Neah Bay was about as far from being a tourist trap as you can imagine. There were no restaurants, no T-shirt shops, no ice cream stores, and no shopping. It's the farthest point of the Olympic Peninsula, and the very northwestern tip (Cape Flattery) is the most northwestern point of the lower 48 states. The hike up to the point was wonderful - lots of boardwalk and trees disks to walk on. When we arrived at Cape Flattery, it was really a set of overlooks showing us sea stacks and the Pacific Ocean. There were lots and lots of birds who nest on these small rock islands out from the shore. The pictures can show this much better than I can describe it. Here's me at Cape Flattery.The best part of the Neah Bay area was the museum - no, really, it was. The Makah Indian Tribe live on the northwestern tip of the peninsula, and have for over 1000 years. The tribal history tradition has always been oral as a lot of north American Indian history is. Their oral traditions were validated when, in the 1970's, Ozette village, (a traditional Makah townsite according to their oral tradition) which was submerged in a mud slide 500 years previously, suddenly reappeared due to a severe tropical storm that hit the coast. The tribe together with archaeologists from Washington University saved thousands of artifacts that documented the life of the Makah tribe in the 1500's. The mud preserved everything virtually intact. This discovery has revitalized this tribe in so many ways. They hired a museum designer and raised the money to have built a stunning museum facility to study and display what was found. The artifacts have spurred a re-learning of traditional woodcarving, weaving, and other crafts by tribal members many of them becoming recognized artists. Their native language is now being taught. Younger tribal members are attending colleges and universities because of this tremendous archaeological find. This was a real life study of how inspiration can transform an entire culture.
It was disappointing that they would not let us take pictures inside the museum. These people absolutely intrigued Drake, and for 3 days all he's talked about is how amazing it must have been for the first Makah who devised a method where he could go out in a canoe and kill a whale and get it back to shore. What a technological feat not to mention the food security a kill like this provided. To give the museum an amazing visual and bring this alive, the modern Makahs actually went into the forest, felled a couple of cedar trees, used the traditional methods and carved full sized replicas of the types of canoes that were used by their ancestors to fish and to kill whales. (Incidentally, it took eight men in a gigantic canoe, each one with a specific job, to kill a whale.) When the modern Makahs finished the canoes, they used the traditional methods of blessing the canoes and then took them out into the ocean just as their ancestors did! Those two canoes were what we really, really wanted to take pictures of. I would recommend this museum to anyone. The Makah still fish every day. Their marina is filled with fishing boats, and we bought fresh smoked salmon out of a garage behind a house.
I can not recommend the second hike we took - the Shi Shi Beach hike, or as I like to call it - The Mud Hole Hike. Now, hiking involves some mud, no argument. However, when the mud is deep enough to SUCK THE HIKING BOOK OFF YOUR FOOT, that's too much for me. The first mile of this hike was great - old growth forest, boardwalks, cedar tree disks to walk on, and then the mud began. We struggled over and over and over again with mud holes - think pig wallows - that stretched across the entire trail and were several feet in length. Not just a couple, not just 3 or 4 but more than 10 of these we struggled thru. Balancing on logs, looking for stones to step on. Fighting our way across each one - dodging branches, probing with our hiking sticks to see how deep the mud was, hoping it wouldn't go over our boots into our socks. Our tempers frayed, and we were both miserable and actually fighting - something we rarely do after 40+ years together. Oh, it was terrible. The icing on this muddy cake? To reach the actual beach, you had to rappel down a cliff - well, maybe not rappel, but it was way, way too steep for a clutz like me. It was just disappointing all around. The moral: Just turn back when you reach the first big mud hole. Save yourself a lot of grief.
We left Neah Bay and went onto the second stop of this trip: The Quinault Rainforest. This was one of our favorite places when we were here 12 years ago. For decades The Quin
ault Lodgeinside the Olympic National Park sits with the best view of the large natural Quinault Lake. The Lodge is famous for its rolling green lawn down to the lake The law is dotted with Adirondack chairs for lounging and looking over the lake. The temperate rainforest that surrounds the lake is green personified. There's every shade, every form, and it all glows in the soft light when it rains - which is quite a bit considering they receive 12 feet of rain in a normal year.
ault Lodgeinside the Olympic National Park sits with the best view of the large natural Quinault Lake. The Lodge is famous for its rolling green lawn down to the lake The law is dotted with Adirondack chairs for lounging and looking over the lake. The temperate rainforest that surrounds the lake is green personified. There's every shade, every form, and it all glows in the soft light when it rains - which is quite a bit considering they receive 12 feet of rain in a normal year. This wonderful micro climate did not disappoint this time. We got to hike it in both the sun (very unusual) and the rain - which was actually better. We stayed in our own cabin right on the lake, and watched the weather roll around us going from sun to rain, and watching banks of clouds form and hover over the mountains each day. There was even a full moon. One main difference from our previous visit is there's a new chef at Quinault Lodge, and dinner was wonderful - I had scallops (a northwestern thing) which were prepared with acorn squash, garnished with mushrooms and asparagus in a delicate sauce. Drake had salmon served on a wood cedar plank which he also pronounced delicious. This was a delectable end to a perfect day that sometimes appears when you find yourself in a special place.
I think what I really liked the most about the Olympic Peninsula was the air. It's very clean, and it's very noticeable that there's more oxygen content. It was a pleasure to breathe. The quiet and lack of noise pollution, that so many of us live in and don't even notice, was significantly calming. This was more than just a great place to relax - it was meditative. We spent a number of hours just doing nothing beyond sitting on the porch and watching the water and the clouds.
That takes me to our last top - the Tacoma Art Museum. They have a magnificent collection of Japanese wood block printings. I've been a fan of the Edo period of Japanese art since Margie, Sarah, Drake and I went to the Dallas Museum of Art several years ago to see a collection of things from this period that the Japanese government sent on tour. The wood block prints of the Tacoma museum were wonderful - so delicate, so restrained and such a glimpse inside the Japan of the 1700's. I expected to like these and I did.
What I didn't count on being blown away by were the paintings of Victoria Adams, another one of the exhibits at the museum. She's a Northwest artist who paints light. In the tradition of Bierstadt, Constable and Turner, she creates imaginary landscapes that are realistic but they are less about land and more about light and the play of light on clouds and other weather formations. It was the perfect ending to a trip which was about light - how it reflects on water (the beach and the lake), and how it is filtered by trees and vegetation (the rainforest).
This was a necessary trip for my own mental health. The beach got me relaxed, and then I got news from Tulsa. My Dad has made a remarkable recovery from his hip fracture. His ability to walk is almost back to normal. The staff is completely amazed with his progress. They are also feeling appreciated because he's being very 'sweet' to them. He obviously missed the place and the people there. This is a better outcome that I could have reasonably hoped for. My father has only two pleasures left to him: eating and being able to walk around. I am so grateful that he's going to be able to retain his ability to move around where and when he wants to. I'm also very relieved that it's obvious now that he's happy where he's living.
I'll finish up by saying that tomorrow I'm 60. WOW! I've been corresponding with some friends about how old I really feel. My interior mental image of myself is about 40. I used to feel 28 not that long ago - but too many deaths of people close to me have aged me. Think about yourself. Forget calendar age - that's a calculation. Think about how old you really are, how you feel inside yourself - it says volumes about who each of us think we are. I picked the age of 40 because most defining elements of my life had coalesced at this point. I'd love to hear from you readers on this question: How old are you?
I'm going to include a link to the pictures of this trip, so you can see for yourselves that these places are everything I've said. Oh, and scroll back up and look at that 40 year old that led off this blog! http://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2010Tour8OlympicPeninsula?authkey=Gv1sRgCI_a6obn-4zligE##
