The Crazy Adventure of Olympic National Park – Part 2 of 2

Alright – I am back!

In the break, I became dad of a lovely, cuuuutuu cuuutuu, smiley smiley baby, then there was Ramadan and then I had to do some research on distributed file systems (yeah, I did that in BART) – but finally, I am back to blogging :)

So – when the car was stuck in snow, I just stopped the car and looked at my wifey. She looked cute when she was worried and afraid – I kinda enjoyed that ;)

After thinking about the situation for a moment, I knew what needed to be done: Reverse at 45 degree angle. The rear side of front tires seemed to be in less snow and I had a gut feeling that reversing at angle will not fail. So I tried it. The car started budging! I was like – wowww – nice!! To be fair, wifey’s prayers probably played some role in this too.

So we took the narrow U turn, sent a flying goodbye kiss to Hurricane Ridge and started descending.  The snow was as heavy as ever and I knew that the way back wont be as easy. I used to enjoy driving in snow in Redmond – but here, the skids were dangerous: there was mountain on left side of road and cliff on right side. An uncontrolled skid could be bad for our health. And unfortunately, descent is much harder than ascent in snowy conditions.

As a precaution, I was driving in the middle of the road instead of driving in lane. The car kept on skidding on the way back – but I had mastered the driving in snow – or so I thought: There was one skid where the car just wouldn’t stop. The ABS was trying hard and I had the tires angled – then straightened and then fully angled again – pumped the brakes despite ABS but it just kept on sliding towards the cliffy side. Thankfully enough, it stopped just in time. Phew!

The remaining way back was slow and cautious. “No more adventures for the day” was the motto and we reached hotel safely in Port Angeles. We were fearing for the worst for the rest of the trip – whether we will be able to see anything at all or not. I thought “better luck next time” and slept – rather, tried fruitlessly to sleep.

The next two days brought the biggest surprise: The remaining trip was really beautiful, pleasant and smooth. We saw the lovely Lake Cresent, Ruby beach, hot springs at Sol Duc, Lake Quinault. Lake Crescent was probably the loveliest part of the trip – with majestic voice of Rahat FatehAli Khan playing in background, mystic peaks including Mount Storm King surrounding the lake and road right at the perimeter of the waters – it was probably one of the best memories of our life.

After a few months – I became daddy of Rayyan who happened to visit ONP at the age of -3 months. Life is good!