A short hop today headed to another giant volcano. It drizzled a little last night but nothing major and all our gear was still dry. We got rolling around 10 along a quiet main road headed east for about 50kms until we found a grocery store with Wifi. 2 birds 1 stone, we picked up diner and checked the weather forecast.
Today, nature has rain on the menu but not the heavy kind we experienced a few days ago on Vancouver island, this is more he low cloud drizzle kind, not really all that bad. Yesterday we were able to see the 14,000′ giant volcano from our campsite, today all we saw was light grey skies. The ride up into the park was still very nice with a beautiful road carving through a temperate rain forest of giant Fir, Spruce & Cedar spiced with the occasional red and yellow colours of the perenials coming to terms with the winter ahead.
Somewhere up there is a huge volcano…
We stopped for lunch at 1 of the 2 lodges in this part of the park before heading up towards the higher viewpoints. The further up we climbed, the wetter it got and the lower the clouds came until eventually we were riding on light drizzle and fog. We stopped for a while at the Paradise visitor centre from where, on a sunny day, we would have great views of the top of the volcano. Since there would be no vistas for us today, we settled for the short video about the mountain and a tour fonthe visitor centre before decending on the east side of the park towards our campsite. As we defended the weather improved and we stopped at a few waterfalls and gorges to take some pictures. We arrived at our campsite around 17:30 and settled in for a few nights. First a shelter of tarpaulins was built under which we set up our tent. Even though the forecast is predicting better weather in the coming days, we are still in a rain forest.
By the time dinner was ready, around 19:00 it was pitch black! The days are getting ridiculously short… bring back the 24 hours of daylight we had a few months ago! By 20:30 we were in our tent, all buttoned up for the night, Zoe reading her book, and me… writing this post.
Good night!
TA
Probably Zoés bike is doing ok for I see you’re taking the chance to go further in visiting the Parks around Seattle first…
The weather is not too bad but could be a little bit sunnier to profit from the views around you isn’t it?
You improved a lot in setting up your tent !! It’s perfect !
I guess it’s not always easy to have your tarpaulin spread over and the table and the tent .. depending on the trees around you huh ? Isn’t the BBQ a little too close to the tent though ?
I like this set up ! Well done 😉
The early sundowns have the avantage to let your bodies rest a little. Good night ! X Mum
Day 174 has a problem, so I jump on 175!
Going slowly to 6 months, half a year on the road on the bike on campgrounds in a tent.
Nice enough but at some stage you will have to acclimatize to “normal” life again, but indeed is it normal?
The jungle used to be out there in the original forest and civilization originated in villages and towns.
Now it certainly is or becomes very fast the other way around.
Pity you didn’t see the mighty volcano.
Baci on Saturday, work on our tent and wheels planned.