Time left: 8:05am
Time returned: ~6:45pm the next day
Time spent on the road: ~20 hours
Total time spent on journey: ~34 hours (about 14 hours were spent in Port Angeles, crashing since no more routes would get me home by the time I got there)
Total buses taken: 13
Itinerary:
-603 to Olympia (8:05-9:15am)
-40 to Aberdeen (9:35-11am)
-50 to Hoquiam (11:30-11:45am)
-60 to Quinault (11:50am-12:40pm)
-Olympic Connection to Forks (12:50-2:30pm)
-14 to Port Angeles (3:10-4:35pm)
~next day~
-30 to Sequim (12-12:35pm)
-8 to Port Townsend (12:50-1:30pm)
-1 to Brinnon (2:12-3:24pm)
-8 to Shelton (3:25-4:30pm)
-6 to Olympia (4:35-5:30pm)
-603 to Tacoma (5:35-6:45pm)
-45 to get up the hill in downtown & back home (exhauuuusted by this point) (6:52-6:55pm)
Top 5 favorite routes:
-5: 1 from Port Townsend to Brinnon. A long, lazy route. Spanned from lots of countryside to part of the Olympic Forest; lots of rural city life intermixed with nature.
-4: 60 from Hoquiam to Quinault. This was the entryway to the Olympic Forest. Just imagine the lovely contrast from plain city views & then to the serene covering of woods and mountains and mist!
-3: 8 from Brinnon to Shelton. Such a winding, woodsy route! And so much of it was on a coast line.
-2: 14 from Forks to Port Angeles. The vast majority of this route was in the Olympic Forest, specifically along an enormous lake and lots of rivers. There wasn’t as much diversity as the Olympic Connection had, but was absolutely breathtaking.
-1: Olympic Connection from Quinault to Forks. There’s everything to love about this route: Lots of the Olympic Forest, lots of the western coast, mountains, rivers, lakes, waterfalls. I could *scarcely* keep my eyes from the view.
Top 5 favorite moments:
-5: Drunken self-proclaimed cisgender guy on his knees at Bar N9ne, tangenting for about 10 minutes or so about how courageous I am as a genderqueer (he saw the button I had and suddenly made his mind up to proclaim his undying support for trans folk).
-4: Disgruntled bus driver assuming I was a Twihard while passing through Forks. “Here for Twilight, I take it?” “Nah, just touring the Olympic Peninsula Loop. Are there still a lot of fans passing through here now? Where do they even go?” The driver shrugs and says, “Heck if I know. Vampire hunt, I guess. Not much else to do around here.”
-3: The guy at Bar N9ne who everyone there claimed was a vampire hunter, but who was super platonically nice to me all night. He bought us a game of pool which hilariously went on for waaaaay too long, we sang karaoke together and danced like total dweebs and he just made me feel so welcome for being so quiet and awkward.
-2: The wave of relief washing over me as I realized I didn’t have to risk missing my bus when I got to Brinnon, connecting to Shelton. One bus arrived at 3:24 and the other left at 3:25. Since the former arrived 5 minutes early, I took a moment to drink in the view of woods and the shoreline at Triton Cove, letting the long-away sun warm my back.
-1: Seeing an eagle nosedive into a lake to capture a fish. It was sunny at the time and just a quintessential scene to witness. Shame I didn’t have enough time to take a picture!
