OK, enough coffee and fish, time to leave Seattle. We drove to the BMW shop where the beemer was ready to go. They leafed through the boat catalogs while I wheelbarrowed the money in to pay the bill. I got around the corner and noticed a bolt on the handlebars that did not get tightened and went around the block back into the service bay. The kid working there said it might have been that way before and I assured him I have been staring at those handlebars for 15 years and had never noticed it loose before. The older guy just said they missed it and tightened it and checked everything else. It was a little thing but they were a pretty red-faced about it. They also said they had to replace a valve lifter nut, but didn't know why, which makes me wonder. The plan was to wiz down Rt 5 to Olympia, then 101 west to Rt 8 to Rt 12 to Aberdeen. That all worked except the wizzing part. We sat on Rt 5 south for over an hour creeping along. There did not apper to be an accident or anything, but my clutch hand was sore from bumping along in first gear for an hour. It was moving enough that I couldn't shut the engine off, so the engine temperature crept up until I finally had to just take off and weave around the side exit lanes and then cut in line ahead. With this little bit of motion, I managed to keep the engine temp down in a reasonable place and finally the traffic cleared (a one lane through lane was the bottleneck), and I kept it at 55 for the next 10-20 miles until Deb caught up with me. At Olympia we took 101 which is a little confusing because this 101 goes up the east side of the Olympic Park and there is another one that goes up the west side. Keeping west on Rt 8 and 12 we pulled into Aberdeen for a break. This park of Washington is not anything like Seattle. There is that familiar tension between loggers and the National Park. The same issues we have at home in the Adirondaks. There are signs protesting something called "Wild Olympics". The park servive want to set aside an additional 34,000 acres as protected land and I am guessing the loggers are not too happy about it. The signs are everywhere.
We arrived at Lake Quinault Lodge, home of no wifi and no cell service so just unplug and enjoy the 1920's era lodge on a Lake Quinault. The weather was spectacular and our cabin was the classic dark sort of rustic room probably built in the 50's as additional space for the growing tourist trade. The mirror framed with fly fishing poles says it all. There are pictures of FDR all over and he apparently visited here in the 30s or 40's and decided to make it a national park. I read a short history of the place and it was built in 58 days by some slave-driver guy (in a nice way) who was famous for building these kinds of places in record time. There is a beach, boats and hiking trails all over. There is only 2 places to eat dinner and we chose the place up the road that had great salmon, but it was way too hot to eat anything cooked, so it was salad bar for dinner. Again, nobody remembers it ever being so hot and every fan they had was running full blast to cool people off.
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