We enjoy the National Parks.

I have a National Park Geek license plate frame and the State of Washington National Parks plate on the Bronco. One of our long term family travel goals is to visit every single National Park.

We are lucky in the State of Washington to have 3 National Parks – North Cascades, Rainer, and Olympic.

We also like riding our E-bikes in and around National Parks and look for Rails-to-Trails bike paths close by the park we are visiting.

We have been a frequent visitor to Olympic National Park over the past six years and on previous visits we talked about biking part of the Olympic Discovery Trail (ODT) – [] https://olympicdiscoverytrail.org .

The ODT traverses the entirety of the Olympic Peninsula starting on the eastern side of the peninsula in Port Townsend (WA) and ending at La Push (WA) on the pacific coast. The trail is still under development and parts of it are asphalt paved and distinctly separate from roadways so you are not dodging cars. Other parts of the trail are gravel and some share major roads with automobile traffic via bike lanes.

We stayed at the RV@Olympic campground which is located about 0.5 miles from one of the many trailheads to get onto the ODT.

After looking at maps we decided to head in a westerly direction towards Port Angeles and ride to Harborview Park and then turn around and head back again. The total length was expected to be a bit less than a 25 mile round trip.

The first part of the ride into Port Angeles was relatively flat and paved. The weather was in the mid-60’s so we had quite a few other bikers and runners enjoying the trail.

Everything was well marked until we got near the ferry terminal in downtown Port Angeles – and the ODT signs were a bit hard to find.

What were we to do? We followed the advice “Go West young man! “

We kept riding in towards the west past the terminal and eventually found some signage – including cool trail markers that were embedded in the sidewalk in a small waterside park in Port Angeles.

Our goal was to go to the end of Ediz Hook and end our journey at Harborview Park. The Ediz Hook is a 3-mile long sand spit looking out over the Strait of Juan de Fuca and downtown Port Angeles.

We stayed on the ODT and found ourselves going further and further away from the Ediz Hook. On looking at the map further we saw that the Port Angeles Waterfront Trail split from the ODT and we had taken the wrong fork in the road!

After a bit of course correction we successfully made it out to Harborview Park and a much needed restroom break!

It was long past time for lunch so we headed back into Port Angeles and grabbed a calzone and local beer and cider at Barhop Pizza & Beer next to the ferry dock. The food was delicious and it was a nice stopping place prior to heading back to the campground.

We did see a variety of wildlife along the way including a deer feeding alongside the highway that we spooked on our bikes. Thankfully it did not jump out in front of us or we might have needed a trip to the local hospital. In addition to several deer and fawns we did see a large number of water birds in the harbor area near downtown Port Angeles.

We really enjoyed our ride – and look forward to another trip to the Olympic Peninsula to ride more of the the 130+ mile long Olympic Discovery Trail with our Trek E-bikes.

Until next time ….