Washington - Take 2

After the warmth of inland Oregon the north pacific coastline was a shock to the system again. Little had changed in the weather since we were there two and a half months earlier. There was slightly less rain but a biting wind blew off the ocean as we pulled in to camp at the Quinault tribal casino. We couldn’t complain though – the parking was free and right on the beach which provided us with our first sea-sunset for months. The morning after we decided to take a back-roads route north towards the Olympic peninsula in order to save us a few miles on the 101 which headed inland. The GPS said it was only 14 miles but would take 2 hours. After the drama of Wards Ferry Rd we decided together that we would share the blame if the road went wrong and would embrace any craziness the road provided. An hour later the road began to run into deeper and deeper forest with the gravel giving way to rubble and dirt. After a particularly steep incline with trees scraping along the side of the van we came to a break in the road where heavy rains had subsided the track. 

I got out to walk across and noticed that the road steeply inclined to the right where it dropped into a deep ditch of swampy water and trees. To the left the track ran across the roots of a dead tree with holes collapsed between the protruding boughs. The track was the width of our van. Having driven this far and being only two miles from the 101 I decided I could drive it and told Emma to navigate me across. As I edged my way forward the van began to pitch to the right so I opened the door on the left hand driver’s side to try and weigh it over and provide me with a quick escape should it start to tip. Fortunately the water and fuel tanks were on the left as well so we were weighted in the right direction. As I edged the front wheels past the dirt drop offs Emma jumped out the way and I gunned it past and up the other side. Emma got back in, heart in mouth and we continued for two minutes into a dead end. 

After all that I had to turn a twenty foot camper around in a dense rainforest. Having cleared a good section of protected tribal land with my manoeuvrings we had the van facing the subsided road once more only this time the weight was all on the wrong side. As I edged the van towards the dip again it began to tilt only this time to the left with me inside it. I closed the door this time and buckled up. If it went there was going to be nothing we could do. The van would be on its side in a remote rainforest, miles from anyone or even phone reception. As I crept forward I shouted to Emma to move out of the way of the road. She moved briefly only to step in front again. I shouted over and over to get out the way but she kept repositioning to better see the wheels. As I felt the back wheel begin to slip I had no choice but to floor it and try to get it up the other side. As I roared forward, screaming at Emma to get out the way she jumped to the side at the last moment and the van made it across once more. As Emma got back into the cab we sat there for a second pondering our stupidity but seconds are short and before long we were off again and laughing, wondering how on earth a 1978 van could make it through rainforest without even breaking a sweat. Two hours later we made it through the labyrinth and back onto the 101 where the smooth tarmac felt like gliding on ice compared to the rubble tracks of the forest floor.