July 20: Ocean Shores to Shelton
It was an absolutely beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest. The sun burned off the clouds by about 10 AM and a gentle tailwind helped me make quick work of the seventy miles to Shelton.
The first thirty miles or so of the ride today left something to be desired though. I shared Highway 109 from Ocean Shores with everybody else who felt a need to leave early. It wouldn’t have been so bad except a good portion of 109 back to Hoquiam has no shoulder and a good portion of the traffic was composed of those monstrously large RVs.
I don’t know what’s going on with the towns of Hoquiam and Aberdeen, but they did not look like happy areas. There were a lot of vacant buildings downtown. The roads are in disrepair and the drivers did not seem friendly. I had a large deisel truck idle past me and then hit the gas, causing his truck to emit a foul, black cloud of exhaust. 
By the time I got to the east end of Aberdeen, I was not in a good mood and I still had to face ten miles or so on a very busy highway 12. It had a wide shoulder most of the way, but it was littered with trash and other highway detritus.
After ten miles of highway 12, I was able to pick up a less busy road — old Washington 410 — that ran parallel to 12. It was a great relief and within a short time my mood had improved.
Just past the town of Elma, I took a left turn off of 410 and onto something called the Cloquallum Road. I took the Cloquallum Road all the way to Shelton and it was such a pleasant ride. It climbed gently about 500 feet over the course of the next 20 miles and the final five miles was mostly downhill into Shelton. The Cloquallum Road had large areas that had been logged which is something I had been seeing here and there in Washington and Oregon. Today it seemed like there was more of it.
Tomorrow, I’ll continue north. I’m not yet sure which route to take though. The most direct route is the west side of the Hood Canal on highway 101. But, I’ve learned over the last week or so that 101 is not really fun to ride on because it has a lot of traffic.
The alternate is to continue towards Bremerton and Poulsbo. I would be able to take country roads similar to the Cloquallum Road I was on today. The downside is having to cross the busy Hood Canal Floating Bridge north of Poulsbo.
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