Friday, May 23, 2014

Sight seeing on a Rainy Day

It was forecast - all the locals said it would - it is a Holdiay weekend. Today we awoke to the sound of rain on the roof. It  was miserable looking outside. we had planned to drive up into the Olympic National Park to a place called Hurricane Ridge, on a mountain 5200ft up,  to see what the park looked like. However lookingout of our window there were no mountains at all - thhe rain clouds and fog had completly obscured them. So it was in to Port Angeles and Walmart for Sally and Jiffy Lub for me and the Chevy. That done (oil change) it had stopped raining and was now just cloudy, still couldn't see the mountains, so we drove into Port Angeles for lunch. Now the other name for the coast here is Dungenesse, so where better to have a Dungenesse Crab than here. So we did! We sat in a waterfront restaurant looking at the Dungenesse bay, eating our Dungenesse Crab (species), except it came from Alaska, as they are out of season here! Go figure! Better still come back in June when they are in season - for the Indian Tribes to catch, or wait until October when the white man can fish for them,. Go figure that one too!
Dungenesse Crab (from Alaska) eaten overlooking Dunegenesse Bay
After lunch we returned to the trailer, still with cloudy skies and no mountains to see. However on loooking at the Hurricane Ridge Webcam it showed that the sun was shining there (it is 20 miles away). So daringly we packed an evening picnic and drove off into the mist. After 8 miles of fog, some of it near zero visibility, even in the road tunnels! and a windy road we suddenly came out of the fog, which of course was low cloud, into glorious sunshine. We then drove up to Hurricane Ridge and were rewarded by the most fabulous views of the Olympic Mountains, made all the better for knowing how miserable the weather was on the coast. we spent a couple of hours there just admiring the scenery and the black tailed deer, watching the sun getting ready to set. This is the first time we have ever looked down on clouds from above (apart from an airplane), quite an interesting phenomenon. We decided to leave before it got dark as the road would be quite dangerous in the dark. We descended down the mountain, duly passing into the cloud and fog and returned to our trailer.
Another great day in the wilds of the U.S.A.
Note - Comet 209P/LINEAR, a tiny periodic comet discovered in 2004 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research project (LINEAR) should provide a meteor shower, called the Camelopardalid meteor shower tonight.

1 comment:

  1. These photos are superb - and they are proper mountains! It looks great and you have whetted our appetite. We are looking forward to seeing Olympic NP for ourselves. Just so you don't feel left out we had rain yesterday and forecast for today so Roy is busy cutting the hedges. The garden is another matter , it resembles a meadow - we are looking for someone with a sheep to borrow! Keep having fun x

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