Day 3 - Legs F, G, & H - Clearwater to Finish

Rising around 7:30am after a very refreshing night's sleep, the camp was barely stirring. Riding these dual sport routes takes a lot of energy and the rest was really needed. We all prepared our various breakfasts and I found a skateboard in the bushes and it provided a little morning entertainment.

Here's Paul from TouraTech showing how to do it solo and behind a bike.


Even yours truly got in on the action.




Of course the skateboard wouldn't go anywhere in the sand!

Finally around 9:30am, we got back on the road to ride once again. Could getting a late start have consequences? Stay tuned!

Here's some riders coming up a series of twisties and what's with the sign? Road closure! What would that mean?





Along the way Rick and I took each other's pictures. Bart was riding ahead of us at this point.



Dave, the ride organizer tried to keep the group "somewhat" together and at one of our re-grouping spots, I caught the following picture of a "few" zip ties.


This fellow could really ride his bike despite its look.

Turning onto and following the north shore of the Lake Quinault Road, I passed by this nice chainsaw carving.


Then I came upon a long wooden bridge that helped to keep the larger RV's off of this road.



Throughout the ride I also saw a number wild fern plants, but finally stopped to photograph some.



I'm now on the South Shore Road and there are two very scenic waterfalls that begged to be photographed. The first one is in the gravel section and I had never seen it before. The second one is on the pavement section and I have pictures of my Wing in front of it.



Arriving at Quinault, I refueled the bike and grabbed a quick bite to eat at the Quinault merchantile store (multi-bean soup & a cheese sandwich) as the others had been there some time and my pace was slower as I was taking a fair number of pictures.



Leaving Quinault, we were about to finish Leg F, and start our trek west towards Lake Wynoochee and Hoodsport. After climbing using the Quinault Ridge Road, we encountered one of several washouts. I found these interesting and one can't fully appreciate how big some of these are.






We made our way to Lake Wynooche and our river crossing.






This was the only river crossing of the trip and it is accessed by a ride down a very overgrown former logging road which terminates at a rocky gravel bar. Fortunately the water level was down and we proceeded to cross the river.



Climbing back up we were now on Leg H (we had to skip side trip T, but more on that later), and we caught a view of Lake Wynooche.


Darkness was now pressing us because of our late start and the number of earlier picture stops, so there are only a couple more pictures.




Arriving at the Brown Creek Campground in the dark, we were presented with a series of tanktraps. Rick bailed from the ride and headed for home in Kalama, I got some help getting over the first tank trap and then rode past a major washout where I met Bart who had ridden over 3 tank traps but couldn't figure out the route in the dark. So we elected to return to the Brown Creek Campground and take the FS23 road back to civilization.

Bart and took a break at the US101 intersection with the Purdy Cutoff road and then re-aired our tires a short while later before catching a very late ferry to Seattle from Southworth.


While taking the ferry, we marvelled about the route and tentatively decided that we needed to return and re-ride the last two legs along with side route T in the daylight. We weren't sure when we could do it, but the seed was planted. It had been a great 3 days of riding. Bart and I became riding friends and we dreamed together the possibilities of doing future rides. Thanks go to David McKay for putting together the GripTwister tour. It's a terrific way to see the Olympic Peninsula from a dual sport perspective.

When would we return?