Vultures hovered as we struck camp. One fellow even came by the night before and asked if he could have the site when we left, as if we could dictate the site's next occupant. He left a chair in the camper's equivalent of peeing on a fire hydrant but came back the next morning to fetch it away, just in time for another man to come by. He ended up talking to us as we breakfasted (though he turned down coffee) about Seattle and Snohamish, where he's from. He was typical of everyone I've met who lives in the Seattle area--he loves it.

We rolled out of Beach 2 by 10 and started up and around the northern and longest side of the Olympic Peninsula. We did not detour to see the sea stacks, those big rock towers, off Second Beach, and I felt put out, and a while later we turned a corner and there was Lake Crescent.

The best swimming of the trip, though short.

Lake Crescent glimmered grey-blue with what I thought would be glacial cold. Still, I wanted to try. Sea stacks I could miss, but swimming no. Opportunely, it was also time for lunch. RDC pulled off into a picnic area with a large sign: "Not suitable for campers or RVs." I'll say. The road hadn't looked that much higher than the lake, but as we turned off the paved road, we turned down, down, down, a half-dozen hairpins, before choosing a likely spot. The trees towered above, keeping the picnic area almost chilly compared with the sun-drenched asphalt of the road. Now, under the trees, I wondered if I could swim: a cup of hypothermia, please?

I had seen the glimmering glassine color and thought off glacial run-off. Closer to the water, I saw that the color resulted not only from cold but from clarity. This water was clean. Chilly, yes, but not cold, and clean. I guess it was cold enough that nothing grew in it--no algae, no plants, no little critters. Wading, I knew it was possible. I could swim in this.

I plunged in. Kind of. I hobbled over the rocky lakebed--this lake did grow big rocks, if nothing else--until the water was deep enough for a belly flop. So I plunged. Delicious. Flawless. Exquisite.

We'd been driving down a valley, and Lake Crescent is the best of possible valley lakes--long, narrow, and deep. I could see the drop-off, very close in, and shied away from it fearing a thermocline.

RDC doesn't long to swim in natural water as I do, but if we hadn't had a ferry to catch, and especially if we hadn't had showers the day before, he'd've come in. As it was, he got to take pictures of me. What a privilege.

We ate our lunch and continued. Close to Port Angeles, we finally saw Olympic Mountains. Despite the mostly-sunniness in the Hoh, clouds to the east obscured most of the peaks. Now we could look south and see mountains still draped in snow. The snow is mostly gone from Colorado's mountains; Mt. Evans, the main mountain in the Denver view, only just kept its snow into August. These mountains, though only 8,000 feet, are 10 degrees farther north--and so still snowy. Lovely in the sun.

The Olympics grow to 6,000 or 8,000 feet from near sea level and my stretch of Rockies grow to 11,000 to 14,000 from 5,000. So while Colorado's still have more vertical drop, they are surrounded by foothills. The Olympics concern themselves less with foothills and just rear up, toes to nose visible in the distance. Grand.

In Port Townsend, we found our first ferry. The last ferry I took crossed Lake Champlain and I needed to walk around in Burlington afterward to clear my head. I hate myself for getting seasick and I dreaded its happening again. It didn't. Washington uses a different sort of engine, RDC theorized, internal, maybe? So the boats run quieter and I suffered not a quease. It is the noise, I think: on ferry-type boats used for whale-watches, I get headaches and feel dizzy, but on sailboats I don't. Or maybe I just like to think that because it makes me feel more like a Swallow.

On the ferry, we looked south toward Seattle in vain. We looked for marine mammals, also in vain. We enjoyed the wind and the sun and the water and the combination of all three.

Headed north again up Whidbey Island, we got stuck behind some fool driving considerably under the speed limit who pro'ly hated all the speeding tourists. So when we pulled into Anacortes for the San Juan Islands ferry, we were wait-listed and eventually rejected. The couple in the car that pulled up next to us greeted us by complaining of the same little Chevy pick-up. They'd followed us most of the way.

The next ferry would come at 6:45, which would be okay. We walked up to one of two nearby restaurants and had whatever, returned to Cassidy to learn that the other restaurant served good seafood--it being on Puget Sound and all. We were back in time, anyway, and waited. And made reservations for a whale watch Thursday. And we waited some more: the ferry didn't arrive until almost 8:00, which meant we (RDC) would pitch the tent in the dark, and that we'd get a sunset cruise.

And so we entered the San Juans. Smooth water. Islands. More water. Clear sky. Lots of water. Forests. Did I mention the water? We saw seals even before we got into deep water, little impish things that disappeared as soon as I trained the binoculars on them. We watched ducks and widgeons and cormorants and seagulls who sounded right. We watched the sunset. I felt like I was coming home.

Off the ferry and into the absolute darkness of Orcas Island (not named for the whale but for a Spanish explorer and so stressed on the second syllable), we followed the careful directions and made our way easily, if slowly, to the resort. The difficulty was finding our campsite, since the numbering system followed some non-Euclidean principle.

Once we did find it, to the left of someone else's boat-on-a-trailer that was parked to the left of the marker, the tent went up without either of us strangling the other. Enough. We slept.