Sequim Balloon Festival

08/02/2024

Tomorrow Dream Catcher Balloon rides 10 am to 3 pm first annual Airport Day at Jefferson County Airport. See www.airport day.org for all the activities and schedule.

08/01/2024

Saturday Aug 24 9 am to 3 pm. One day only. Come to the air affaire at Sequim Valley Airport. Yes Dream Catcher Balloon will be giving free Veteran rides. Too.

08/26/2021

It's back! Yea!!

Event set for Saturday with vehicle rides, demos

11/19/2020

king high tides combined with storm surf on a winter day at Rialto Beach, Olympic Natl. Park. Mostly shot in slow motion.

11/11/2020

Thank you, Veterans. We appreciate your service.

Black Bear Diner will be open on Veterans Day November 11th from 8am - 8pm. We will have a special menu in appreciation of our Vets! Thank you for your service past and present!

10/23/2020

We all make them...

Post #11 - A big mistake

By the time of the 1889/90 Press Expedition, there were hundreds of trails used by the Native Nations of the Olympic Peninsula. Harry Hobucket, Quileute Tribe, wrote about a trail from Port Angeles up through the Olympic mountains, along the ridge by the Sol Duc River and down to Lake Quinault, Trisha and my final destination.

While the tribes' single-file trails simply wound around trees and obstacles, the Press Expedition had been slowly cutting a wide swath of forest so that the interior of the Olympics might be open to settlers. Captain Barnes said, "So thoroughly had we done it that a party leaving Port Angeles could lope after us on horseback, and easily travel in a few days over a road it had taken us months to come."

By the time the Press Expedition had reached the confluence of the Goldie River in April of 1889, gone was any attempt at road building. The men needed to find the headwaters of the Quinault and quickly. Their supplies were almost gone, and wild-game proved elusive. It was then that Christie took a gamble, deciding that the Goldie River would be a shortcut to the Quinault River.

It was a mistake that would make my earlier six-mile navigation error seem microscopic.

The Press Expedition left the Elwha behind and slogged their way up the Goldie River, climbing a valley so steep that there is still no trail through it today. When their last mule refused to go on, they left her behind to starve. They cached more of their precious supplies to lighten their load and carried what little they had left on their backs. When nobody was looking, their own hungry dogs wolfed down the last of the supply of bacon. Of the ragged-looking men, Barns said. "Tougher looking tramps never bummed the roadside."

The Press Expedition wasn't lost, yet the men didn't understand what was in front of them. Day after day, they continued to climb through the snow, determined to reach the ridge above the Goldie to where they could look down and reckon their actual location.

Finally, when the men of the Press Expedition stood on the final crest of snow and ice, they realized their mistake. Below them was not the Quinault, but the same Elwha River, which in the shape of a letter 'C' had almost circled them. Their struggle up the Goldie River valley, the most difficult twelve-days of their entire journey, could have been accomplished by a three-day easy snowshoe up the Elwha. But the men spent no time on self-recrimination. "Such is the fate of explorers," wrote Barnes jauntily, as the men quickly traversed down the other side of the ridge to join the Elwha in the vicinity of this log bridge at Chicago Camp.

Meanwhile, it was the end of the day, and Trisha and I still had three more steep miles left to climb to reach where we were supposed to camp for the night. Exhausted, we gave up, flopped down at Chicago Camp, and slept dreamlessly next to the Elwha River.

Tomorrow, both the Press Expedition and Trisha and I would leave our old friend, the Elwha River, which at this altitude was reduced to the size of a small stream. Covering the same ground—but separated by 130 years—all of us would make the final push to the pass at Low Divide and the headwaters of the Quinault River. This ground back in 1890 would be the last bit of terra incognita on the Olympic Peninsula—perhaps in the United States—not for the tribes, but for James Christie and the Press Expedition.

To be continued...

10/13/2020

Nothing like a happy hour at the end of the day.

Post #10 - The Comforts of Camp

Trisha and I finished the days' 15-mile hike at 6pm at the confluence of the Elwha and the Hayes River where we set up camp. The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe fished at least this far up the river. Joe Sampson recalled that prior to the dams, he made trips up the Hayes River where there were large chinook salmon.

It sounded like the fishing had been good for the Klallam. Trisha and I had plenty of food too, but by this point in their journey, back in the early spring of 1890, the men of the Press Expedition were running out of supplies. Breakfast was a little baked flour and water and tea. The men believed they could live off the land, but after crossing the Lillian River, they entered the high country and had no luck hunting and fishing.

I filled our water bottles from the tumbling Hayes river, named after Christopher O’Connell Hayes, Yakima cowboy, and at 22, the youngest of the Press Expedition. I lit a fire, and we got dinner going, simple, as cooking consisted of pouring hot water into our freeze-dried food pouches. We mixed a little of the hot water with our whiskey ration and sipped it to smooth out our aches and pains.

By now, the Press Expedition had none of those creature comforts left. Captain Charles Adams Barnes, whose topography experience made him the expedition’s mapmaker, noted in his journal that they had used up all their sugar and coffee. The Press Expedition had packed in whiskey too. Yet, the men weren’t as diligent in making their supply last as Trisha and me. Barnes commented wryly, “We had some excellent whiskey in the medicine chest on starting, but during the first two or three weeks, so much palliative was required for cramps in the stomach, nausea, sore thumbs, etc., that it was all consumed. Fortunately, all recovered from these diseases, and the camp has since had no necessity for the remedy.”

In no time at all, Trisha and I had our tent set up, pads and pillows inflated, and sleeping bags unfurled. The Press Expedition had its own system for sleeping on the snowy hillsides. The men would cut out a bench of snow ten feet square, chop a giant tree into logs and place them parallel. On one end of the log platform they would light their big fire, while on the other end, they would layer boughs a foot thick for sleeping. I could almost hear the men sigh as they turned to bed after cooking their supper. “We were as comfortable as we had any right to be,” Barnes said, then adding. “The fire, replenished once or twice during the night, lasted till morning, and at the first gray signs of dawn, one can spring to his feet with the elasticity of boyhood.”

Trisha and I slipped into our sleeping bags as we fell asleep to the melodic sounds of the Hayes River just a few feet away. We had completed day-two of our five-day journey, and though I didn’t imagine we’d be jumping up with the elasticity of boy or girlhood when the sun rose, I was excited about what adventures tomorrow would bring.

For the Press Expedition, it was a life-threatening miscalculation that was about to dawn upon them.

10/08/2020

In case you're looking for a place to take the family this weekend...

Hooray! Our pool is OPEN again!! Thanks to Governor Inslee for hearing our plea! Book your stay, reserve a slot and enjoy this amenity! https://www.choicehotels.com/washington/sequim/quality-inn-hotels/wa151

09/26/2020

So who were the first explorers of the Olympic Mountains?

Post #9 – Humans have been wandering throughout the Olympic Mountains for thousands of years

Trisha and I, refreshed from a ten-hour sleep, enjoyed our second day on the winding trail. As we hiked under the canopy of ancient firs with their combs of feathery moss, we passed half a dozen log cabins and shelters like the one at Humes Ranch. These historical structures highlighted the usage and travels of white settlers, hunters, and fishermen in the Olympics.

While the evidence of travel though the Olympics before the arrival of Europeans was impossible for Trisha and I to discern, it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. I would love to report that Trisha and I were the ones to find this 2,900-year-old basket fragment, but alas, no. It was discovered in a melting glacier in the high country near Hurricane Ridge. Traveling even further back in time, archaeologists have found sites along the Elwha and in the high-country meadows where Neolithic hunters flaked tools at their campsites 8,000 years ago.

Who else had traveled in these mountains?

Back in the spring of 1890, the Press Expedition was surprised how difficult their struggle up the Elwha had become. Leader James Christie lamented, “The Elwha is quite a different stream I find from the Elwha of common report.”

The Press Expedition had been given bad reconnaissance. Christie claimed that The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe living at the mouth of the river had no information about the interior of the mountains, so he turned to the mayor of Port Angeles mayor for guidance—someone who had no experience or knowledge of the river.

Perhaps the language barrier was too much, or maybe the Lower Elwha Klallam thought pulling a ton of supplies through the snowy Olympics was madness. Whatever the reason, it’s too bad this tribe didn’t advise Christie, because their history is full of stories of travels across the Olympics. This natural byway was a place for them to gather food, hunt, trade, wage war, attend potlatches, and even vacation. Olympic National Park ethnographer, Jackilee Wray, interviewed a Klallam who recalled how her grandmother traveled across the mountains with her five children to visit relatives at the mouth of the Quinault.

Trisha and I stopped for a snack on the bridge over the Lillian River and felt the cold air tumbled down the canyon along with the rushing water. By the time the Press Expedition had reached this confluence of the Lillian and Elwha Rivers in late March of 1890, their one ton of equipment and provisions had been reduced to 800 lbs. The men didn’t seem worried that their supplies were getting low, as they anticipated easy hunting and fishing in the upper Elwha. They wouldn’t have been so cavalier if they’d known the next nasty surprise that was in store.

If only James Christie had spent a bit more time with the Lower Elwha Klallam asking their advice.

Photo courtesy Matthew Dubeau, Museum Curator, Olympic National Park.