just cranking miles. I think we averaged 14.5mph on that section, which was great, because it was slightly uphill!

From there, we turned into the park road. We still had 18 miles to go, but it was beautiful! We’re biking along the Hoh river, which is all glacial/snow melt, and it looks gorgeous. The speed limit for cars was 35 for most of the way up, and we had plenty of time to enjoy the area! We stopped lots to look at the river, and to go into shops! At one shop Ryan bought a new shirt and a pretty cool map of the area!

We made it up to the campsite by 3pm, setup camp, planned tomorrow, and went for a swim! It was a wonderful day.

Tomorrow we will bike to Kalaloch campground with in the park. We don’t have a campsite there, but they have a waitlist we’ll try to get our name on. If we can’t, there’s State Park land we can camp on in a pinch! But we’re optimistic!

For now I’m (for the first time this trip) zipping myself into my sleeping bag and sleeping!! Goodnight!

We’ve taken a bit of how hiatus from writing, but we’re back to blogging! This section of the trip is with Mark and Ryan (Darragh is in Cape Cod with her family and may provide separate blog accounts of her time there.)

For this section, Ryan and Mark are biking around the Olympic peninsula! We’ve taken an aggressive (maybe too aggressive) route that’s 50% on gravel and 366 miles. We modified to make it longer, adding stops in Olympic National Park! As all will laid plans, there will be some modifications after riding in the heat today.

Today was based on a song by Olivia Rodrigo, Brutal. (Although Ryan reports that Boogie Wonderland was stuck in his head all day, but it sounds more like to state we desired to be in, rather than the state we were actually in.)

We did 77 miles + 4 without weight for dinner, so we’ll say 80 miles. It was HOT today. Maybe we should’ve taken a hint when the place we had lunch was shutting down at 2pm when it was scheduled to be open until 8pm. (Side note, lots of respect for the owner who called his employees and told them to close it down ). We still had 30 miles to bike, but the camping around there was reportedly really bad and we wanted to get to the coast where it would be a bit cooler.

But from the beginning, the day started at 6am, with a quick breakfast at Matt and Liz’s house, and then out the door by 6:50am. Our goal, which we easily hit, was to take the 8:50AM ferry. In a stroke of good luck, there was also a top pot doughnuts near the ferry, so we got doughnuts for the ride.

After all my riding in Norway, I was a bit upset that I had to pay for the ferry as a bicyclist, but alas not everything can be free.

The ferry ride was beautiful, but there were no whales 🐳 spotted on the way. Maybe, next time! On the ferry, we meet a couple from Cincinnati who were feverent Michigan fan. The wife was an avid cyclist, and told us all about her biking. She has a Cervelo that weighs 15 pounds, so a different type of riding then us.

After the ferry, we had some lovely cycling in okay temperatures. We took our first gravel section, and had a blast. It was looking to be a great day.

But then, we started up the second gravel section on the route. That was when the start of the brutality started. It was starting to get really hot, and to get into the tail, we had to push our bikes through raspberry bushes. Ryan managed to make it through relatively unscathed, but I got a few gashes on my leg, which burn when salt from my sweat dropped into them. We pushed our bikes up the hill to start, and then started biking. The road quickly turned into the worst type of gravel road, actual gravel. (Ryan points out that sand is worse than gravel, which is correct, but gravel is still pretty bad.) We had a long and slow uphill over the gravel trying to get to the top of the hill. (Excellently guided by my new Wahoo bike computer I may say!) It was hot, and slow going, and sometimes very exposed to the sun.

To say we were relieved when we finally made it to town would be a bit of an understatement. We stopped at the first market we saw, bought water and Gatorade, and enjoyed the AC.

We stayed in that town Quilcene for 2 hours while we got food, and lunch, and brought our body temperature back down.

After we sat until 3, we got back in the bikes as they were sitting down the restaurant. They said we were welcome to stay, but we still wanted to do 30 miles. (Wanted maybe a strong term, we did 30 miles because we wanted to have a cooler night near the ocean).

Those 30 miles were brutal. Luckily, the road was closed too though traffic, so it was great for biking, and when we were in the shade, it wasn’t awful, but after even small climbs in the sun, we needed to stop to cool down. At one point we even stopped at Lake Leland and dunked our shirts in so we could have the evaporation help keep us cool.

If you want to see the full route, you can find it here! https://ridewithgps.com/trips/131484276

We made it to put destination at 5:30 PM. Ryan crushed some of the last few miles, and we were on a bike path for most of it as well! We were pretty tired setting up the tent, and another guy came over to chat with us. He had also biked in, but it sounds like he lives on his bike. He gave us lots of local recommendations, which was nice, but also told us story after story that was almost certainly bs. For example, he told us he’s been struck by lightning 4 times, and was ejected from an ambulance when the paramedics thought he was dead, and then he moved, and the surprised paramedic slammed on the brake, causing his gurney to fly through the front windshield. … Right.

Anyway, finally got everything setup, ditched the other camper, took an amazing shower, and went out to dinner! It was a glorious, but very quiet dinner as we rebuilt our energy!

Based on today, we’ve modified the plans for tomorrow. It’s still going to be pretty hot, so we’re going to do 25 miles in the morning, and then rent a car to drive up to our campground. The day after, we’ll take a bus from the car rental place to a few towns over and then bike from there to the campground. All in all, this will save 80 miles of biking across 2 days, which is great. It’s also supposed to cool down later in the week, which should be good!

Tomorrow night we stay at Sol Duc Hot Springs. Hopefully they have some cool springs as well. And then on Thursday night we stay at Hoh rainforest campground. Which should also be great!

We’re looking forward to some rest! Hoping for at least 10 hours!

We’re writing this blog post from what I can imagine a very nice refugee camp would be like. We’re packed in with probably 300-500 other people in a fairly small campground. One thing I miss about the US when traveling in Europe is our campgrounds. We have much much nicer campgrounds in the US. (Although, having them near towns with showers and washing machines is nice!)

We woke up early this morning, and got out of camp by 6:00AM to start driving back towards the airport for our flight to Detroit tomorrow. When we awoke it was drizzling and we were in a cloud, so no more beautiful pictures from the drive out!

I didn’t get a lot of photos from the day today, so here’s one more from last night.

The dirt road out of the campsite was pretty easy. I’m now ready for the Rivian to get sweet photos in the Cascades.

Once we were back to the ring road, we decided we mine as well complete the circle, as it was only an extra 25 minutes to drive that way. So we did it, and drove the 9 hours back towards the airport.

Our goal was to get back in time to go hike to see the active volcano! That would’ve been amazing. But we unfortunately didn’t make it in time. The hike closes at 6, and we were there at 5, so we hiked up to see a slightly older volcanoes 🌋 now dried lava flows, which was still spectacular!!

We’re now at a campground near Keflevik (where the airport is. Fun fact it was built by the US!).

We’re off to bed! We’re fly out to Detroit early tomorrow morning! Fingers crossed no one parks us in.