July 1: New Tires, ‘frodin, Mountain Goats, and Reading Problems

I woke up today knowing that I was going to get new tires on my bike and that was about it.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to head over to Victoria or
down towards Seattle.  Again, the wisdom of my girlfriend prevailed and I made plans to enjoy the area that I was already staying in, Port Angeles. 
I picked up the bike and decided to break in my new tires on the roads of Olympic National Park.  I started the drive up there and that’s when things
just got strange.  I rounded one corner and saw this:

An older couple from Israel had gotten distracted and simply driven off the side of the road.  They had both climbed out the driver’s door and were
fine.  I tried to suggest that maybe it was the dirt on the road…someone else commented that it was a sunny day and maybe that had caused it, but the guy just kindof shrugged and said “Ah, it was probably just my fault” to which his wife rolled her eyes and pointed out that there was no dirt on the road.  I continued up to the top and did a bit of hiking around.  On the way up one of the trails I met with this fellow:

So do you think they pay the wildlife to make appearances?  I mean, I was taking pictures of a mountain goat…standing mere feet away from him/her.  My guess is that it sees people fairly frequently and that it couldn’t care less what I was doing or how closely I was standing to it.  My suspicions were later confirmed by this view of a dear hanging out in a lovely meadow with many of it’s human friends, and also this neat sign of a deer jumping up on a person, apparently looking for food.  (By the way, I overheard the kid on the right ask his dad if the picture was of a kangaroo.  Awesome.)

I later met up with a guy named Bill who told me about a cool dirt road nearby.  I headed down that way (video below) and met back up with him on his way back up the road.  I continued on to the bottom where I saw a sign that (I thought) said “PJ Lake 0.3 miles”.  I headed out on my “quick” trek and found myself walking down steep switchbacks into a valley far below.  Turns out that I had misread the sign and 0.3 was actually 0.9.  I’m convinced that most of that .9 miles both ways was spent in the vertical direction.  The lake was beautiful…clearest I’ve ever seen, and the views on the way to it were incredible…but the hike back up the side of that mountain nearly killed me.  I really need to start working out when I get home.  Ok, so this short post has quickly turned into a long post.  There’s the video below as well as some more pictures from the Park, the dirt road, and the hike (with some more pictures on Flickr).  GPS file from the dirt road back to Port Angeles is here.  I’m out of here tomorrow.  It’s time to move on…