Best Pacific Northwest Drives – Olympic Peninsula – Seattle to Iron Springs
The Olympic Peninsula in Washington offers a tremendous diversity of driving experiences. Rugged coastlines, impressive mountains, ruler-straight forest roads and few really ugly bits. In February 2021 I set out for a quiet long weekend in a cabin on the coast, anticipating a spirited drive and hunkering down before a rare Northwest snowstorm. For anyone unfamiliar with the coastal lowlands of America’s left coast. We can go a year or two without snow. It’s not our thing, and we are ill-equipped when it happens. Folk that visit the mountains in winter, or smarter folk than me in general, have winter tires, chains and such. But most of us see snow on the ground and celebrate a snow day. No worries. I was well ahead of the storm. And you are probably ahead of me.
Seattle to Iron Springs and Ruby Beach
Taking the scenic route to the coast I boarded the ferry to Bremerton and headed into the foothills of the Olympics. About an hour in I realized my meteorological skills were lacking and I was not beating the storm. The rain turned into sleet, then snow, and then the snow started to accumulate. It was still above freezing at ground level, but there was a lot of it. Biding my time in the tracks of someone who had come a few minutes before me was fine, until the “avoid highways” setting in my map app outdid itself and tried to take me down an untraveled road. I tried turning gently into it and my wheels successfully left their slushy rut and went onto the snow. Then … nothing. Somewhere in a tire testing logbook the synonym for “summer performance 285/35ZR19” is “sled”. After inelegantly executing a 24-point turn I got back on the barely passable track, made it to the coast and hunkered down for a fireside winter’s eve.
Driving was much less harrowing the next day. Because it was impossible. Heavy coastal rain had turned to freezing rain overnight and everything was covered in a stunningly beautiful coating of clear ice. The perfect excuse to stay put, walk the beaches, feed the fire and catch up on reading.
Cramping my style
An interesting quirk of Iron Springs is that at low tide the beach is a legit landing strip. Which made it a non-option to drive my frozen car on a frozen beach. That might not have ended well.
By the next day the sun was out and driving was back on. Highway 101 is the Northwest’s equivalent of California’s famous Highway 1, twisting along the coast for some magnificent vistas. At times terrain or property rights force the road up into the forests and mountains, still to good effect.
Everyone enjoys the twists, turns and views of a good coastal road, but heading east from the entrance to the Quinault Indian Reservation on the imaginatively named BIA Road S-26 you encounter a rare delight for a northwest coastal dweller: a straight road. For miles and miles, lightly trafficked and well maintained, it passes serenely through the evergreens. To a flatlander this may be meaningless, but I got a wonderful fix of effortless driving. I used 5th gear for the first time in a year and 10,000 miles of backroad driving.
After rejoining Highway 101 and heading north you come to Amanda Park, which is the gateway to Lake Quinault in Olympic National Park. Allegedly very nice with an historic lodge. I have yet to go. More exciting to me was E0 (no-ethanol) gasoline in a nameless roadside gas station. The pump barely functioned and it took me 25 minutes to fuel up, but at least I imagined I had more power from more BTU’s per gallon.
I turned around at Ruby Beach, one of a string of fabulous rocky beaches along that coast with impressive headlands and sea stacks. My pictures of horizontal rain didn’t do it justice. I didn’t have time to do the full Olympic Peninsula loop this time, which is the right thing to do for anyone with time. But that’s for another post.
