Olympic National Park

Aug. 2021

Rialto Beach sunset

Olympic is a huge, diverse, beautiful park. We saw several beaches, the mountains, and the rain forest. We hiked some trails to waterfalls, too. In hindsight, we should have stayed in a couple different campgrounds, instead of having just one home base, because the different areas of the park are so far apart, and required a lot of driving back and forth. We didn’t go the the Lake Quinault rainforest, because it was so far, and we didn’t get to go to Cape Flattery, which is the northwesternmost point in the lower 48, because it is on tribal land, and was closed due to Covid.

We stayed near Forks and were very close to Rialto Beach. Our first evening, we walked about a mile on the beach to get to the very cool sea stacks, and then after sunset, had to hurry back before it was totally dark to find the way to the parking lot, which was hidden by all the huge logs of driftwood.

The next day, we drove to Second Beach. We had to walk a trail through a forest about three-quarters of a mile to get to the beach. It was a beautiful day, and that beach also had large, interesting sea stacks.

Both of these beaches were large, and not too crowded. The following day, we went to Ruby Beach. This popular beach was much more crowded, because it is right off the parking lot, close to a campground, and there’s no hike needed. Even though it had a lot of interesting sea stacks, we didn’t like this beach as much because there were so many people. But we did bring our folding chairs and had a picnic lunch there. It happened to be very misty right at the shoreline, which made the sea stacks look really cool.

We see rock cairns everywhere we go, and since there were so many rocks on these beaches, I just had to build a little cairn!

Close by Ruby Beach, was a beach near Kalaloch Lodge and the campground, where the “Tree of Life” was, so we made a quick stop to see a tree seemingly suspended in air, with its roots exposed and clinging to the bank.

The next day, we needed to get groceries, so we had to drive over an hour away to a decent store in Port Angeles, as the one in Forks was badly out of stock of everything (supposedly warehouse issues). We decided since we were in the area, to first go to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center on the mountain. Unfortunately that day, there was a lot of haze coming from forest fires in British Columbia, which obscured the view of the mountains.

However, as we walked an easy trail, we saw an Olympic marmot. I love marmots-they’re so cute, and they just seem to pose for the camera! We also saw several blue grouse right beside the trail.

Driving Highway 101 back to Forks, we passed right by Lake Crescent. It is a beautiful blue.

Lake Crescent: photo taken through a dirty car window as we passed by.

At Lake Crescent, we walked an easy trail to Marymere Falls. It was very pretty with the green moss on either side.

The road to Sol Duc Falls (pronounced sole duck) was not too far from the Lake Crescent area. We walked an easy trail to get to the falls, and had a picnic lunch afterwards. Sol Duc Falls were flowing nicely, even during a dry August!

We also visited the Hoh Rain Forest, and walked the Hall of Mosses trail on an overcast day, making it feel nice and gloomy! The trees were huge and draped in moss. We got there fairly early to avoid the long line of cars waiting to get in. Once the small parking lot at the Hoh visitor center is full, they make you wait at the entrance station until a car leaves, opening up one space at a time.

There was another short, easy trail in the same area. We saw young trees growing out of a fallen log. It’s called a nurse log. The root ball of the log was shaped like a heart.

We went back to Rialto Beach, even though the weather along the coast was cool and foggy or overcast for several days. We watched the surf crash against the rocks and found more colorful rocks in the sand. (We have not kept any cool rocks we’ve found. The saying goes, “Take only pictures, leave only footprints.”)

We really enjoyed our first visit to Olympic. The whole state of Washington is packed with so many beautiful places!