Visiting with Old Friends on the Olympic Peninsula [260605-07]

(Posted 260610) Since we had to drive through Washington on our way to Alaska, we decided to take the opportunity to spend the weekend catching up with some old friends who live there.

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Despite a car or truck somewhere around us idling something causing a droning/vibration sound for several hours in the wee hours of Friday morning, the rest of the night was relatively quiet (for a rest area) until our 8:30 alarm in the morning.  We did our morning routine, and were back on the road a little after 10.

A few little bits of background might be helpful in understanding the interesting day we were about to have:

• we strongly prefer only using Top Tier gas when its available at a reasonable price, so a fair amount of time is spent on GasBuddy planning the next/cheapest Top Tier gas-carrying gas station stop
• we strongly prefer not having to pay to dump our tanks, and an increasing number of campgrounds (particularly on the west coast) have started charging for the privilege.  Our research showed that our next campground was one of them.
• after having to replace the gaskets on the T42's black tank valve last fall (twice, actually, thanks to the horrible Winnebago design that makes it almost impossible to do correctly so they don't tear) Tom is now ultra-religious about lubricating the valve before dumping whenever possible.  Since this involves crawling on the ground under the back of the coach - something you don't want to be doing at the dirty dump site, if you can help it - we usually do it as "the last thing before leaving the campsite before heading to the dump station" when we're in a campground.

Christine's research had found a free dump station at the Scatter Creek Rest Area 118 miles up the road, but Google satellite view indicated that it was located on the exit ramp to the rest area itself, so there'd no place to lube the dump port there beforehand.  (Our favorite rest area north of LA has the dump station on the entrance ramp back to the freeway, so we can lube the port while parked at the rest area before heading to the dump station.)  GasBuddy showed a relatively inexpensive Mobil station in Centralia (8 miles before the rest area), though, which was "close enough for lube purposes" too, so the plan was to stop there for gas, lube up in their parking area, and then proceed to the dump station at Scatter Creek.

Our day started out rather pleasantly.  We had been concerned about commute traffic through Portland, but Google Maps kept telling us that the transit time through was pretty much the same regardless of the time of day which just sounded like bad data crazy talk.  We decided to wait until 10 a.m. before proceeding north, and didn't hit anything that we'd consider "bad traffic" (by Bay Area standards) at all.  We crossed over into Washington at 10:48.

Things went off the rails fairly quickly in Centralia, though.  The first wrinkle was that the Mobil station was down a highly congested road, and the turn into the station was much sharper than a vehicle of our length should have to make.  Then we noticed that all the "Mobil" signs had been stripped off and "under new management" signs put up; it was unclear what gas they were using, but we were pretty sure it wasn't Top Tier so we decided to just delay until a cheaper Costco down the road (on the far side of Scatter Creek).  The sketchy not-Mobil also ended up not even having a good place to park to do the port-lube so we had to find another parking lot - which was further complicated by the concrete median in the street outside the not-Mobil forcing us to turn the opposite direction we wanted to when exiting.

We finally found an empty dentist office parking lot to use, but just as we were parking it started to rain.  Heavily.  We didn't have much choice at that point, though, so Tom got out his "emergency tarp" (his old "Maid of the Mist" poncho, from Niagara Falls) to lie on and can of dry-lube and got to work, getting fairly wet in the process.

The rain subsided a bit during the 8 mile drive to Scatter Creek.  All three lanes of the dump station were free when we arrived, so we chose the middle one.  In our travels we've come across a number of weird variations of "rinse facilities", but this one had a new one: water flow was controlled by an electronic push button, that supposedly provided 40 seconds of flow per push.  (There's a special place in hell for the folks that install fixed-flow rinse faucets at dump stations, since the invariably high flow makes it nearly impossible to rinse anything without getting dirty backspray on yourself.)  The hose itself was also a clamped, unthreaded, narrow gauge cutoff hose that is incompatible with our black tank flush system, but we carry adapters for exactly this sort of occasion that worked reasonably well (except for the one time the adapter popped-off in the middle of the process, spraying Tom's sleeves with water-of-questionable-cleanliness).  Oh - and the button actually only provided 20 seconds of water push, not the 40 seconds advertised.

Moving forward to the fresh water fill station in our lane:  it had a similar push button design (although had a standard thread faucet) but after connecting the filter and hose up Tom pushed the button to find that it didn't actually work (Christine had apparently sanitized it without testing it first).  So we had to move forward and then back up into the next lane (very glad that the station was not busy at all) to use the one there instead.

With our tanks taken care of, we pulled into the rest area parking lot to use the rest room and have lunch.  While in the rest room, the rain started pouring down again so Tom (who had very intelligently left his raincoat in the van) had to wait for a break in the rain to make his dash back.

After stopping for gas at the Costco in Tumwater (whose gas station is relatively small, but thankfully not very busy) we made one last stop to check out the reportedly free dump station (because we hadn't had enough "dump station fun" today yet 😉) at the 76 gas station in Port Orchard, for use on our return trip through in a few days.  It looked to be a "perfect" dump, with a standard faucet controlled threaded hose that had good water pressure for flushing.

Why, you might wonder, would we be passing through the same spot in a few days?  Our trip through Washington includes a visit for a couple of days with Christine's best friend since high school, who lives out on the Olympic Peninsula.  We remembered from previous visits that their street was down a one lane dirt packed road (exactly the sort of road that we avoid in the T42 - particularly in the rain - after getting stuck in the soft, wet soil in the Everglades), and their driveway was steep enough that even our old Honda Odyssey had trouble getting back up it; so moochdocking in their driveway was out of the question.  Instead, we got a site at Scenic Beach State Park about half an hour away in Seabeck, and headed there to check in.

While checking in at the gate, we were pleasantly surprised to see a sign saying that shower tokens were no longer required; free showers!  We drove up the hill to the campground and found our site, which was actually quite nice.  Like many/most of the sites, it was separated from its neighbors by copious amounts of trees and greenery and had a huge parking pad with a picnic table area set far back from the road.  Water, dumpster, and bathroom path access were all close by.  It was kind of a shame that we weren't actually planning on spending a lot of time there.

Since it was getting close to 5 p.m. by this point, we headed out to our friends' house - stopping quickly at the dump station "just to take a look".  The sign there actually said that the dump fee was waived if you were staying in the campground (so we could've dumped for free), but the rinse facility there was even more ridiculous than what we had seen at the rest area:  a garden-sprayer type handle with a flared silicone tip (which we might have been able to adapt to) that barely dribbled any water when pulled.  It wouldn't have provided enough water pressure to set the vacuum breaker in our flush's backflow preventer, and probably wouldn't even be good enough for cleaning spills at the dump station (which might explain the bits of toilet paper sprinkled around the dump area; this is why Tom wears disposable booties over his shoes when using dump stations now).  Our alternate dump station plans were looking better and better.

Our friends had arranged for us to use the driveway of one of their neighbors on the paved main street, but when we arrived we decided that the driveway was a tad too narrow to safely park and still let the owners in/out of their garage, but we found a nice flat patch of hard packed dirt on the street to park on instead.

Christine's friend Dawn-Marie shuttled us down to her to house in her car, and we grabbed quick showers before sitting down to a gourmet meal of salmon with a beuerre blanc sauce, Srirachi Steak, potatoes, and asparagus that her husband, Ed, had prepared for us.  Then we sat around and chatted until past 10.  It was a wonderful end to what had been a somewhat stressful day.

We were shuttled back up to the T42 and we drove back to camp for the night.  As we were getting ready for bed, Tom noticed that the thermometer sensor we had decided to "permanently" mount to the underside of the spare tire carrier for this trip wasn't transmitting any more.  (During the East of the Rockies Trek the sensor had sat in the tray of the bike rack, where it was protected from elements by the bikes' cover.  For the year we were bike/rack-less, we hung the sensor off the running board when we stopped for the night, and had to remember to bring it back in before leaving in the morning - which was both something of a pain, and couldn't be done in the rain.)  We had hoped that the carrier would provide sufficient protection from the rain in its new position, but it was quite waterlogged when Tom brought it in.  Luckily it came back to life after Tom took the batteries out and blew air through it for a few minutes; we decided to leave it inside for a few days to continue drying out.

With that excitement, it was midnight before we made it to bed.  But our first night in Washington earned us yet another state on our map.

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Saturday was a very laid back and relaxing day.  Since the forecast was for rain in the afternoon, we decided to just hang out at our friends' house and chat all day.  And eat more of Ed's wonderful cooking (Soupe au Pistou for lunch, and grilled shrimp, rice, and air fried green beans for dinner).

We got back to camp around 12:30 that night.

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The weather Sunday promised to be better, so after a quick photo by the T42 . . .

. . . we all piled into Dawn-Marie and Ed's car for the hour drive out to Port Townsend for the day.

Port Townsend is a historic seaport town that dates back to the 1850's, and is now populated by cute little touristy shops - a fun place to spend a few hours.

This pair of shops was particularly enticing.  After sampling a goodly number of balsamic and oils, Christine "supported the local economy" by buying a bottle of the Cara Cara Orange and Vanilla white balsamic.  Tom managed to resist the urge to buy a smoky tea, though (the fact that we had left all our good tea infusers at home helped 😉).

Despite all the "official" works of art sprinkled around town, the one that really caught our eye was this piece - that we assume is owned by some visitor passing through town.

One of the more unique items in Port Townsend is "Gunther": the 42 foot long reassembled skeleton of a gray whale that died and washed ashore in 2019. 

This big guy was doing his best to sun himself on the pier next to Gunther's.

Perhaps one of the most interesting (and most overlooked) "streets" in Port Townsend is this one:

On our way out we stopped at North Beach, which is a popular spot to look for sea glass.  We found the availability of sea glass there pretty sparse compared to other "sea glass beaches" we've been too, but eventually we all managed to find a piece - as well as a few other interesting items as well.

Then we drove back to the house, where Ed whipped up a traditional Spanish Tortilla (which is like a frittata; no flour or corn is harmed in the making of it) to have with the salad Dawn-Marie prepped.  We spent our last night chatting together until almost midnight, before finally heading back to camp.

It was fun visiting with old friends, but Alaska awaits so tomorrow we'll be continuing our slow Trek northward.