Day 33 - Elma, WA to Belfair, WA

Day Total - 56.4 miles
Trip Total - 1,234.7 miles
Dear Washington dog owners:
When your dog stands in the road barking at us and then charges me, I will pepper spray it. It is not my fault that the dog attacked me. Perhaps you should keep your animals under control - California and Oregon seem to have it figured out, why can't you?

We had to leave the hostel by 9:30 this morning, so we got up at 7:30 to make breakfast in the kitchen. It's the first and likely last time we'll be using an actual kitchen during the trip, and having a real stove was much quicker than the usual camp stove ordeal. We left just after 9:00, but instead of backtracking almost 2 miles to the Adventure Cycling route, we followed the suggestion of the hostel owner and cut off some distance by simply getting on the road north at a different place.



The weather was very nice this morning, in a change from the past couple of days, so the first dozen or so miles were nice and easy. The road was pretty flat too, though not quite to the degree of yesterday. but then dog troubles struck again. We came around a corner just over the Mason County line and found a good-sized brown dog waiting for us in the road. It initially retreated into a driveway, but then started running with us before charging me. In the confusion, I managed not only to fail to take the safety off on my pepper spray, but also to forget to unclip, which sent me toppling over in the middle of the road. Fortunately, the dog's owner called it back at the same time. We went down the road a bit for me to clean my bleeding hand off.

As I was doing that, the owner of the dog pulled up with his animal in the back of his pickup. As soon as he stopped, the dog jumped out and charged Kevin, who immediately got ready to fire. The owner stopped the dog just before Kevin pulled the trigger, but then he started yelling at us about how the dog wouldn't have attacked us if we had just kept going. Except for the fact that that was exactly what we tried to do, he had a point. Plus, the dog was waiting for us in the road before we even got within sight. It was really difficult not to just spray both dog and owner on the spot.

A few miles down the road, we had another dog issue. This one was a small dog with short, stubby legs (I don't know dog breeds) that ran out of its driveway yipping at us. Kevin went ahead, but I had to stop. The dog stopped too, but whenever I tried to move, it would run toward me. I stopped and started a few times, but the dog wouldn't go away, so I got it to within range and pulled the trigger. Getting hit in the face caused that dog to run away even faster than it had come, and we were on our way.

By that point, we were both thoroughly annoyed with having to stop for unrestrained dogs, but fortunately, we didn't have any more trouble prior to reaching the city of Shelton about 25 miles into the day. After crossing our old friend Highway 101 for the final time, we rode through town and up a steep hill on the north side. It was our only climb of any note for the day, so other than being slow, it wasn't too much trouble.

North of Shelton, we rode through timberland for awhile. As ugly as clear-cut land is, at least logging companies tend not to keep vicious, unrestrained dogs on their property. That, combined with the sun being out, made for good riding. Some 10 miles out of Shelton, we came to Mason Lake and its vacation homes. We rode along its west shore before making a turn to the west. More importantly, the turn would lead us down the slope to the Hood Canal, an arm of Puget Sound.

We were now on the Kitsap Peninsula, which looks like a huge arrow pointing into the Sound. Hood Canal is a long inlet that forms the western and southern boundary of that arrow. We rode north along its shore to the town of Belfair, where the Canal ends. We stopped for groceries there along busy Highway 3, then headed back toward the southwest to Belfair State Park for the night. Though it's a three mile detour from the route, the park has hiker/biker sites.

In Washington, we're finding out, these are actual campsites, albeit very small ones, so you pay by the site rather than per person as you do in California and Oregon. In this case, we were put on the edge of the campground, not far from Highway 300, the road along this side of the Hood Canal. Because we arrived so early, at about 3:00, we had plenty of time to kill, so I took a walk down to the shore. At low tide, it was just mud flats, so I quickly headed back to camp for an early dinner. We were both tired after the long day, but we were definitely thankful that the weather was holding out for the first time in a few days.

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