Olympic: Sol Duc

Today was a move day! We had 3 nights in Forks so we could see the stuff on the western side of Olympic and now we have 3 nights here in Joyce (near Port Angeles, kinda sorta). 

We left Forks around 10:45 and headed north and east.  It was only supposed to be an hour, but road construction and waiting for pilot cars made the drive take 2 hours! 

We are staying at a county park in Joyce, WA called Salt Run.  It is right by Crescent Bay and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  Our campsites are up on a hill and this afternoon we had awesome views of the strait and Canada! 

When we arrived I was waiting for Dad to figure out what he was doing, where  he was going etc and I picked up my phone – on the top it has information about network and signal strength.  Right by the bars it usually says “AT&T” and next to that it says either 3G or E depending on the network.  When I picked it up in the campground it said “ROGERS” where the AT&T belongs.  A few minutes later it said “TELOS”.  Turns out those are Canadian networks!!!!!  I do not have “roaming data” turned on so I have no data coverage on those networks – and don’t want any, AT&T sent me a text when I 1st connected to the Canadian network and told me “Unlimited Data does not apply in my location using roaming data will cost me $15 a Megabyte!!!!  Yikes!  Luckily Mom and Dad’s aircard (Verizion) works so we have wifi!  My one question though is text messages – I’m wondering if I will have to pay a surcharge on the texts I send/receive while using ROGERS or TELOS?   I plan to fight the charges if I do, I’m not in Canada and my phone isn’t giving me the choice or warning me of the consequences like it did for the data.  I don’t get that many texts anyway!  And, we aren’t just sitting at the campground – as soon as we get back to Highway 101 I have AT&T E! In fact it comes and goes here – no provider is solid. 

While we were eating lunch I saw a Coast Guard ship going up and down the strait and it made me wonder – do the crab fishermen head out this way to to get to Alaska and the Bering Sea?  Would it be possible to see the Nothwestern heading out from this campground?  I’m thinking I need to send Capitan Sig a Facebook message or a tweet and ask if he’s going this way in the next few days so I can watch for him!

After we got some lunch it was off to the Sol Duc area of Olympic.  We decided to go back through all the construction because it was probably faster than the other route we found which was double the mileage! While we were waiting for the pilot car we got great views of Crescent Lake and I even climbed over the guardrail to dip my feet in the lake.  I would have gone for a full swim if I’d had my bathing suit on!

Our first stop in Sol Duc was the short, .8 mile trail out to Sol Duc Falls.  The trail was a bit hillier than advertised and Mom wasn’t as happy about that, but she made it!  The forest was really pretty – tall evergreen trees, moss covered rocks, although not as much moss as in the Hoh Rainforest, little creeks running everywhere.  It seemed much wetter than the rainforest was!  The falls were pretty cool – especially when the spray made a rainbow!

After the hike we went over to the Sol Duc resort for dinner and a soak in the Hot Springs pools! This was our 2nd meal at a National Park Resort in Olympic and I must say I’m impressed with the quality of the food.  The service has been slow in both places, but the food has been surprisingly good!  The pools were nice – there were 3, a very hot, a medium hot, and a chlorinated swimming pool.  I went in all 3.  It was very nice, even though the smell of sulfur is pretty nasty!

When we got back to the campground the fog had rolled in pretty thick.  It was still daylight, but you couldn’t see the Strait at all.  It was 51 degrees when we got out of the car! I’m huddled in my RV all bundled up in long underwear ready for a chilly damp night!  Sounds pretty good! :-)

Olympic: Sol Duc