TRAVEL: Visiting Seattle’s Fremont Neighborhood, Driving to Olympic National Park for a Wilderness Camping Trip
A (By-No-Means) Comprehensive Guide to Seattle in a Day
My hiking partner and I both flew into Seattle to meet up for this long weekend trip, but he had to go do some work first at the Adobe offices, so I got to hike around and explore the Fremont neighborhood before we could get on the road towards the national park. This isn’t actually a guide to Seattle, but if you’ve got an afternoon to spend in Fremont, you could have a worse afternoon than this?
So of course, being drawn to the weird and whimsical like a rare earth magnet to a metal bridge girder, I had to go hunt down and visit the Troll, and his gruff little billy goat friends. I’ve got a particular fondness for these legends (whether moralizing children’s story or serious fiction) as at some point for an assignment I did a rewrite as a rhyming and (poorly) illuminated medieval manuscript for an English assignment. I know. NERD. And don’t get me started on the troll movies…
Anyway, they’re great.
After walking around for awhile, I found a coffee shop with a quiet patio (or was it a catio? My dining companion seemed to think so, by which I mean a neighborhood cat that joined me for brunch) along with a stone-faced buddha statue and a rosemary shrub of enviable proportions, grabbed a caffeinated beverage, and pulled out my guidebooks and map to do a little more recon and re-read the sections on the trail we’d be hiking (especially since I’d be leaving the heavy book in the car and just bringing the topo map on the trail).
Coffee drank, reading and research done, random affectionate cat adequately petted (achoo!), I set off in search of a different sort of Buddha… when in Rome, and all… and of course that was both easy and legal to procure. Such a weird experience (in that it was completely normal?).
That little errand complete, it was time to meet back up with my backpacking buddy, and grab a light meal before hitting the road in our rental car. Stopped in at Eltana for a wood-fired everything bagel and a bowl of red lentil soup. A hearty snack or light lunch, and I guess I was hungry? For some reason? Weird. Anyway, this was delicious and definitely a great choice. The soup, I mean.
I somehow didn’t take any photos of the hellacious traffic getting out of Seattle (if you know, you know) but we drove through the night towards the park. It’s pretty desolate out here, and definitely don’t count on having phone service. Download your maps, people. Download. Your. Maps. And get on the Luddite train with me and carry paper ones, ok? They’re cool and they might save your life! I’m not sure what universe this trip was supposed to take less than 4 hours in was, but it certainly was not the universe we were in.
Fremont, Seattle, WA to Quinault rain forest loop drive – Google Maps
We were running low on gas (keep your tanks full on trips, or just, like, always? Or does not everyone watch or read the same apocalypse movies and novels that I do?)… but this anachronism appeared though the darkness and mist to save us. I thought I fell asleep in the car and woke up in my mother’s PNW childhood (kidding, these probably date to my childhood, not hers, but it was pretty surprising to see pumps like this still in service, and lucky for us there was actually an attendant inside so they were on, or we’d have been sleeping in this parking lot or risked getting stranded in the middle of nowhere with no way to escape a 3 AM Sasquatch encounter. Or Batsquatch. It’s a thing, and that’s a thing you know now. You’re welcome).
We kept driving until the intermittent rain and the absolute darkness on winding narrow roads until our bleary travel tiredness made it unsafe to keep going (well, my backpacking buddy did anyway, I sat in the passenger seat because I moved to the city before getting a license? I mean yeah I *could* have helped with the driving but I could also theoretically swim in the Chicago River, but neither of those things are safe, legal, or advisable… lol). Luckily my friend rented an SUV so it was pretty comfy to stretch out and sleep in the back once we found a safe place to pull off the road… ah, glamping. Ish.
At first (or second, or maybe third) light we got back on the road to finish the journey to the park. Enjoy some local color, signage, and scenery… My mom is from Olympia (or technically, Tenino… or was it Tumwater? Or Shelton? I’m not sure, she moved around a lot… but anyway, tiny), although I’ve only visited there once and just an overnight stop in Olympia for a White Stripes concert on a ten day Greyhound bus pass (during which we saw them play in 5 towns and two countries, ah, youthful folly… that was a ridiculous trip but the kind of thing that sounds like a good idea when you’re barely not a teenager anymore). This trip was definitely another window into the place where she spent the early parts of her childhood. And I’m from the Ozarks, I have SEEN some things on some very back-roads…
…But even though there are bobcats and mountain lions back home, I never really saw one (maybe a shadow in a far off field, or the aftermath of missing chickens, but that was usually hawks and coyotes). I have definitely seen one now.
Sorry, no photo, those suckers are slinky and fast… but I was glad that we had pulled off to look at Merriman Falls on the way to the park and were still pretty far from our trailhead. Or was it Bunch Falls? Honestly, I don’t remember, I’m writing this from memory a lot later (and perhaps my memory is influenced by the Tangerine Seattle souvenir?). But I wasn’t the ONLY cougar in those woods that weekend. Grrrowwwwwww!
