The Olympic Peninsula

Even in the rain, Washington's Olympic Peninsula was incredibly beautiful, with fall colors that made you think of New England, except for fewer reds. 

Our campground was in the town of Sequim (pronounced "squim") on the northern edge of the peninsula, between the larger towns of Port Townsend and Port Angeles.  Our hosts were extremely friendly, and one of them jump started the pickup truck that we tow when we couldn't get it to turn over.  We took it to the Les Schwab store just a block away, and they changed the corroded terminals and pronounced the battery healthy.  Turned out that they didn't have a battery for our truck in stock, which may have played a part.

Nancy and I drove down to Port Townsend, which we had looked at in the past as a potential future home but at that time concluded that it was just too far from civilization and the bright lights to picture ourselves living there.  This time we thought it was absolutely charming, with lots of great shops - book stores in particular - and a number of restored older buildings.  There is a campground right in town, overlooking the water, not fancy but within easy walking distance of downtown.

We asked the locals about their favorite restaurants for lunch, and the one that came up was Sea J's Seafood Cafe, which also had the highest ratings in Trip Advisor on the internet.  It was tricky to find, a little funky, with family style tables.  Its reputation was for the best fish and chips in town, so we both ordered that, and we shared a praline milkshake, I regret to admit.  Probably the best fish and chips ever, and the milk shake was wonderful.  It was a working class cafe, and most of the customers appeared to be commercial fishermen.  Everybody was friendly.  Great local color experience.

We'd been considering spending a month at one location next year, and our visit convinced us that Port Townsend would be a perfect place to hunker down next April and get to really know the place.

Back in Sequim, we visited the Dungeness River Audobon Center, which had an extensive exhibit of stuffed flora and fauna from the area.  They also offer wild mushroom identification walks, which would have been fun if our timing had been better.  We took the dogs with us on our favorite walk of this trip - over a magnificently restored railroad bridge and on a long trail through the trees.  On the bridge we were at treeleaf level; there were very few evergreens along the way and the colors were spectacular.  Quite a beautiful scene, and the weather was relatively nice that day.

Leaving Sequim, we headed west, along the northern coast of the peninsula, then took the Olympic Highway, which led to perhaps the most beautiful mountain lake I've ever seen - Lake Crescent.  It's big and isolated, and very few houses were visible.  The water was like glass and we could see the reflections of the yellow and orange trees at water's edge on the far shore, with green-covered mountains rising on all sides.  I highly recommend it and we hope to visit it again next spring.