Port Angeles II, day 2

Last night I didn’t sleep very well because of asthma issues due to the fabric softener the AirBnB host used. So this morning I did a load of laundry and sent a suggestion to the host about not using fragrant fabric softener; she apologized for it and said that normally she gets fragrance-free but her wife had picked up the wrong stuff and she didn’t want to waste it. Not a huge deal, at least.

While doing the laundry I kept on hyperfixating on the idea that I should get breakfast but I didn’t really want to get Breakfast, like I’m very much not into the idea of American-style brunch these days, but it seems like a waste to travel and then eat cereal or breakfast bars or whatever. Fortunately, I got distracted with some TicketAuth-related work on Publ, and by the time I’d decided I would in fact go and get breakfast, it was already lunch time, so I tried going to The Rail, which was open but nobody seemed to care to take my order at the window, so I went to Little Devil’s Lunchbox, which was really friggin' good. I thought about eating there but I decided to just take it back to the AirBnB and work on Publ some more.

After that I made my way out to the Marymere Falls. I had a minor panic attack during some of the windier bits but fortunately it happened right before a lookout point by the lake, and so I was able to stop and get a good view which I used to center myself. I was having a pain flare and thought maybe I should just turn back, but then I noticed I was only about a mile away from my destination annyway and it’d be a shame to waste the perfect hiking weather, so I made it to the Storm King ranger station and wandered around a bunch before I finally found a trailhead. It turned out to be the wrong trail (specifically the Barnes Creek loop), but it was a lovely stroll through the forest and that trail eventually connected with the Marymere Falls trail anyway. I’m glad I started out on the Barnes Creek loop, because it was doable by my shitty disabled body. The Marymere Falls trail… not so much. When I reconnected to Marymere Falls it was quite enjoyable for the first half. Then the second half happened and I noped out pretty quickly, and went back to my car.

When I got back to Port Angeles I had around 20 miles of range left, so I went to the Wal-Mart and found their one CHAdeMO charger, which was kind of awkwardly placed but I still managed to park reasonably well while getting a good connection to the charger. Rather than hang out in my car for an hour I went into Wal-Mart for the first time in around 20 years, and boy howdy was that an experience. It’s the largest Wal-Mart I’ve ever been in. When the first Supercenter opened in Albuquerque it felt like a whole city inside. This Supercenter was easily twice the size of that one!

I thought that maybe I’d be able to find some stuff I wanted, but it turns out that Wal-Mart’s intended clientele has very different tastes than me. I mean, that’s to be expected, but it’s amazing how there were three aisles each of livestock feed, diapers, and hunting targets, but only half of one aisle with coffee in it, all of which was either preground or K-Cups, and all major brands. There was practically no selection of decaf, either, although to be fair I’m used to that.

I still had around 45 minutes to kill while waiting for my car to charge so I wandered around a bunch and picked up some more things:

  • Some me-colored flannel sheets
  • a box of Very Berry Cheerios, which I’d not seen before (it turns out that outside of the Seattle bubble there’s, like, a dozen different varieties of Cheerios!)
  • A bag of SweeTarts jelly beans
  • Two shelf-stable organic ramen kits
  • A Detroit-style frozen pizza
  • A small two-outlet plus two-USB extension cord to try to make up for the lack of usable outlets in this AirBnB
  • A box of store-brand “Fruit Smiles” not-actually-fruit treats
  • A bag of tortillas
  • Two bottles of Soylent (one mint chocolate, one chocolate), which I’ve been curious about but not curious enough to order online
  • A bag of (sigh) preground Starbucks decaf1
  • A box of oat milk
  • Strawberry Pocky
  • A tiny apple pie that was a daily 50-cent special (and worth every penny)

The car took about an hour to charge to 96%, and then slowed down to a trickle charge so I decided that was enough. It cost about $10. Equivalent gas would have cost twice that (although wouldn’t have taken an hour to fill, to be fair). I’m looking forward to a future where there are fast chargers in more places so that you can charge your car while you happen to be doing whatever you’d gone there to do in the first place, rather than needing to make the charger itself a destination.

I guess that’s sort of the case now, as long as you don’t need to do a full charge (see all the slow L2 chargers in Sequim) or where you happen to be going anyway is Wal-Mart. Or grocery stores in general; that’s where most of the fast chargers in Seattle are.

I also imagine that the CCS future will be much better. I sort of regret being stuck on CHAdeMO for now. CCS is really catching on, at least, and most new EVs and charging stations provide that. The CCS-based vehicles also have much larger batteries so you don’t need to stop as often in the first place. I kind of wish I’d held out for an Ariya or Ioniq/EV6 or even try to forgive VW and go with the ID. Buzz, but the Leaf switch was more of an opportunistic thing and cost me very little to do.

In any case, right by the charging bay at Wal-Mart there was a family living out of (or at least intensely traveling in) a camper. They were having a heck of a good time building stuff on their “porch” while also blowing large soap bubbles. I’m not sure if they were homeless or if they were just roughing it temporarily, but either way it seems like a nice lifestyle for folks who can handle it. I don’t think I could, though.

I got back to the AirBnB, threw the pizza in the oven, and joined my weekly ADHD support group.

All in all I think it was a pretty good day.

Tomorrow I need to finally get back to that gastropub I like, ideally for dinner. I also have a therapy appointment in the mid-afternoon, and the weather forecast isn’t too promising, and I’ll probably be in fibro flare mode anyway so I’m not sure if I’ll get any hiking in tomorrow.

There’s also a really good barbecue place I was excited to come back to but was disappointed to see on their website that they’re only open weekends now. But on my way back to the AirBnB I passed by it and saw they were open, the liars! So maybe I’ll go there for lunch tomorrow.

Then on Thursday afternoon I have a voice lesson so my day is similarly weirdly broken up. And Friday I check out of the AirBnB and make my way back to Seattle to hug some kitties who are hopefully not too mad about being left alone for a few days.

Still, already I feel like this trip was worthwhile. I’m feeling way less stressed than I did two days ago. It’s good to get away for a little bit.

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