Bizarrely, the camp ranger woke us all up at 9:45pm at this site to check if we had paid (we had!). The kids make no allowances for sleep disruptions though, and woke up full of wiggles and demands. Daisy cooked pancakes for us again for breakfast. Gotta keep those kids eating!
On our way out we stopped to take a picture of this hilarious road crossing. We weren’t there only ones, either. I imagine the people that live on this road shake their heads at us tourists taking pictures but… How could we resist?
We made our way out of the park and back to the ODT. We were excited to finish this section of trail to Port Angeles because that meant we were heading to Canada the next day!
The section of riding today looked good on paper, but in real life it was actually pretty miserable. The Olympic Discovery Trail was away from the road all day, but it goes up and down steeply for every creek. We were exhausted after spending our morning pushing the bikes while the kids walked.
We missed the slightly-off-route market where we planned to buy something appetizing for lunch. Instead, we kept riding, looking for a picnic table to eat what we could scavenge from our bags. That ended up being a fruitless search; there were no tables to be found. We even looked in a car/highway rest area which had bathrooms but no tables!
Eventually we decided to just eat lunch without a table. It was at a nice boardwalk section of the trail, finally. During our lunch we saw about 10 touring cyclists pass in small groups. That was a lot since we hadn’t seen any yet all morning!
Finally refueled, we made the final push to Port Angeles. The path went down to the water, and then followed the coast for the last few miles. We could see our destination while being buffeted by the wind. We made it, but were definitely feeling tired. The day was unexpectedly harder than we were anticipating. Daisy laid down on the sidewalk by the bikes and actually fell asleep while Jason took the kids to buy coffee and treats.
The kids and Jason went into the Marine Life Center that is right on the water in Port Angeles. They have awesome touch tanks! Next up was getting Jason’s brakes checked, and yes they needed some adjustment. We then headed up the hill to our Warm Showers host’s house. We had a great time chatting, and also sleeping inside. (Thanks, John!)
For those out there that don’t know about warm showers, it’s a hosting network for touring cyclists. In cities it can be impossible to camp and extremely expensive to stay in hotels. When cyclists aren’t on tour they offer to host other cyclists that are. We have hosted in Pennsylvania, but not yet in Colorado.