Now that I'm done with my MAT program and it is not so much winter any more (April is warm!), we've decided to try to go camping every weekend we can. This weekend we decided on a shorter drive to our neighboring woods, the Olympic Peninsula. After our journey to the east in search of mining history, I thought I could do one better and try to find the things that appeal to Tim as close to home as possible. I planned a surprise camping adventure for Tim and Chaach and Nathan and unveiled where we were going as we waited for the ferry to Port Townsend.
Though there were some doubters, we made it to the Tubal Cabin Mine trail head before it was totally dark and just down the trail from our car, we quickly came to an excellent camping area complete with fire circle, shelter structure with shelves to keep our food out of Tilly's reach, great flat tent spots and nice trees for Nathan's hammock. It was a bit chilly up there around 3,000 feet, but nothing a bunch of tough Alaskan's couldn't handle for a night! (Yes, Tilly got to sleep in the sleeping bag again. She kept me warm. :)
In the morning, for some reason we thought camping at 5,000ft would be even more appealing and brought all our heavy gear and packs with us rather than leaving them in the conveniently close car and heading out with only day-packs. What were we thinking?! Up 2,000 feet we went, fully loaded with not-ultralight gear. After scrambling up the last few hundred feet, we found the mine adit we came here to see! Other visitors were snapping pictures at the entrance and heading back down but we were not satisfied with only that and headed in to the long, dark, wet tunnel. Instead of a trail, we were walking up a shallow creek bed into the hillside. I counted my paces for the first two hundred then gave up and kept following our fearless de facto leader. After a while we came to a place where water was showering down from above in a curtain across the adit and I figured that was as good a reason as any to beg to turn around and head back towards the light. Though it felt like eternity going into the dark, after only a minute I could see the small point of light marking the entrance again and felt relieved.
It was well into lunch time when we emerged and so we though we had better head for someplace warm, dry, sunny to set up camp for at least lunch and maybe the night. Why not head another half mile or mile back down the trail than climb up that steep hillside for a half mile or mile and see if we can get to the 1952 B-17 plane crash for lunch? That seems reasonable! So we strapped on our packs and kept on trekking. The hillside seemed to get steeper with every step, but eventually we reached the remains as day-hikers whizzed past us without packs. We found a fire circle and the remains of an old cabin to sit around and enjoy our lunches, then watched shadows getting longer and thought about the still-snow-speckled ground. Maybe not sleeping at an even higher elevation than last night? Maybe... maybe we could head down the mountain and head to the hot springs! My exhaustion melted away as new enthusiasm filled my legs with the promise of relaxing hot springs to come. Tilly didn't know what was up and, with her own heavy-ish pack, was actually looking tired and dragging at the back for once.
We debated the hike-in campground and hot springs or drive-up? I took the extra leg of driving and we headed for the drive-up springs. When we arrived, they were closed for the night. Closed?! How can nature be closed!? So we set up our tents and tried again in the morning. Again we were too early and they wanted buckets of money, so we stuck our feet in the warm runoff and got back in the car. On we went to the hike-in springs. Two miles without packs flew by and we found ourselves stretched out in our own private pool. So nice. I felt I could float home.
On the way home, we spent 4.5+ hours waiting to catch a ferry as all the reservations for the day were taken by early morning. At least our extra travel time was spent making sand castles on the beach and eating ice cream instead of developing blisters by gripping the steering wheel through blizzards.
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