There isn’t a whole lot to share about today. We woke up at 5:30 and Dwayne walked next door to Starbucks to get us some breakfast sandwiches to eat while we got ready to leave. We left around 6:30 and it was 52 degrees and raining.

We rode 75% of the day in the rain, which was far less than enjoyable. By the time we arrived in Astoria, OR just before the Washington border, we stopped at a gas station so we could top off the gas tanks and I could get some coffee to try and warm up. The nice gas attendant took pity on us and gave us both a card for a free cup of coffee, which I thanked him profusely for. Oregon has gas attendants at every station because it is illegal to pump your own gas there. Luckily the attendants usually let motorcyclists fuel their own bikes though, they just hand you the nozzle and hit the button for you.

Once we finished our coffee and shared a Snickers PB2 bar we headed on across the super long bridge into Washington. We were graciously greeted with more rain, how kind!!!

We did manage to get a break from the rain and some dry roads for about an hour, but about 30 minutes from Port Angeles the skies darkened up again and it started to rain a bit.

That’s about the time that we came around a corner and traffic came to a sudden halt and it was backed up for as far as we could see. After about 10 minutes of sitting we noticed that some of the locals ahead of us were turning around and retreating to a side road behind us, so we decided to do the same. Once we turned around we saw that there was now a cop redirecting traffic onto that road, we had just managed to get passed it before he got there. By the time we got on the road, it was backed up quite a way as well, but at least it was slowly moving. When we finally got to the end of it and back onto 101 going North again, traffic going South was backed up for miles. I am assuming there was probably a wreck due to the wet roads.

Once we were on 101 and moving again, it started raining harder and a minivan about 4 cars ahead of us decided to go 15mph under the speed limit, while traffic backed up behind us as far as I could see. To say that we were unhappy in that moment would be an understatement. Eventually the road turned into a 4-lane and we were able to get past her, and we finally made it to our hotel.

All-in-all it was a pretty crappy day, and I hate that we missed out on seeing some of the things we wanted to see because it was raining and we just wanted to get to our hotel and out of our gear and into a hot shower.

Tomorrow we are going to do Olympic National Park and then we will be staying in Centralia. Weather is not looking great, we will probably be in rain again most of the day. We are also unsure about Mt. Rainier or North Cascades, both are looking iffy at this point. We also found out that Glacier is still not completely open either, so we are unsure what our plans are going to be. We may have to change our plans and head back south and save those parks for another trip, but we aren’t making any decisions for another day or two when we know for sure what the weather will be like and whether or not Glacier will be open by late next week when we are supposed to be there.