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Deane & Norm's Motorcycle Trip to Alaska | |
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August 4 - Vancouver, BC to Forks, Washington - 240 miles |
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Today
started in Vancouver with a disappointment, but ended with a totally
spontaneous and fun side trip. We
had scheduled ourselves for a long morning visit to the "Trev Deely
Motorcycle Museum" in Vancouver. Trev Deely had the first Harley-Davidson dealership and
distributorship in Canada, and has been a well known collector and
restorer of motorcycles for a long time.
In the museum, there are about 250 antique and restored
motorcycles. This was one of
our specific "must visit" places on the Alaska trip. Well,
when we got there, the museum was closed for renovation and we couldn't
get in. One of the employees
let us just look through the door, and told us a little about the museum,
but that was all. So, since we had scheduled the night's motel for the Seattle area and that was a very short ride, we decided to take a diversion ride down Whidbey Island.
(Incidentally, what you see on the water is a big tug boat pulling a long "boom" of floating logs, and he came through the narrow "Deception Pass" between the mainland and the island.) We initially thought we'd just ride on down to Seattle after riding down the island, but we were dreading the Seattle traffic. However,
about
half way down the island, I told Norm half seriously and half joking, that
we should take a different ferry from the island, and go over to the
Olympic Peninsula rather than go on to Seattle. Then we
could ride its perimeter and go down the Washington and Oregon coast
to our destination in Oregon for the next day.
After taking a quick look at the map, we decided to do just that.
Neither of us had ever been to the
Olympic Peninsula before, so it sounded like fun. Then the question was whether we could get on that ferry, to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula. As we rode up to the ferry terminal, there was literally a mile of cars and RV's in line for the ferry. We stopped at the ticket office to ask what the policy was for motorcycles, whether we just had to get in line or whether they fit motorcycles into any spaces they had between cars. The ticket lady said, in so many words, "Pay your $7.00 ticket, shut up, and get over there where the load master will load you on the ferry that is loading right now".
Throughout this trip we have found that when it comes to ferries, it pays to be on a motorcycle.
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We
had a nice day for the crossing on the ferry, sunny but cool on the water,
and in a very shot time we were ready to ride.