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 Dwight Peck's personal website
Summer
2004
The
Olympic Peninsula in Washington, USA
You
may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a
good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught
up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.
In
many ways, the Pacific Northwest of the USA (like many parts of New England) does
not seem part of the USA we know and glance askance at, as represented to us by
Fox News, Hollywood, and the Republicans and Christians wherever they may be lurking.
THIS
is not bad at all!!! And here we are, who knows where this idea came from, but
it was a good one -- airlifted from our safe haven in neutral Europe to dine
well at the backyard trough in Framingham near Boston and stop in at the Gardner
once again, then wafted -- wafted is close, but not quite the right word -- in
an airborne fruit-tin with under-achieving ventilation equipment out to Seattle,
State of Washington, to climb into a hired car and push on out to LA
PUSH. More on that in a minute. First . . .
HOH
RAIN FOREST
On
our way to La Push, 17 July 2004, we need to look in on the Hoh Rain Forest, part
of the Olympic National Park -- not all of us are equally appreciative of great
whacking trees packed on top of one another with nasty dripping vines hanging
all off them, but some of us are inordinately, so here we are at Five Mile Island
on the Hoh Rain Forest Trail towards Mount Olympus -- only five miles (8km) out
on a 17-mile path to the Olympus base camp at Glacier Meadows, but that's enough
for today.
Kristin
views the mighty Hoh from Five Mile Island.
The
central parts of the Olympic National Park were only opened up by late-nineteenth
century three-month-long expeditions, and there are still very few roads into
the interior, namely Hoh River, Sol Duc, and Hurricane Ridge. Otherwise, you're
on your own (even if, like Mr Peck [right] you've lost your socks).
The
rain forest hikers prepare to . . . to . . . well . . . well, to push on for La
Push.
A
look at the still very distant interior of the Olympic National Park from Five
Mile Island, as we retreat.
LA
PUSH and the Quileute Reservation
La
Push, a beach-side
"resort" owned and operated by the Quileute Indians on their 1 sq. km
reservation at La Push (from the French 'La Bouche', the mouth of the Quillayute
and Sol Duc river). Nice little self-catering two room flats with balconies, in
our part of it -- not very well kept up, in fact this photo was shot from around
the duct tape holding the picture window together, but the price is right, the
people are very nice, and reinvestment seems to be concentrated upon some of the
other, newer (pricier) buildings just nearby.
James
Island just offshore, where Quileutes used to retire and draw the ladders up when
the Makahs showed up with their war-paint smeared on. The Quileute "resort"
also has a very nice BYOB restaurant on the river dockside, excellent inexpensive
dinners, especially fish things, and free wine glasses and a bottle opener for
your convenience.
The tourist
literature of the Quileutes and other tribes on the Olympic Peninsula is a fascinating
study in wire-walking tones. The brochures genuinely promise friendly welcomes
for all white visitors who want both to relax and to learn about indigenous cultures,
and find artful words to disguise the most ferocious animosity about all that
has been taken from them. The Quileutes of La Push point out that they once roamed
the Peninsula as far inland as Mount Olympus, but lost all but the coastal strip
in the Point No Point
treaty of 1855. They welcome you to that stunningly beautiful coastal strip,
whilst also pointing out parenthetically that when the Olympic Coast National
Marine Sanctuary was established in recent years, they lost that, too, and are
now stuck with their one square kilometre.
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That
said, the people were pretty much wonderful -- we were there, 16-20 July 2004,
during the long "Quileute Days" weekend, with street fairs, beauty contests,
tennis tournaments, a very festive atmosphere, and police from a hundred nearby
jurisdictions and the BIA watching over it all benevolently.
And no
casinos here, Thanks Bog. La Push can be reached by automobile, by the way, from
the west coast town of Forks, which has little to recommend it except a long history
of clear-cut forestry devastation nearby. Pass through Forks looking neither right
nor left, that's my advice.
The
resort at La Push: http://www.ocean-park.org/index2.html.
{Sorry, that link isn't working anymore.}
Feedback and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative,  .
All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 24 September 2004, resized 30
January 2008, 27 April 2013.
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