We Reach the Corner of the USA

Corner of the USA--the blue dot is us!

2019-09-23  Monday

Wow, it’s been another wonderful adventure for us today. But when we woke up, we were dismayed to find it was raining again. Not only that, we needed to connect our Jeep. For whatever reason, it took us longer than usual, so it was about 11:20 when we finally hit the road--kind of late for the day I’d planned. I was hoping that the rain would dwindle, because that was why we didn’t do much yesterday--hoping to avoid the rain. But we couldn’t wait another day, so we soldiered on.

We drove about 1.5 hours northwest, heading for Neah Bay (both a bay, and a town of the same name) and Cape Flattery, the northwest-most point geographically in the lower 48 states. It was only about 60 miles from us, but so many of the roads are twisty, 25 mph roads, that it took a long time. We got there at about 2pm, stopping first at the Makah Museum/Cultural and Research Center. Neah Bay is on the Makah Indian Reservation, and I thought we’d learn about them before going to Cape Flattery.

The museum was very interesting (they strictly forbid taking photos, and even have signs not to do any sketching!) The Makah have lived in this part of the world for thousands of years. About 500 years ago, there was a landslide of mud which covered a village called Ozette, about 25 miles or so south, on the coast of the Pacific. The mud totally preserved the village buildings and artifacts for hundreds of years. Then in the mid-60s, the water and wind started exposing the buried village. Archaeologists were called in, and they, along with help from the Makah, carefully excavated the site.

Eventually they uncovered 55,000 artifacts, everything from buildings to every kind of utensil, clothing, weapon, etc. that comprised life in the village before the arrival of Europeans. The Indians realized that they needed somewhere to keep and preserve these items, which represent the life of their ancestors, and they built the museum. It is used as a research resource as well as a display and explanation of the life of the Macah hundreds of years ago. The displays include a comprehensive explanation of the archaeological dig, and then many of the finds are presented in beautiful but simple displays with explanations of Macah life in the village.

Easy part of path. It got harder.

 We spent an hour there, and realized at the end we were both super tired. So we went back to the RV and decided we needed to take a nap before we tackled the 1.5 mile round-trip hike to Cape Flattery. At 3:30, Joe woke me up, and said we’d better go. He was right-- it was another 20 minute drive (for 10 miles) to the parking lot for the hike. We also spent at least 15 minutes trying to decide if we could negotiate the lot with the RV--we weren’t sure we could turn around, despite the fact that there was almost no one parked there. We finally managed, however, and donned rain ponchos and grabbed our walking sticks, and walked into the forest.

I’d read up on the hike, so I knew it was 3/4 mile each way, and downhill all the way there. This did not bode well for coming back, of course, leaving all the uphill portion for after we were already tired. But we were not the ones who designed this continent, and that’s the way it is! The first part was semi-paved. Then we began to encounter more mud (it was raining the entire time) and lots of tree roots. The roots helped somewhat, providing a semblance of stairs. But when it got too muddy, then we had tree stumps buried in the mud to use as stepping stones. Then we reached the wooden pathway built over the worst of the uneven and muddy places occasionally with steps and handrails as well. The wooden walks helped a lot, but often they just alternatived with more tree roots. Occasionally we had to navigate around large puddles--our walking sticks came in VERY handy for this hike. But overall it wasn’t too arduous, just very wet, and then we arrived at the first overlook.

Joe and Deb at the Corner of the United States

Wow! It was beautiful! It reminded me quite a bit of the Oregon coastline-- small islands right off the coast which was steep, and had caves which the waves had carved into it. But it was beautiful, despite the rain and mistiness. In fact, it also resembled Japanese paintings of coastlines, sort of misty and soft. And, it’s the Pacific Ocean! So we had officially gone across the entire country from Atlantic to Pacific. We took a selfie to celebrate.

We continued on the path, and came to a second overlook, this time looking north. This was a beautiful cove, with 3 or 4 caves carved into it. There was another guy there, with a complicated camera and a border collie. The three of us were looking down and suddenly I saw a gray back disappearing into the water. I shouted, “Oh, a whale!!” This was not terribly surprising in one way, because we’d already seen signs along the road saying “Welcome to the Whale Highway” (or something like that, anyway.) The Juan de Fuca straits are known for whales, orcas, and other sea animals and birds, and they are frequently seen. But I certainly wasn’t expecting to see anything in the foggy, rainy air--the visibility was very poor. I almost doubted myself, but we waited about 5 minutes and then both Joe and the other guy said, “There he is!!” This time they saw it, but I missed it... but that confirmed that I did indeed see a whale, which is very exciting.

Pacific Ocean looking north along coast--here is where we saw a whale!

After waiting a little longer with no more whales appearing, we continued on the last little bit of the trail, to the very tip of the peninsula. This last bit included climbing up three steps on a ladder to reach the overlook. There was Tatoosh Island, just off the coast, and the wild ocean all around us. It was fantastic. I’m sure on nicer days, the view is amazing, but just standing there in the rain, feeling the wet air, was wonderful. I took a screen shot of our “blue dot” locating us on Google Maps, there on the very tip of the American continent. We were pretty thrilled.

View from our first lookout, Pacific Coast looking south

Of course, we still had to climb down the steep ladder, and start slogging back up a 3/4 mile uphill trail. The rain began to come down even heavier at that point, and we were just slogging along trying to ignore it all. We did stop to rest a couple of times (they have a few benches along the way, but not many) and I was worried about Joe’s legs, but he pushed to the limit, and after 20 or so minutes of climbing, we were finally back to the parking lot and the RV.

Unfortunately, we were also both soaked and exhausted. We got inside, stripped off our wet clothes, and threw ourselves on the bed for about twenty minutes. Then it suddenly occurred to me that it must be getting pretty late--we hadn’t even started our hike before 4:00. Sure enough, it was after 6:30pm, and it was STILL raining, and as a result, it was pretty dark too. According to my original plan, there was an hour and a half of driving ahead of us to a state park along the western side of the peninsula. But the roads we’d come in on were very winding and slow, and we were now really tired.

Luckily, on my way through the town of Neah Bay, I’d kept an eye out, and we did pass one RV “park”. It looked like an empty lot off the main drag, but I did notice electric posts at the site and the sign saying RV Park. So we decided to see if we could pull in there for the night, rather than drive in the dark when we were tired, with the almost certain prospect of having to unhook the Jeep once we arrived at the state park, in the pitch dark, and possibly still in the rain.

So we drove back to town, and kept a very careful eye out for the RV park, and pulled in. And just like that, we were able to pull through a double space so we didn’t have to unhook. Of course, we are now 90 minutes from where I want to be tomorrow. But it was not a good idea to drive on those roads when we needed to eat and were so tired as well. Joe made us a quick dinner when we got here, we have electricity for our great electric heater (which might help our wet clothes to dry faster), and we are both ready to crash. It was a long day. But an awesome adventure!

A Whale of a Story

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

We started our day by moving Mo to a new campsite which seemed a bit more secluded than last night’s, so that Roxy would not feel compelled to bark at everyone who walked past our site on the main road. Also, now we don’t have a great view of the bathroom, ha ha! The new site is also even shadier than the one we had last night, so we felt that if we left Roxy alone all day, the RV would not heat up very much.

Then we hopped on the shuttle which took us to Bar Harbor. This shuttle idea to get people around the island is actually very good for RVers, as I think I wrote last night—it takes away a lot of the worry of driving into a crowded town and finding parking. And boy, is Bar Harbor crowded, AND I would NOT have wanted to drive there, that’s for sure. I kept seeing signs pointing to RV parking, but never actually SAW any RVs parked anyplace—maybe they send them a mile away! But the shuttle got us into town in only about 15 minutes. We got off at the Village Green and walked down VERY crowded streets past all kinds of adorable touristy shops, heading toward the waterfront.

Our original plan was to come to town and maybe rent scooters to explore. We were dressed for scooters, including carrying some snacks. However, it was already noon, and when we passed a VERY attractive ice cream and chocolate shop, I couldn’t help but go in—just to see if they had any sugar free ice cream for Joe; I certainly wasn’t thinking of MYSELF, of course! They had FIVE interesting sugar free flavors, including blueberry—so that’s what Joe got. I couldn’t let him have ice cream alone, so I got two flavors of chocolate—and MAN was that ice cream good!! Joe was super-impressed with his, also; he said it was wonderful. So it’s good to be grown up and have ice cream before lunch, right?

Then we walked to a grassy hill overlooking the harbor. It was simply beautiful! Blue water, white boats, green mountains in the not-so-far distance, and even the people everywhere couldn’t mar the vista. There was a good reason for all the people—the Caribbean Princess cruise ship was sitting in the harbor. I suspect there was an additional few thousand people in town just because of that. But we didn’t really care—we sat on the hill eating our ice cream, and admiring the view and the warm sun, blue sky, and exquisite day. It was simply perfect.

Then we went to check out the whale-watching cruises, because the building was right below our seat on the hill. They were sold out of their 1 pm cruise, but they had tickets for 4:30 for the “sunset cruise”. So we decided to go on that, and bought ticket. It boarded at 4 p.m.

This meant we had 3-1/2 hours to spend, but we decided NOT to get scooters this time around. Instead we wandered along the waterfront by the Bar Harbor Inn, and then window-shopped. Around 2 pm,we were hot and needed to eat some real food, so we found a nice restaurant for lunch (not a lobster pound, but Joe did have a lobster roll, a sandwich which is available everywhere here, and he said it was very good). Then we wandered again for about 45 minutes, before going down to get in line for the whale watching cruise.

The cruise got off to an inauspicious start. For one thing, it was 4:30 and we were still standing in line waiting for the previous whale cruise to come back. We didn’t get onto the boat until around 5. They apologized for the delay, explaining that the 1 p.m. cruise had not seen any whales, and they’d been sailing quite a long way in search of them, which was why they came back late. Then they told us that they were going to take us to a different place from the 1 pm cruise, but it was farther out in the water, and would be choppier. They gave us the option to get off and get a refund or a new reservation, but Joey and I stayed on, despite my growing apprehension that we were not dressed right for this experience. We were both wearing shorts, and although I’d brought a long-sleeved shirt for myself, Joey didn’t have one (he insisted he didn’t need it.) I recalled that it got cool at the campground last night, and realized that on the deck of a boat out in the ocean, we were going to be COLD. But, we stayed anyway in our seats on the top deck at the very front.

So the boat got under way, and almost immediately I was cold. All the other people apparently knew what to expect—I saw people pull out everything from cotton hoodies to heavy jackets! If I’d had any idea we’d be out on the water today, I’m sure I would have packed differently too. I managed to stay on deck for an hour, but just around the time we got to the area where they thought the whales might be, I went down to the 2^nd deck so I could stay inside if we didn’t see whales.

Almost immediately, however, we found a huge group of pilot whales. The guide was very excited—he said it was the first time he’d seen pilot whales this season. They are not among the “large whales”, as he called them, but they ARE whales and they are cute. All in all, we may have seen 50-75 pilot whales, and they were on both sides of the boat, very close to us. In the photo with the 5 pilot whales here, you can see the blow-holes on two of them, which should give you an idea—they were so close below us (and since I was one level down, I was even closer than I would have been up on top.)
I forgot about being cold, and started snapping pictures and oohing and aahhhing with everyone else, running back and forth depending on which side of the boat the whales were on (finally, they were all around us!)

But then the guide said he saw white puffs of water coming up a little bit further away, and we got a close-up view of 3 or 4 finback whales. Finback whales are among the very largest whales, and this group was chasing fish and moving very fast! However, the boat was able to stay fairly close to them, and we saw them again and again, first to one side and then to the other. They were intent on feeding and didn’t come too close to us, but they were coming up out of the water as they swam, making large waves, and exhaling in great puffs. I got several really good photos, as you can see!

All in all, we spent about an hour with the whales. The pilot whales came back near us as we were finishing up, and the sunset gave us some lovely light with whales—both finback and pilot-- silhouetted against it.
The guide said it was the best cruise of the day; the photographers (who were working for the local whale study program) were very excited, and of course we were happy also, knowing that the previous cruise hadn’t managed to see ANY whales (they think that the waters had been stirred up by the recent hurricane, so that they had moved from their previous location and were proving to be more elusive.) BTW, supposedly you can see the “official” photos on a flickr site at www.flickr.com/photos/bhwhale. I don’t know if it works, though (I hope I remember the address right.)

The ride home was about an hour long, but they showed us a nice movie of undersea life. One interesting thing was that at 5:15 when we left the dock, it was getting overcast and dim; but the visibility out on the ocean where we saw the whales was much clearer. As we came back to harbor, it was totally foggy again, and the decks of the boat were slick with moisture. But the town of Bar Harbor itself was considerably warmer than the ocean had been, and less foggy too. I do wish I’d had long pants and a heavy jacket on this trip, but I managed to survive, and we were thrilled by the whole thing. We caught a 9:30 shuttle back to the campground, and luckily Joe has a flashlight on his keys, because the ride here was foggy and the campground is VERY dark! But we are back, and warmed up, and my blog is done. I’m not sure if I want to go up and post it now—it’s after 11 pm. It’s been a very long day, but a very good one. I am SO glad we decided to come here to end our vacation—the area is beautiful, there is a lot to see and do, and we are looking forward to the next few days.