A Big Ride I Wanna Do: The Olympic Peninsula Loop

Here's the route I came up with, starting and ending in Bremerton, WA (just a ferry ride away): (zoom out to see the whole thing)


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Notice the detour out to the north west tip of the North West: Neah Bay. It looks like there's a road to get out there, which is enough for me. I wanted the route to hug the water as much as possible, to ensure the best scenery.

I did this loop in a car about five years ago, and remember thinking at the time that I'd love to do it on a bike, but that it would be super scary: the tiny shoulder combined with huge trucks and RVs. But that was before I'd ridden with SIR, and tackled I-90, Highway 2, and other crazy paved beasts of roads.

And around Lake Crescent there was a big climb, and that seemed like the scariest part, since RVs seemed to drift into the bike/emergency lane often - but this route skips that section of Highway 101, heading towards Neah Bay. (at least I think)

The route also skips Highway 101 around Aberdeen, which I remember to be quite the bustling sprawl going on (e.g. not where you want to ride).

Maybe there's a permanent set up for this route - and if not, perhaps I'll try to submit it as one? I think SIR might have done something like this already as a 600k.

Distance: 386 mi (622 km)
Route: Bremerton, Port Angeles, Neah Bay, Forks, Elma, Bremerton (these could be some of the controls, of course!)
Max time: 40 hours

The best part about creating such a route would be actually attempting it! While quite a few have done this route over the period of a few days, I'd like to do it as quickly as possible. I'll just bring a sleeping bag & bivy in case I want to sleep. Can't wait!

This is all for summer-time by the way, I'm not that crazy!