USA – Road Trip – Ozette – 12th September

We woke up to sunshine and photographed the sun rising across the lake, pretty idyllic so far! Packing up was easy as the tent is very small and quick to take up and down, so this helped us speed up somewhat before making our way to the north-westerly point of the peninsula. The weather got greyer and greyer as we made our way in the direction of Neah Bay.

As we were pretty early we made our first point of call the Native American Cape Flattery Museum as it had been mentioned in the Lonely Planet and sounded pretty interesting. Opening at 10am the museum is located just before Neah Bay and we were pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed it! The place is dated (as are a lot of things in the area) but it does the history of the tribal region justice, housing totem poles, whale catching boats, and all original artifacts found from Native American villages buried under mudslides. It’s worth a visit if you’re in the area.

As is Cape Flattery, the most north-western point of the lower 48 states! Fact! ha! The weather was still foggy and misty but the hike through the forest and out to the viewing places was really cool, very eerie indeed! Good misty and atmospheric views out to rocks and the wild sea, on a clear day you can see Vancouver Island, on this day we struggled to see the small island only 150 meters away!

Moving further down the peninsula we drove to another lake to camp for the night at Lake Ozette. There were only 17 sites here so we managed to pick one that was perhaps one of the largest and we were most definitely the smallest tent! Naughty! But we all pay the same! So we had some lunch and got a few maps and ideas for a hike going from the ranger station to the coast, we chose to do a 6 mile round trip hike going along the lower boardwalk. We were pretty speedy there and spent some time at the wild coast taking in the   washed up logs and rocky terrain. Its a pretty wild coast! Fortunately for us it wasn’t too wild but all the evidence displays what this place is like in the winter.

Back at the campsite we managed to do a little bit of work and cooked up yet another camp meal, to this point we were of course still excited about what our next meal would be! The Ozette campground was our favourite in the region, really beautiful and only cost $12. No shower though but the location and scenery make up for that!

(Leica M9, Summicron-M 50mm f/2.0, Leica 90mm f/2.8, Zeiss 18mm f/4 ZM processed in Lightroom 3)

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