At 6AM, we woke up and began descending the trail by 7AM. The descent was relatively quick, downhill, and easy. Within a couple hours, we arrived at the trailhead and drove to the visitors center to drop off the borrowed bear cannister.
On the way back to Tacoma, we stopped at Mcdonalds for breakfast and stopped at a casino for a few hands of blackjack, before arriving at the airport rental car building at about 12:30PM.
From the rental car building, I boarded the light rail and a bus to Discovery Park where the Pow Wow festival was taking place. The Pow Wow festival is a yearly Native American cultural festival which takes place in numerous cities throughout the country. The Seattle festival consisted of 3 days of vendors, dancing, music, and celebrations. As I arrived at the festival, a dance-off competition was just starting. About 20 Native American men dressed up in traditional garb were passionately and individually dancing to drum music being played by a circle of Native American men. The Native-American passion and pride was evident throughout the entire festival.
After the dance competition, I walked passed all the vendors who were selling Native-American inspired apparel, art, and foods. Most of the food vendors seemed to be selling variations of fry bread, which I decided to try out. I had previously learned about fry bread while researching about the relatively high rates of obesity among Native Americans. The fry bread was average tasting and very unhealthy, but I’m glad I was able to try it out for the experience.
After a couple of hours at the Pow Wow festival, Mike Tew (https://www.couchsurfing.com/people/mikelv), emailed me about his last-minute plan to drive over to the Olympic Peninsula in order to spend two nights hiking one of the coastal trails. It was Saturday afternoon, I had just arrived in Seattle after two days of backpacking, I hadn’t showered since Thursday morning, but I decided to join him. About 30 minutes after our confirmed plans, he picked me up from Discovery Park and we drove north toward Edmonds, WA. From Edmonds, WA, we drove onto the Ferry which was headed to Kingston, WA. Luckily, we were one of the last five cars that fit onto the approximately 300-car-capacity ferry.
From Kingston, we continued around the entire Olympic Peninsula until arriving at the West Coast. After discussing for a couple hours, we decided on hiking the entire South Coast Trail, a 17 mile coastal trail stretching from the Hoh River to Third Beach. The one concern we had was how we would be able to hitchhike to the start/end of the trail before or after completing the hike. Ultimately, we decided that we would park at the northern trailhead and try our luck at hitchhiking to the Southern Trailhead before beginning the hike north.
At about 11:30PM, we were approaching the northern trailhead on La Push Road. Based on the map, we anticipated La Push Road would be a very quiet, lightly traveled road, especially at the time we would be arriving. Surprisingly, there were hundreds of cars traveling in the opposite direction (in the direction we were trying to hitchhike in.) We had hit the hitchhiking lottery!
As soon as we parked at the trailhead, we began flagging down cars for a ride to Highway 101. After about 10 cars ignored us, one car pulled into the parking lot but stopped well before where we were standing. It seemed obvious that the car wasn’t stopping for us, but for some other reason. As I approached the car, the two Native American men kept quiet and ignored me as one exited the car to take a restroom break. Mike then approached the driver who nonchalantly agreed to give us a ride to Highway 101.
During the car ride, it became evident that both of the middle-aged men had been smoking marijuana (one of them was actually smoking marijuana in the car and offered it to us.) During the 20 minute car ride, Mike displayed his expert-level socializing skills by engaging in passionate conversation with the Native Americans about them being Makah Indians and details about their indian reservation in Neah Bay.
Mike and the two Native Americans even became immersed in a discussion about the process of lampooning whales, which one of the Native Americans had actually done a few times in the past. Perhaps because of his experience as a Mormon missionary, Mike is an expert at communicating and building rapport using a pleasant tone of voice, non-condescending tone, genuine interest and genuine love/compassion/respect. Mike had visited the Indian reservation of Neah Bay numerous times and had even visited the reservation’s museum multiple times. By the time we reached Highway 101, the Native Americans willingly offered to drive us a couple of miles out of their way to a nearby gas station, where we would have a better chance on the next leg of our hitchhiking journey to Lower Hoh Road.
Luckily, the gas station was also extremely busy at Midnight, likely due to the same festival at La Push. Within a few minutes, a couple offered us a ride in the back of their pickup truck to the mouth of the Hoh River. At the mouth of the Hoh River, there was a beautiful waterfront area which was ideal for camping. At about 2AM, we retired into our tents and prepared to begin the South Coast Trail in a few hours.
