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| RUBY BEACH, OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, WASHINGTON |
May 18: After sad goodbyes to the sweetest, smartest little girls on the planet, we crossed the Columbia River bridge in Vancouver, Washington. We had planned on continuing north on “The 5”, as Interstate 5 is routinely called in the west, and we did for a while, but with a quick change of plans, we turned left at Olympia, Washington. The new plan was to circumnavigate the Olympic Peninsula instead of just touching its northeastern edge. This is country less traveled, roads less wide and tourists less common. The roads are bounded by either a) beautiful tall conifers that almost touch, forming a cathedral-like feeling, or b) clear-cut wastelands, where every tree has been slashed from the earth and the debris piled up to rot. Mountainsides are either verdant or rapidly eroding brown mounds where all the vegetation has been removed. Beautiful and rapidly moving rivers cascade throughout, today very clear, but when it rains... not so pretty. We stopped at a few locations along the route, mostly where the close proximity of the road allowed views or venturing onto the Pacific Ocean beaches. The best by far was Ruby Beach, where graceful sea stacks and rock formations emerged from the falling tide like Atlantis rising from the deep. Huge logs that had escaped the lumbermen were washed ashore by the sea and littered the beaches. Signs warned that at high tide, these former trees become potential killers once they start to float and get knocked about by the tidal currents. We spent about an hour walking the beach at low tide, enjoying the occasional sunlight that pierced the marine layer of fog that mostly prevailed. Bald eagles soared overhead, gulls and sea ducks searched for food in the surf and a black oystercatcher worked the anemone encrusted rocks.
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| RUBY BEACH, OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, WASHINGTON |
We carried on to Sol Duc Hot Springs Lodge and Resort, in the northern part of Olympic National Park. They also have a small RV park, where I am comfortably sitting in our camper, providing you, dear readers, with this account of our day.
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| SOL DUC SPRINGS TRAIL |
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| SOL DUC SPRINGS RILL |
May 19: Woke up to pouring rain and 45 degrees. Not conducive to doing much of anything outdoors, but intrepid souls that we are, swaddled in fourteen to twenty layers of insulation and water repellent gear, we walked the 1.6 mile Sol Duc Falls trail. The path wandered up and down through pristine and ancient temperate rain forest. Towering Douglas firs, rising so high through the mist that we couldn’t lean back far enough to see their crowns, Sitka spruce so massive that they blocked out what little light there was. Because of the rain and high mountain snowmelt, cascades of water poured down the hillsides, roiling over moss-encrusted stones that were reminiscent of “middle earth”. In places, it was so perpetually wet that the moss had moss growing on it. The falls themselves were a raging torrent of the clearest blue water you could imagine. Not a plummeting cataract, but a crystal cascade that tore through the narrowest of slots in the chasm. Not deterred in the slightest by this deluge, a pair of American dippers flew up and down the gorge, plunging into the white water to ferret out insect larvae hidden in the underwater rocks. Later, on the return walk, a varied thrush, looking like a very fancy version of a robin, sang its long monotonic notes, sounding like a cell phone ringing through the giant conifers.
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| SOL DUC FALLS |
Still raining, we returned to the RV for a catered luncheon, then over to the lodge. The feature here is the hot springs, which have been corralled into several swimming-type pools of varying temperatures for guest use. It was still only 46 degrees, with an ice cold rain pelting down, but I went for it anyway. First the 101 degree pool for a half hour and then the 105 degree tank for a similar period. Sitting in these delightfully warm baths, I “took the waters”, as if at Lourdes and was cured of all my worldly aches and pains, diseases and deformities. I am now 28 years old. Just kidding. Actually, I felt like a par-boiled spaghetti noodle when I finally gave it up. Guests are warned to stay hydrated and to not overheat. Oops.
We carried on to Port Angeles, a small city on the southern side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which separates the state of Washington and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, where Vancouver is not, but Victoria, the provincial capitol, is. (Nice sentence structure, eh? I must be getting too close to Canada.) We drove part way up Hurricane Ridge, in Olympic NP, selected a camp site at the Heart O The Hills Campground and drove back down into Port Angeles for a local seafood dinner (king salmon and Dungeness crab). The restaurant overlooked the Strait and Gale got two lifers while were enjoying our repast - pigeon guillemot and rhinoceros auklet. Why should such a diminutive creature be compared to its larger namesake? Because it has a small orange “horn” sticking out of the top its its beak! Then out on the adjacent City Pier, with our spotting scope, we got even better looks at these two little alcids and also saw all three scoter ducks, plus Brandt’s and pelagic cormorants sporting their fancy flank feathers of breeding plumage.
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| SOOTY GROUSE (F) |
Before it got too late (sunset is now 8:52 PM), we we went back up the Hurricane Ridge road and found a number of black-tailed deer, browsing placidly roadside, a 180 degree rainbow, AND a pair of sooty grouse, which is what we were really after. We tried driving to the top of the ridge, but the road was wet and the temperature dropped rapidly to near freezing, so, two miles from the top, we acted with some sensible caution, turned around and retreated to our campsite for the night. As Scarlet O’Hara once said, “Tomorrow is another day”.
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| OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK |
May 20: Still damp and cold, but at least the rain had stopped. We headed back up the mile high mountain, which is very steep, considering that it rises directly from sea level. Part way up, we, being serious techno-geeks, finally figured out where “the cloud” is, as we passed through it at about mile marker 14. So that’s where all that information is going! Continuing on to the top of Hurricane Ridge, where it was a brisk 34 degrees, we were now above the clouds. The view was expansive as we could see most of the snow-covered Olympic Range. It was like being on top of the world. Going for a little walk, looking like the Staypuff twins wearing all the clothes we owned, we caught sight of snowshoe hares, already in their lush brown summer pelage, tiny Olympic chipmunks, juncos and a lovely golden-crowned sparrow, tuning up on a migratory ride from California to its Alaskan breeding grounds.
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| SNOWSHOE HARE |
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| HURRICANE RIDGE, OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK |
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| OLYMPIC CHIPMUNK |
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| WASHINGTON FERRY |
Returning to the lowlands, we stripped off several layers and headed toward Port Townsend, WA, to catch the 5 mile ferry ride to Coupeville, WA on Beautiful Whidby Island. After putting all the layers back on, we stood on the open upper deck and looked for sea life during the crossing. Steller’s sea lion, and harbor seal bobbed on the surface. Hundreds of “rhino” auklets formed feeding rafts, surrounded by glaucous-winged gulls and some common murres. A flock of about 10 tufted puffins zipped by off the bow.
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| THOMPSON RIVER VALLEY, BRITISH COLUMBIA |
We wandered through rural Washington for a while, then left Bellingham going northeast toward British Columbia, Canada. The border crossing here was a quick piece of cake, compared to the 1-2 hour delays trying to get through at Vancouver, just to the west. The final part of today’s journey took along the awesome Fraser and Thompson River Valleys. These massive rivers, fueled by snowmelt draining the surrounding peaks of the Cascade Mountains, are deep, wide and dangerous. I have never seen such powerful flows except the Niagara River below the Falls. Roiling, boiling, currents and eddies going in five different directions, giant rocks in the middle of each river, all combine to make these streams absolutely terrifying. Yet up and down each were signs advertising rafting trips. Not for the faint of heart! We finally pulled into Skihist Provincial Park for the night, a lovely little park along the former Gold Rush Trail to Cariboo, where in 1859, thousands sought their fortune in this very rugged country. The road they poured through is still visible in the campground and is a path for your imagination to take over, putting yourself back 157 years, wondering what it must have been like for those intrepid souls.
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| WORLD'S LARGEST FLY ROD! |
May 21: British Columbia is huge! We drive and drive and barely make any headway on the map. Our goal over the next 5 days is simply to get to Anchorage, to meet our friends Doug and Shirley Beach, from Connecticut, to spend the next three weeks birding in Alaska. Two great things happen today. As we speed by, I spot a goldeneye duck in a small roadside pond. We turn around to check it out and find that it is a Barrow’s goldeneye, a lifer for Gale. Upon close inspection of the pond and the one across the road, there is a total of 11 duck species! Barrow’s, northern shoveler, gadwall, American wigeon, ruddy duck, mallard, redhead, canvasback, surf scoter, bufflehead and greater scaup. Amazing! The next great thing, believe it or not, didn’t involve birds. We stopped at the Visitor Centre in Williams Lake, BC, based in an amazing three story log building. Not only were the local displays and information excellent, they had espresso and tons of maps about all of northwest Canada and Alaska AND they had wi-fi, so we could catch up on email, news, golf tournament results and Yankees and Cubs scores. Being tourists, we stopped at the "world's largest fly rod" for a photo op. Continuing on through Prince George, BC, where it seemed the entire town’s economy was based on timber - cutting it down, milling it into boards, making huge piles of sawdust and chips and turning them into plywood, particleboard and pellets for wood burning stoves. A lot of smoke and smelly air is also involved. We ended up at Beaumont Lake Provincial Park and were extremely lucky to get a campsite, since this is Victoria Day weekend, a national holiday in Canada.
We have kept several lists of things seen thus far during the trip:
Bird species: 354
Mammals: 29
Road kill: 22
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| OUR FIRST GLACIER |
May 22: Our goal today is to get somewhere about 400 miles from where we are now. This is not easy to do in Canada, since they annoyingly do everything in metrics. We have no idea how many kilometres we are getting to the litre, either. At least time is measured in understandable increments and we have noticed that the sun is now going down around 9:15 PM and shining again by 5:00 AM.
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| BLACK BEAR |
We hit the road early, traveling west on Route 16, then north on Route 37. This is a long and very quiet road of some 450 miles, going from northwestern BC to the southern Yukon Territory. We took one lengthy detour down Route 37A to visit the tiny towns of Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK, which are connected at the end of a long fjord. The idea was to see some glaciers and a beautiful little fishing community. There was one glacier along the way, more of a fingerling that extended from the giant Bear Glacier atop the snow-capped mountains. It was a mini-glacier that slipped from the mountainside in a classic flow pattern, made a left turn and dropped into the narrow steep-sided valley. We could see from the terminal and lateral moraines that the glacier had previously been much larger, conforming to modern shrinkage patterns. The towns were a decaying bust, very tacky and no real fishing going on. Oh, well.
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| KINASKAN PROVINCIAL PARK, BC |
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| PINK LADYSLIPPER ORCHIDS |
We continued north and came across three small black bears playing next to the road and munching on some dandelions. They were covered with mosquitos. When we opened the windows for photos, we were instantly similarly embraced.
Night at lovely Kinaskan Provincial Park, BC, where we have a campsite right on the lake. It is 9:52 PM and I am actually sitting outside at our picnic table watching the sun set behind the hills as I write. Amazingly, no bugs.
May 23: Got out early again today as we really had to cover some ground. We still had 220 miles to go north on very rural Route 37 before hitting the Alaska (AlCan) Highway, with another 250 miles to reach Whitehorse, the capitol of The Yukon Territory. Fortunately most of the day the weather was perfect and we cruised along, making occasional stops for scenery or black bears. OK, I’m holding out on you. There was one moment that will go down in history, if you are a birder. If not, suck it up and pay close attention. We stopped at Lower Gnat Pond (I’m not making this up), a lovely shallow body of water that was partly marsh and partly open and started scanning. There were greater scaup, Barrow’s goldeneye, mew gulls and a lesser yellowlegs that started singing! (remember how far north we now are). Then, with a loud OMG, I saw the motherlode - a breeding plumage yellow-billed loon, cruising along the far shore! These birds are so uncommon and live so far north above the arctic circle that I didn’t even put it on our list of birds to hopefully see. They winter primarily in Alaskan coastal waters and then nest in the high eastern arctic. This one was probably crossing from A to B and we got lucky when it made a one-day stand.
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| YELLOW-BILLED LOON |
The rest of the day was ho-hum driving, not counting amazing snow-covered peaks amidst magnificent boreal forest. Dodged a few rainstorms and pulled into Whitehorse, on the banks of the Yukon River, by 7:30 PM. Dinner of fresh caught wild halibut and sockeye salmon and it’s time to call it a day (night is an increasingly scarce commodity around here).
Sounds like a wonderful trip! Love getting your updates! B and B
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