A mysterious companion joins us!!! *insert dramatic music*

Day 10:

Fog. That is what we woke up to, but than again our campground was on an island in the Puget Sound, you almost expect it. Today’s agenda was to make it over to Olympic Peninsula. Since, there aren’t many bridges over to it from where we were at, we had staked out a ferry to get us across. Well, once we got to the ferry port, we found out that it was going to be a while before the ferry came and they were only taking passengers that had reservations for a couple of different ferry times. So we had to travel all the way back up the way we came and then back down towards Seattle. We stopped at another ferry terminal before reaching Seattle, hoping that we could cut out going all the way down to Tacoma to cross. Lucky for us, that ferry was able to take us. What was also lucky was that we got there just in time to catch the 10:30 ferry. If we had missed it, we would have had to wait until 11:10. Soon after we drove onto the ferry, it was moving away from the dock and out into Puget Sound. Leaving our car, we climbed up a few decks until we reached the top where we could enjoy the ride in the brisk outside air. Although, the fog hindered us from seeing pretty much anything, we were able to see a handful of jellyfish as they floated by.

View from ferry.

View of the ferry.

 About twenty minutes later, we returned to the car and the boat docked at the other side. We drove off and headed north for Olympic National Park. After finally getting there a few hours later, we stopped at a visitor center. Walking back to the car, I spotted something on the windshield of our red chariot. As I got closer, I saw that it was placed beneath the wiper. The object had me perplexed. No, terribly perplexed. I picked it up, looked around to see if any other cars had such a strange object on them, showed Nathan, and then started to laugh. I am sure by now you are quite curious as to what it was, and to be honest, part of me doesn’t want to tell you until the very end of the journey. However, that might be cruel, so I shall tell you. There, on our windshield, was….well….um….(should I stop being cruel? He he he!)…It was an ear of corn. A plush toy, nonetheless, that permanently has a giant grin on its face. It was so random and out of place, that it was hysterical.

We named him Hurricane after the ridge we were on.

 I am not sure who put it on there, or why (other than they saw we were from Iowa…I am not sure that really answers why…oh well), but it was there. Not knowing what else to do with it, we brought the little fella with us. When we got to Hurricane Ridge trail, I put him in my pack and then we hiked up the 1.6-mile hike to the top. They said it was about an hour and a half hike to the top. Nathan and I did it (with only stops for pictures) in 33 minutes! The view from the top was pretty amazing. The Olympic Mountains could be seen on one side and on the other we could see Victoria, Canada.

 Olympic National Park's wild flowers.

View of Olympic Mountains from Hurricane Ridge.

 Hiking down went by even faster then hiking up. From there, we hiked to a pretty cool waterfall. The trail there led through some very neat forest.

Merrymere waterfall.

 Our next order of business was to find us a campsite. We drove to Dungeness National Wildlife Reserve and got us a nice spot. We spent our evening by going to a sand spit, which is a thin stretch of sand with water on both side. It was 5 miles out to the end where a lighthouse was. No, we didn’t go all the way there. We only had about 45 minutes before it closed for the evening, so we walked for a while on the beautiful beach before we finally came back.

Sand spit.

Mt. Baker with lighthouse in foreground.

 By were we parked there was another little walking trail that was on top of a bluff, so we waited there for a short while and watched the sunset. That was pretty cool to see. 

Sunset pictures.

Back at camp, we grabbed some firewood and enjoyed the evening.

End day 10.