I have to admit, when we arrived here last night, this place creeped me out. I could tell it was a beautiful house, in a beautiful area, but at night with the total darkness, separation from its neighbors, and constant creaking, George and I were both captured with a mild sense of “the call is coming from inside the house” “I see dead people” “she never sleeps” doom.
The morning light revealed what we knew this place to be all along: absolutely gorgeous and positioned high on a cliff overlooking the Puget Sound and Seattle.
We wandered over to the general store for breakfast sandwiches.
There, we ran into Max, a very large black lab who wandered around the store and its general vicinity like he owned the place. He would be right about that. The girl working the counter told me he lives up the road. I love this dog.
After breakfast, we walked out on the pier and then around the tide flats.
Thankfully, the kit to fix George’s starter did come in, so he got to work on that, primarily because the Bumblebee wouldn’t start when it was time to get photos of the cars.
Aiming to be as helpful as possible while George was working, Evan and I retreated to the back porch for beers until we were paged. The Bumblebee is fixed. Possibly.
Then we took turns driving up the winding road toward the house, passing my camera for stills and Evan’s for video. (And that one would have been so great if it, like, you know… contained the entire car.)
Then Evan staged a little “meet the cars” interview session wherein each of us described our vehicles, including what works and doesn’t, while the other two relentlessly and ruthlessly trash on it between sips of Maker’s.
(Yeah, I’m gonna be trying these again tomorrow at some point…)
After sunset on the back porch, we rode into town for quite possibly the best fish and chips I’ve ever had.
Over dinner we discussed plans. Ultimately, we’ve learned that our “one-night” cities like Paso Robles, Phillipsville, and Coos Bay were mostly layovers. None of us could really recall what any of them looked like in daylight. Making it all the way to Vancouver was originally my idea. Now it’s clear that we’d get in late at night and have to head out early the next day, so we wouldn’t actually do Vancouver. So I’m putting that city back on my “Places to Visit” list.
Instead, our furthest point for this adventure will be reached tomorrow: taking US101 up to Port Angeles and taking a ferry over to Victoria for lunch, and spending the afternoon driving the north edge of Olympic National Park. We should hit 2,000 miles somewhere along the way. We’ll come back down to Indianola tomorrow night, then take the ferry across the finish line into Seattle on Friday morning. I cannot believe we’re so close.
