On the Road, Part III: The Curse of the Broken Windshield Wiper

We have been blessed, thus far, with close to no rain on this trip. We're in the Pacific Northwest, for Jeebus' sake! The Olympic Peninsula—the rainiest place on earth! But during our time traveling (heh...) up to Washington and our exploration around Forks, we stayed dry. Shocking, I know, but true.

That is, until today. =/

And, imagine this: our windshield wiper decides it wants to kill me with an aneurism by making a metal-scraping-against-glass sound every time it moves… in the pouring rain. I try and pull out my Eckhart-Tolle-A-New-Earth-knowledge about how the wiper doesn’t mean me any personal harm by making the sound of devil worshippers, but I just can’t seem to stop my face from contorting with pain at the sound of it. And our music just can’t go loud enough.

Oy. Anyway, now we’re traveling, moving from Forks towards Seattle—a strangely long trip to a place that’s not that far away. Damn those big mountains and expansive forests and big, huge bays. The drive up the 101 (then to the 5 North) takes you up around the Olympic National Park (which is effin’ huge, I might add), through Port Angeles (we’ll get to that in a sec), down around the other side of the Park, through Olympia, up through Tacoma and then into Seattle. I mean, anyone ever hear of a bridge??

But we decided to take the road less traveled: A ferry. We’d never been on a ferry before—one that takes your car along with it, so we thought “Hell! Why not?!” And when it costs nothing to travel on it, and only $12 for your car, who could argue??

But first, Port Angeles. Yes, another Twilight stop. We’re unsure how Bella could get lost in this town, but whatever—that’s fiction for 'ya! We didn’t get Italian food (please, we’re not THAT lame!), but we did spend a reasonable amount of time in the used bookstore. I never need a reason to buy books, especially when they're used. But we refrained from taking pictures. We'd had enough of small-town locals looking at us like we're insane.

The town is adorable. I really, really like it, and with ferries that take you right across the bay to British Columbia, how could it be a bad locale? There are worse places to live, lemme tell ‘ya.

So, the drive from Port Angeles to Seattle (via the route I mentioned above) takes about the same amount of time as taking the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle. But that would be an hour of not driving and not wasting gas, so it would be worth it. So much so, we didn’t even feel like fools when we got to the ferry an hour early for the hour-long ride and the guy at the toll looked at us like we were crazy-folk and said, “Uhh... you know, it would be faster to drive.” Psh! Eff-that, toll guy—we’re takin’ the ferry!!

It was a good choice. And the sun came out! The sun likes it when we don’t pollute the earth with our car.

The view of Seattle coming across the water was well worth the not spending money and time driving. Such a magnificent skyline! Plus, Avaryl got to enjoy her sodium snack, a.k.a. Cup’o’Noodles.

Despite the sun coming out, I knew our luck wouldn’t last. My one mission for the entire day was to go to Red Mill Burgers in North Queen Anne (a super nice district of Seattle and where I would totally live someday, had I money of any kind), and try the #17 burger on GQ’s list of the Best Burgers in America (I have mentioned this list many, many times before). But they were closed. It was, I dunno, Easter or some crap like that. And they wouldn’t be open on Monday, just my luck. So I missed that boat.

Then we got to our lodgings in Seattle, courtesy of Avaryl's cousin, John. Um... I'm thinking this story would be better-suited for the next post.

Until then.