HOOD CANAL & LAKE CUSHMAN

The next installment of our motoring adventures took us to the Hood Canal and Lake Cushman area on a sunny Saturday. When you live on the Olympic Peninsula, Hwy 101 on the Hood Canal is one of our very few driving options to escape the Peninsula. It is a pleasant drive with some spectacular scenery along the way and enough wiggly road (yes, it’s a technical term!) to keep the driver happy. 

After passing through the burg of Quilcene, the road goes through ONP for a bit then dips down to the water and the town of Brinnon. You can find Whitney Gardens here, and if you have a bit of time, makes a great break. They have beautiful Rhododendrons and so much more. 

As we were motoring down the Canal, we saw hundreds of motorcycles heading the opposite way. We finally pulled over at Lilliwaup and just watched them pass by.

There were also many, many, many boats, (mostly on the water) due to it being the official opening day of boating season. There were pickups and boat trailers crammed into every conceivable place possible. 

At Hoodsport, we turned off to Lake Cushman…uncharted territory for us. We wandered up the road and eventually found ourselves at Cushman No. 1 Dam.

Since we didn’t know the area, we just motored around. We found the Lake Cushman Resort, which has RV spots and a nice little store with a huge deck and dock area.

  
Then we found a terrific view point.

    

We also found Skokomish Park, which we thought was a State Park, but is actually privately owned. It has two campgrounds and a lovely boat launch area. We toured around one loop of the campground, and Coop had to pretend he was camping!

After we ran out of paved road, we decided to turn around and go back down to see if we could find a place to have lunch. After looking around for a bit, we decided not to try any local diners and went to the IGA store instead. The roast chicken looked good so we got some to go and headed out to Potlatch to have a picnic in the park by the water. The wind was pretty strong, but the sun was still out, so we claimed a picnic table and had our lunch. Food definitely tasts better when eaten outdoors!

We finally packed everything up and started heading back North. Since it was so windy, the boats were coming off the water as fast as they could and as we motored up the road, we saw long lines of pickups with boat trailers waiting to pull their boats out of the water. Fun day. 

On a more somber note, on the Canal we came to where there had been a fatal accident involving a motorcycle and a sedan, and they were letting alternating single lane traffic get by. Kind of put a damper on the day. It also served as a reminder that you may think you have the road to yourself, but just around the corner might be someone else, so stay in your lane.

Drive safe & happy motoring!