OLYMPIC, Wash. — As the final rays of sun disappeared behind the treetops, the valley plunging into a deep, dark shade of 9 o’clock blue, a mother black-tailed deer and her fawn strolled by as they scavenged for a late-night snack. The sound of their hooves clicking and clopping off the field of smoothly rounded stones barely reached our ears over the rushing waters of the Sandy River.
It was our last night in Oregon and our last in Oxbow Regional Park, a home that we had quickly fallen for over the past eight days. Sitting by the riverside after an elongated dinner date, Taylor and I were hoping to take in as much as we could before our departure the following morning. As we somberly watched the mother and fawn walk by, taking the occasional break to dig at some foliage hidden between the rocks, we tried to make out the forehead bulge that would have indicated it was the friendly deer that had routinely visited our campsite. Although they were less than 10 feet away from us, the impending night had rendered them walking silhouettes.
“I’m going to say that was Molly,” Taylor said optimistically as we trudged through the now impenetrably black forest toward our tent.
“You know,” I replied, waving my flashlight at the dangling flora and moss that enveloped us, “I bet it was.”
Just under 12 hours later, Taylor and I had rolled, tied and smushed our tent into the why-do-they-make-it-this-small bag, cleaned our pot and strainer and loaded the rest of our belongings back into the car, saying our final mental goodbyes to Oxbow as we broke camp and headed North.
We had been to Washington once already, accidentally. Unable to keep a site for the weekend, we quickly booked a cheap motel room just an hour away in a town called Longview. Unbeknownst to us – until we crossed a mint colored steel bridge with a sign pointing out our short sightedness – Longview would serve as our first venture into the Evergreen State. We stayed at the Travelers Inn, a one floor motel with roughly 20 rooms in the heart of a small logging town. Over the course of the two days we were there, Taylor and I restocked our food caches and did a few loads of laundry, biding our time until we could get back to Oxbow. Returning to a nearly empty campground Sunday, we hastily set off for our next excursion as soon as the tent poles were taught and secured.
The first order of business was tackling the few trails that were woven in and around the camp loops. Crossing the ‘Ancient Forest’ off our to-do list, we headed out on a waterfall hunt. At Guy W. Talbot State Park we hiked just under 3 miles to the Latourell Falls, huffing up a steep, rocky incline to the crest where we sipped handfuls of ice cold water bound for the edge. Seemingly in Oxbow’s backyard was the Columbia River Gorge, an 80-mile canyon that’s home to the Wahclella Falls. Standing at the foot of the falls, in front of a rippling pool of teal water, Taylor and I were doused in crystalline droplets that floated down from 60 feet above.
Having only a few days left in our temporary homestead, Taylor and I were determined to make the most of each hour and return to camp exhausted and satisfied. With that plan in mind, we crashed to the floor of our tent every night successfully drained, retreating into the comfort and warmth of our sleeping bag with heavy eyelids already closing.
While we could have stayed amongst the dense rain forests and sheer mountain sides for another week or so, it was eventually time to pack up and hit the road once again, an act we did reluctantly and as slowly as we could. But you can only kick around tent poles and search for that last ‘missing’ stake for so long and eventually Pearl roared to life and was carrying us toward uncharted lands once again.
Five hours after leaving Oregon, Taylor and I found ourselves looking over an immense valley. Directly in front of us lay a steep meadow of dried, yellow grass speckled with a handful of purple naked broomrape flowers. The meadow then gave way to a deep trench, which dropped quickly out of view before erupting on the other side with mountains carpeted in tall pine trees that jutted out like the back of a porcupine. Beyond those lofty summits lay the Olympic Mountains, a range of bald, serrated peaks the color of soot. Despite being the middle of August, Mount Olympus, the tallest of the range at 7,980 feet, still clutched a broad coating of snow that almost seemed to glimmer from 16 miles away.
Putting on a jacket to fend off the high altitude wind, I slung my camera and telephoto lens over my shoulder before following Taylor on a trail that led nowhere but up. The walk to Sunset Point isn’t far, but it will still turn your legs into columns of gelatin before making the summit – multiple fellow trailsmen carried a set of carbon fiber hiking poles, passing us as we sucked wind and looked on with envy. Eventually, however, Taylor and I stumbled our way to the peak, inhaling large swaths of the fresh mountain air while planting ourselves on the nearest rock.
Here, a new panorama came into view. Staring off to the north, down the long, rolling foothills, we could make out the city of Port Angeles, which ran both ways out of sight and hugged the coastline. Beyond that, a massively wide river separated our shore from another filled with equally large mountains that faded into the haze of distance. That foreign land, we later learned, was our neighbor to the north, Canada.
Feeling satisfied with the outdoors already, Taylor and I took to the nearby metropolis of Seattle. Making your way into town from the south, the Emerald City skyline comes into view just before the large, reaching structures of the city’s port: tall, rusted cranes patiently wait for the next barge to come in, stacks of colorful shipping containers wait to be loaded and flocks of seagulls drift mid-flight as they scan for a suitable perch.
Cruising through the sleek and stone blue architecture of downtown, Taylor and I drifted from sight to scene: taking a 605-foot ride to the top of the Space Needle before stopping at the Pacific Science Center for a laser light show and grabbing a hot lunch at a cozy cafe on the northside of town. Once again, we returned back to our basecamp with a sense of accomplishment, proud of the progress we had made at exploring and yet still eager to start the next day.
As we packed our tent with the necessary overnight supplies – water, flashlights and a couple packs of Pop Tarts – it dawned on us that our journey had begun to peak. Through 52 days on the road, we managed to scramble our way across swamps, prairies, deserts, canyons and forests, making our way to the furthest possible corner of the continental United States. From here on out though, there was nowhere else to go. In just a matter of days, our compass would finally point east. For the first time since we set out on this adventure, we would be heading toward home.
Up next: Montana
(Hunter O. Lyle is a summer travel columnist for The Era with publications of his two-month trip across and around the United States appearing each Friday. To contact the author, email drifttrip2024@gmail.com)
