Olympic NP Trip - Paddling the Strait of Juan de Fuca

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On Monday Shauna and I rented sea kayaks and paddled on the strait between two county parks just west of Port Angeles, Freshwater Bay and Salt Creek. It was about 4.5 miles between them, making a 9 mile round trip. Sadly, I didn't take any pictures this day since my camera isn't waterproof. There were plenty of things worthy of pictures though, it is an extremely nice area. The area we paddled was mostly tree topped cliffs with few landing places available. We started out taking it easy, checking out the bays and watching the raccoons climb on the cliffs. As we made our way along, we heard several thunder booms (but thankfully never saw lightning) so we covered the latter parts of the route quickly. Even though the tide was coming in, we still had to go around Tongue Point to make our landing at Salt Creek for lunch. While we ate the weather didn't seem to be getting any worse, and we didn't hear any more thunder, so once we were done we started paddling back. In just the time that we ate lunch, the tide had come in enough that we could paddle across a low area of Tongue Point. We made our way back, taking in the areas we had sped past the first time. We heard more thunder on the way back but still didn't see any lightning (probably, the strikes were quite far away and the thunder just carries well over the water).

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