Olympia to Port Townsend
After leaving Olympia, the first segment mostly follows 101, which has a considerably wide shoulder, despite the loud and heavy traffic. We split off at highway 3 and passed through Shelton to take Brookdale and Webb Hill roads to Skokomish. From Skokomish we again picked up a largely shoulder-less 101 to ride to Potlatch State Park. Recognizing that this segment of 101 was incredibly unfriendly to bikes, we broke camp at dawn to put in the next 40 or so miles of 101 on in the early hours of morning.
But everything changed for the better when we hit Center Road in Quilcene. This was our first encounter with the wonderfully bike friendly Jefferson County. From there our trip along Center Rd and Highways 19 and 20 to Fort Townsend state park was a pleasure along the highly hospitable and well-maintained shoulder.
We stayed two nights in the Port Townsend area, with accomodations at the hiker/biker sites in both Fort Townsend and Fort Wordford state parks. While the beachfront views of quaint Port Townsend are wonderful at Port Wordford, the strong ocean breeze blew our neighbors staked tent away and makes the night sleep in the sitka spruce Grove of Fort Townsend SP preferable.