Hi again! We spent a great week on the Washington Olympic Peninsula. This is home to the Olympic National Park, miles of rocky beaches and national forests. We traveled to the Olympic Peninsula by Ferry, thanks to the advice by Steve H’s brother, Richard, and his wife Joyce. Richard and Joyce live north of Seattle, and came to visit us while we were still on the “mainland” of Washington state. It was so nice to see them, and since they have been RV’ing for many years, they gave us a lot of very helpful information. (Picture below – those of you who know Steve H will notice how much he and Richard look alike!) We had planned to drive through Seattle and around to the Olympic Peninsula, but they told us about the ferry, and recommended it as a better alternative to driving through Seattle. We were worried about managing the RV onto the ferry, but, it was as easy and uncomplicated as promised. So glad we did it that way, saved us hours of driving and much less stress than navigating Seattle with the beast in tow.
We did have a couple of maintenance issues, right before we left to take the ferry, so we had to delay our trip by a couple of days. I found a mobile RV service that came to the campground we were parked at and they replaced the breaker that controls the outlets and the gfci outlets (again!). You may remember we had trouble with this breaker at the beginning of our trip, and had it replaced while at the factory. We discovered our issue this time while parked at Walmart for a night, which was our staging area to get the ferry the next morning. Since we had no hookups in the Walmart parking lot, we were using battery power and generator/inverter power. That’s when the outlets quit working again.
A phone call to Rob (he is so nice to be our “on call technical support”! 🙂 revealed that our batteries in the RV – we have 2, 6 volt batteries, the same type used to run golf carts – were pretty low on water. Who knew you had to put water into battery cells???? Not us! A quick run into Walmart (they are smart to let RV’ers park in their lots, we spend a lot of $$ every time we are there) to purchase distilled water and Steve filled up the battery cells. But, the gfci outlets would not reset (again). So the mobile guys replaced the breaker the next day. They also tested our batteries and said we should have them replaced. They were losing their power and would not last much longer. So, we found a battery place nearby and had them replaced the next day. Was much easier than we anticipated, they were used to dealing with RVs, had a spot for us to pull up to easily, and half an hour later we were on our way to the ferry!
The Olympic Peninsula is very beautiful. We did the Hurricane Ridge drive in Olympic National Park, and several hikes in the area, including one on Dungeness Spit – a long spit out to a lighthouse. We love the rocky beaches in this area and also the mossy forests. The weather was great also, which is a big plus! We visited a few small towns in the area: Sequim, Townsend, Port Angeles. We found a local food co-op that had great produce and local meats, and we also found a local restaraunt that specialized in soups, bakery and coffee…we literally went every day! There was an area that had a lot of totem poles and a Native American gallery – we enjoyed visiting it and purchased some gifts there.
Hope you enjoy the pictures in the links below!
Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park: https://1drv.ms/a/s!Ap-2lg-EnL0pk1RMo-4ioXyxr6qG
Olympic Peninsula: Ferry, beaches and totem poles: https://1drv.ms/a/s!Ap-2lg-EnL0plQRrH_fktZ70rq2A