Olympic Peninsula Hood Canal · part 1

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Fuel stop near Carnation

   Planning note

   Olympic Peninsula Hood Canal is where the day begins. Next is Seattle / Pacific Northwest return.

2. 2. Near Stanwood, on the way back

   Stanwood and the northern end of Camano Island lie at the edge of the Skagit Delta, where the Stillaguamish River spreads into a flat, fertile plain and meets the waters of Port Susan. The land is as flat as a table, and the horizon is filled by the Cascades to the east and the Olympics to the west. This is a landscape of dairy farms, fields of peas and potatoes, and drainage ditches, with huge skies and a strong smell of earth and sea.

   Read the complete Near Stanwood, on the way back write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Seattle / Pacific Northwest return comes up about 97 km into the recorded legs. Next is Food stop near Port Hadlock-Irondale.

3. 3. Food stop near Port Hadlock-Irondale

   Planning note

   A break here. Next is Photo stop near Home.

4. 4. Photo stop near Home

   Home is a small community on the Key Peninsula, a long, wooded finger of land reaching into southern Puget Sound west of Tacoma. It has one of the stranger origin stories in the Pacific Northwest: in 1896 a handful of idealists founded an anarchist colony here on the shore of Von Geldern Cove, and for a couple of decades it attracted free thinkers, writers and the suspicious attention of the authorities. The colony faded, but the name stuck.

   Read the complete Photo stop near Home write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Photo stop near Home closes the day.