The Olympic Discovery Trail
Our travel took place on the ancestral lands of the Quileute, S’Klallam, Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla, Chimacum, and Suquamish peoples who have stewarded those lands since time immemorial.
July in Washington State — especially Western Washington — is incredible. The sun is up from 4am until 10pm and it is the brightest and warmest type of sunshine. Since Western Washington is surrounded and punctuated by water, the temperature rarely goes over 80 F, and everyone is just drunk on sun and trying to get into nature as much as they can. I wanted to make the most of this time of year by planning to explore the Olympic Discovery Trail, yet another one of Washington State’s amazing rail to trail conversions. The rail lines were removed from the Olympic Peninsula in the 1980s and advocacy to create a multi-use trail began shortly after. The entire Olympic Discovery Trail is more than 100 miles long, and is still under construction — the Western end will eventually reach La Push.
I found a really cute campsite near the Eastern edge of Lake Crescent that was OK with us leaving our cars overnight. The owner was a really sweet older lady who owned a ton of property and was working with the local parks district to turn the property into a horse-friendly recreation area once she passed on. Real cool lady!!!
Walking bikes on a narrow rocky trail
We had just over 50 miles to cover between Joyce and Bogachiel State Park, a wooded riverside camping area with four hiker-biker sites. We started out by charging downhill to the start of the trail along the north shore of Lake Crescent.
We rolled along for a few miles on the wonderfully even gravel trail until we hit a tunnel that had been closed by a rockslide, so we had to walk our bikes around a really narrow goat trail. It was fairly terrifying considering that there were no warnings about this type of obstacle. However, that was not the most dramatic thing to come. After the first tunnel, the even gravel became more intermittent and there were long swaths of the trail that were covered in really big rocks and boulders. None of us were riding on particularly fat tires, so we had to get off our bikes and walk several times.
Once we got out of the larger gravel area it was much smoother sailing. After we left the shore of Lake Crescent the trail was paved and progressed at a really mild grade — rail to trail conversions are like this because railroads needed more mild inclines. The bright July sun beamed through the forest canopy creating really beautiful dappled light, and provided a really wonderful amount of shade as we cycled uphill. We passed through several types of forests, and stopped for lunch a few miles after we crossed the Sol Duc River. Somehow we found the only picnic table on the trail at the exact moment that we started to feel ready for lunch.
After lunch we kept pedaling and the trail dumped us onto some forest roads, and for some reason we all got a burst of energy and sprinted to the crossroads with the highway at about 14 miles per hour! We pulled over for a snack and bathroom stop once we started traveling on US-101 and were told (quite rudely) by the proprietor of the gas station that our little trip was not that impressive. He said he met lots of people that had cycled up the coast from California, so us cycling 50+ miles in a day was no big deal.
Gnarly flat tire on the way back… Fixed by the nimble cyclist
Our next stop was Forks where we loaded up on snacks and booze before setting up for the night. Shopping when you are dehydrated, starving, and cannot remember what it is like to not be pedaling is really hard. I cannot usually think about what would make sense to cook later, and tend toward wanting a lot of cold beverages and chips, but I pulled it together and found some good snacks and canned wine to share.
When we rolled into the park, we found that all of the hiker-biker sites were not only smaller than any of the sites at other state parks, but also all completely occupied. We felt a little hopeless and desperate, but one of our group found the camp host, and they were nice enough to let us stay in a regular campsite that had been reserved, but the people never showed up. Thank goodness because the hiker-biker sites were really small and never could have fit all of us.
We took some of our wine down to the river and spent some time swimming, skinnydipping, and reading tarot cards for one another. At some point a ranger came down and told the naked people to put clothes on which was a bummer, but there were a lot of kids running around. Luckily we got to skinnydip in Lake Crescent on the way back to Joyce without any disruptions.
I highly recommend the Olympic Discovery Trail for any cyclist that loves the Olympic Peninsula and riding for miles and miles on dedicated bike trails. I hope to do the whole trail some day!
