For Christmas last year Rob bought me a book about Bicycling in the National Parks. Any time I get to take my bike out for a spin is a good day in my mind, and there are lots of pix on this site to prove that. One of my favorite National Parks, of course, is right in our back yard, the ever so beautiful Olympic National Park. The only thing wrong with bicycling in the Olympic National Park is the fact that it’s ALL mountains. Very, very steep mountains. And even with a good motor on my bike, there is little terrain that’s a good day’s riding for us.

But one of the spots mentioned in the book is a day trip cycling around Lake Quinault. So I decided to give that a try. But, the state and national parks around that lake do not have any spots big enough for our little trailer, and the closest I could find is Sylvia Lake State Park near Montesano, which is just nearly exactly an hour from the lodge at Lake Quinault. It’s also just two quick hours south from home through Shelton (avoiding I-5 is always a treat), and literally one block above the town. But once you turn the corner into the park there are zero reminders of civilization anywhere, and a lovely small lake and campground with room for about 30 families.

So we booked a weekend there with our friends Jon & Lynn, who have converted from boaters to campers and also have two power bikes. After a very cold and wet spring, the weekend at Sylvia Lake was shaping up to be a much needed warm and sunny two days. But our friends decided the bicycling was for another weekend, so we drove up to Lake Quinault on Saturday and had lunch at the lodge and a nice walk into the rain forest. After that it was definitely turning back to cold and rainy, so we decided instead of Rob & I bicycling around alone, we would just take a nice drive.

We found two absolutely stunning waterfalls, just right off the road. The drive was a combination of nice paved road, double lane dirt road, and occasionally just a single lane with some rare pullouts. But we made it all the way around the lake, marveling at how gorgeous it all was.

That night around the campfire after dinner we started talking about our upcoming trailer trip to Alaska. We’ve decided to spend next summer (’23) in SE Alaska on our boat, and then take the two travel trailers up to Alaska in summer of ’24. Rob had read that we can ship them up on Tote Maritime to Anchorage, so that’s likely what we’ll do. I’ve already started researching what we need to know to secure campsites in Denali National Park, and ordered some road maps from AAA so we can all get the big picture (literally a very big picture) and decide what our priorities are for the short summer schedule. The procrastinators reading this might think I’m totally off the charts crazy for planning a trip 700+ days from now, but why put off what you can start now?