Touring Home
Olympic Peninsula Tour
Tour #3... We learned an awful lot on our first two tours and it paid off on this one. Well planned and equipped, we truly got to just enjoy the fantastic riding. It couldn't have gone better. This tour route has light traffic, unique scenery (you're in the only large piece of temperate rain forest in North America), and easy resupply. 2-3 extra days would have been nice, it would have allowed us to go deeper into Olympic National park and do more hiking. An interesting thing about the route is that while it looks like you're along the coast you don't actually see much of the ocean.

 

6 days
288 Miles
Pics
Pack List 
 
Daily Waypoints
Miles/Day
Total Miles
Day 1: Port Angeles to Fairholm
26.7
26.7
Day 2: Fairholm to Kalaloch
66.2
92.9
Day 3: Kalaloch to Lake Quinault
38
130.9
Day 4: Lake Quinault to Westport
58.4
189.3
Day 5: Westport to Bay Center
56.4
245.7
Day 6: Bay Center to Cape Disappointment
42.5
288.2

 

Lessons Learned:

  • We pretty much know what we're doing and are just refining things.
  • Cleat screws came lose (1 lost) preventing Eric from getting his shoe unclipped with traffic on that side. Got loucky enough to find an Ace Hardware but even they didn't have the right thread/head/length combination. Need to check these before our tours, maybe locktite them, and carry extras. Maybe carry an extra cleat as well.
  • We seem to prefer eating breakfast our bikes, lunch on the road for a nice long mid-day break, and can go either way for dinner. Should just plan to eat lunch out every day if available, and 50/50 on dinners.
  • On longer tours like this it's good to have a low mileage day #3 or worst case #4.
  • Having a shower or a dip in the water at night sure was nice.
  • We enjoy getting into camp a little earlier and relaxing at night.
  • I broke a spoke only a few days later on my rear wheel. Wonder if I could have found it with a better inspection.

Services Used:

  • Port Angeles is a full service town. Has bike shops, plenty of restaurants, etc.
  • The National Park campground at Fairholm is great. No showers, but a very gold dip in the lake did the job.
  • Lake Quinault is a good stopping point. The NFS camppground has a walking trail that goes through a great rain forest. I wish we had a couple of extra hours to spend there. The Quinault Ranger Station reports 137 inches of rain per year, that's probably the highest at any spot in the US.
  • Cape Disappointment State Park is beyond nice.
  • Chico's Pizza in Ilwaco is great.
  • Portions of 101 are remote so plan for resupply accordingly, but for the most part it's not an issue.
  • There is public transportation along most or all of this route. Taxpayers of Washington run empty buses through these remote areas all day long for some reason unknown to me. I think you could cover all of our route with a public bus pass if you were bored enough. Major bike breakdown can be solved with a few quarters I suppose.
  • The ferry (click here) from South of Ocean Shores to Westport was a nice, fun break. It's a long ways from the town and restaurants. We didn't even see a vending maching nearby. So plan to eat in town but make sure you have time to catch the ferry.