Not a Lot Happened Today

Makah Indian Nation Flag on the left

2019-09-24 (Tuesday)

Today was, quite frankly, a very frustrating day when not a lot happened. I guess that happens sometimes, even on the best vacations. And with a vacation like this, which covers 9(!) weeks, there are bound to be one or two days when Life Happens rather than Vacation Happens. Today was one of those days.

We left our RV "park" in Neah Bay at around 10:00, I think, and headed east along WA 212, which is a designated Scenic Highway because it is along the coast of the Puget Sound. And by "along," I mean RIGHT along. And God did not make that coastline a straight line. So we weaved and wove our way along the road (we were happy to see that a downed tree we'd passed yesterday, which had blocked the east-bound lane, had been sawn in half and cleared so we could go past.) I could see that if the day had been warm and sunny, it would have been very tempting to stop and go down to the shore and maybe stay awhile looking for more whales. But it was still overcast, although noticably better than yesterday, and not raining anymore. Yay!

It took about 90 minutes or so to arrive at the town of Forks, which was "large" as these things go on the OP. By that I mean, it had amenities such as a grocery store, a bunch of places to get food, gas stations, and other useful businesses. We saw a Ranger Station, and according to our new policy of stopping for Forest Service Maps, we turned into the small road which became the driveway of the building. Joe stopped along the curb, because we couldn't see the end, and were afraid we would not be able to turn around. The road, of course, was only semi-paved, and there were puddles.

I walked over to the public entrance for the Ranger Station, and discovered that it was closed! It wasn't lunch time, or a weekend, or a national holiday.... it was just plain closed. It would be open on Friday. I was pissed off. My tax dollars are supposed to support this, right? So I walked back to Joe, and he informed me we had a problem. He'd been checking all the Jeep connections (he does this daily, and it's a good habit) and discovered that we had lost a nut to a bolt that holds the tow bar onto the RV. Considering all the incredibly bumpy, semi-paved, and mud-puddley roads we'd been over lately, it was a miracle the entire tow bar hadn't fallen off!

Hoh River Valley

 In brief: to replace a simple nut (which we had a spare of), it involved a) unhooking the Jeep; b) pulling the heavy connecting piece out of the tow bar; c) lifting the RV with the compressor and power jack; d) replacing the nut; e) tightening it with the compression wrench or whatever it was; f) reversing everything we'd done and putting all the tools away.  Did I mention there were puddles in the road? All of this took place in close proximity (and occasionally IN) puddles.  In the middle of this process, Joe couldn't find the right size adapter that fit the nut we were replacing. We were not entirely luckless, however--we were parked RIGHT behind the NAPA store! So he wandered in there, with the seat of his pants all muddy, bought a new adapter for $10, and came back to finish the job.

At this point, it was 1:30 or so in the afternoon. We needed lunch, Joe needed clean (and dry) clothes, the RV needed gas, and I needed an attitude adjustment. It was almost 3pm before we got ourselves out of the town of Forks, Washington, and headed further south to the Hoh Rain Forest in the Olympic NP. The road was another one of those S-shaped roads, with curves back and forth on what seemed like a pretty narrow road. The first 2/3 of it are regular local roads, and the last 6 miles are in the national park. Before we got to the park, we were unexpectedly stopped by an ambulance, police car, and sheriff's car, attending to an accident on the opposite side of the road. A car had run off the road into a tree. We saw as we finally passed (after a 30 minute or so delay) that all the airbags, front and sides, had deployed-- I just hope the people were okay (the ambulance didn't leave for a while, so there didn't seem to be the urgency you'd expect with serious injuries.)

View of our Campsite taken out our RV door

By the time we arrived to the visitors area, it was 4pm. The road had gotten prettier, and we were driving along the wide, shallow, stone-scattered flats of the Hoh River valley. It was really lovely, but we didn't stop to look more closely because we were feeling the pressure of time. But once we arrived, Joe admitted that he was done for the day--wrestling with the RV and all those tools had done him in. There was nothing left to do but the obvious-- to find a campsite in the exceptionally beautiful campground there, and set up for the evening. So that was what we did, and that was our day: driving about 70 miles, replacing a nut on a bolt on our tow bar, and arriving at the campground. Not very exciting...right?