We survived the night in Sasquatch territory and it is time to get back to some sort of ‘civilization’. Today we are heading towards the beaches of Washington state. We are not going very far today and will try some sightseeing as we go.
Graves Creek Fishing
Ok, we did not see Sasquatch, but we did see some slugs. These things are huge! Kathy thought it was a snake until I pointed out that it had tentacles.
The road back out did not get any better now that it was light out. Nope, still rough. What is one to do other than a little fishing along the way. This is all part of the Olympia National Park and because of that, you don’t need a license. We asked the Rangers.
We did not catch anything. Didn’t even see anything. Again, we asked the Rangers. They said that the Salmon and Other fish that spawn here and go back to the ocean eat everything when they come. You need to fish here when the fish are here. Okay. That’s not how it works in Colorado. Good to know.
Kalaloch Resort
No, I do not know how to say it. This is going to be a recurring theme in Washington. Things have weird names that do not sound like they are spelled. Just like Australia.
This is whole beach area is also part of Olympia National Park. This park is enormous. I think most of Washington state is covered by it.
Here is the Tesla telling us how to get here.
We will arrive with about 30% charge remaining. That’s about 100 miles or so.
The resort is located right on the beach and has a lot of cabins for rent. The ranger station is across the street. Another thing we notice is that Washington (and Oregon) beaches have huge drift wood trees on them. Everywhere.
We get to the resort and they show up as a destination charger. These are chargers that business owners provide (for free) to customers who have electric cars. We need some lunch, so why not? These chargers where not Tesla chargers, but rather ‘open’ standard 2171 connectors. We have a converter for that! We have never done this before, so this should be interesting. We plug in and the charge rate is actually not too bad, about 7kwv. That would fully charge the car in about 8 hours. For other EV’s that use these types of chargers, they would have had to stay the night to get to the next charge station. We don’t, we have a Tesla. We have a nice lunch overlooking the beach and come back to an extra 15% charge. Nice. But when I try and disconnect, the car will not let loose of the connector! I can disconnect from the converter but that is still attached to my car. Luckily, I have seen an episode of Now You Know on YouTube that talked about this issue. You open the trunk and under the charging port is wire that you can pull down on. That pulls the pin holding any charging cord attached to the car. This can happen with ice, or in this case, a foreign connector. This never happens with Tesla type chargers. On those, you just push a button on the cable and Bob’s your uncle. Off it comes.
We have decided to camp here as there is a campground up the road. We drive up to that campground and it is of course full. They say the campground back about 1 mile is open. We of course ignore that and continue down the road looking for other sites. There are none that are open! We do not want to repeat the “Graves Creek Misadventure” episode, so we scamper back to the previous campground that was said to be open.
This was really an overflow campground, but it had tables and fire pits and that’s all we really need. We have the Tesla.
We set up camp and get a fire going. Not too hard as there is tons of lumber on the beach. It starts to rain. This will be are first rainy day camping in the Tesla and it turned out to be no big deal.
Everyone here is glad to not be roaming around looking for a camp site. Later in the evening, we see a lot of other people we saw on the road earlier pull in. Been there. Done that. We chat with a few folks about the Tesla and camping in it. It is pretty amazing to most. I get that.
We get some good advice about some towns coming up that we may visit: Forks and Port Angeles. We will see what tomorrow brings.