We wake up nice and early to get an early start. Still familiarizing ourselves with the whole tear down the campsite and get going flow of things. Cold water – check. The campsite warden was already out and casting a sharp shadow on the morning dew. I noticed her stop and give us a sharp eye as we rode across the 101 to enjoy the East point view of The Great Bend. The shore was lined with eaten clam shells and it was hard to ignore the sunny day and energizing vibe. We got some breakfast at Hoodsport Coffee Company, some reserves at the Hoodsport IGA and headed deeper into the Peninsula using N Lake Cushman Rd.

Early morning in Potlatch State Park

Not long before we hit the High Steel Bridge. Tall, but far from lonely, plenty of people crossing and taking pictures. When the visitors manage to get across the bridge they park and head back to the bridge. There is a sense of disbelief in how tall it really is, you realize it better if you have good vision. Just when you start feeling dizzy from all this looking down and about, you get snapped back to reality as you see a logging truck race towards you. It raises enough dust to cover you and your vehicle and its weight and width is very pronounced on the bridge.

View from the High Steel Bridge

We find a very pretty single track that was probably a hiking trail, but I cannot resist. Maybe I should have, because it quickly got steeper with small drops here and there. In retrospect we needed to warm up a little before doing something like that. This is where we start to struggle and we break a clutch and mirror handlebar mount. As we continue in, we start warming up and taking more double track. Exploring the Olympic National Forest is a ton of fun and we quickly get lost. A couple of dead ends and one lost camera mount later we backtrack a little, head for some elevation to take in a magnificent view of the forest and enjoy a much overdue lunch.

Trail in the Olympic National Forest

Giant trees in the Olympic National Forest

Grilled oysters!

Soon we rejoined the 101 and the coast and headed to Port Angeles. Had an awesome dinner there and decided that we could make this day even more awesome if we found a great camping spot. So we headed to Deer Park Rd where we obviously found dozens of deer spread out across the mountain road. We arrived at the Deer Park campground under a moon light glow and richly exhausted. There was only one spot available to camp and we weren’t even sure it was a spot because we didn’t have any light there, but who cares 🙂 . We set up the tent and just lay there in the freezing cold, completely mesmerized by the theatre of stars.

View from the road leading to Deer Park camp

Good night, Milky Way!