U.S. Highway 101 leaves Port Angeles heading west along the base of the Olympic Mountains. Port Angeles is the peninsula's largest town and a working deepwater port, handling cargo ships and a passenger ferry across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Victoria, British Columbia, before the highway turns inland toward the range.
Settle in. You're rolling west out of Port Angeles, and that working waterfront sliding by on your right is the real thing, not a postcard town. Log ships and freighters tie up at the deepwater piers here, and a ferry crosses the strait from this harbor over to Victoria, in Canada, in about an hour and a half. For more than a century this has been the peninsula's front door, where the timber went out and the supplies came in. Take a last look at all that saltwater bustle. From here the road leaves the sea and aims you straight into the mountains.
Photo: Sualkdd · CC BY-SA 3.0
