After yesterday’s’ flight I was quite tired but I knew that I needed to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime to avoid jet lag. Unfortunately, my efforts were in vain as I went to bed at 11:15 PM and woke up at 3:45 AM. After failing to fall back asleep I got up early to plan the day.

I mentioned yesterday that I wanted to spend some time in Seattle as, although I have visited the city before, I have not been up the Space Needle or visited the Museum of Flight but the thought of going “backwards” to Seattle felt so negative that I decided to move on. After all, the Space Needle isn’t that high and is outrageously expensive and I have been to several great air museums on my travels.

I, therefore, headed towards the Olympic peninsula. When I started to plan the trip I decided I was going to drive across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. This span is something I talked about every year in my physics classes as it is the classic example of forced oscillations causing resonance and destruction. The original bridge was opened in 1940 and, at the time, was the third longest suspension bridge in the world but it broke up just a few months after opening due to a steady wind of just 42 mph. Details can be found in this Wikipedia article and video of the collapse is here. The original towers and cable anchors were used to support the “new” bridge, built in 1950, that I drove over today. My drive across the bridge is the first yellow section on today’s map which can be found here. In 2007 a second bridge was added to carry eastbound traffic. The second yellow section is the Hood Canal Bridge which connects the  Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas. You will probably need to zoom in on the map to find these sections.

The highlight of the day was the first of three areas I want to visit in Olympic National Park. I drove to the visitor center in Port Angeles where they showed a stunning film outlining the importance and diversity of this unique area. The only other time I was on the peninsula the clouds and fog were so bad that I did not even bother to visit the park but today was completely different as I drove to the mountainous section at Hurricane Ridge. The drive in both directions was spectacular although the views were spoiled to some extent by haze and the camera struggled to capture the splendor of the region. I was both impressed and refreshed by the experience and forgot how tired I was until I arrived at my hotel in Port Angeles.

The Tacoma Narrows bridges as seen beneath a grey, threatening sky.. The ruggedness of the mountains at Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park

The glacier on Mount Olympus.
A short video of the panorama.