Olympic National Park

Visited: Sept 2016

Nearby city: Seattle, WA; Port Angeles, WA (Hurricane Ridge area); Forks, WA (coastal areas, Hoh Rainforest)

The Olympic peninsula in extreme northwestern Washington is a wilderness paradise. Olympic National Park covers a large swath of this peninsula. It protects an incredibly diverse and unique ecosystem on the continental United States. This Park has so much to offer. High alpine adventures, a temperate rainforest, and windswept rocky beaches littered with amazing and eerie sea stacks.

Olympic National Park is home to a number of species found nowhere else in the world, and is home to the largest unmanaged herd of Roosevelt Elk. In fact, the Park was initially created as a National Monument by Teddy Roosevelt to protect these elk.

Olympic National Park is kind of cumbersome for motorists and it is hard to visit all the main attractions in one day. There is no highway that goes through the interior of the park. Instead, motorists use U.S. Highway 101, which wraps around the edge of the peninsula and provides access to 12 separate roads that penetrate the interior (and all dead-end) in the Park. The following regions are (starting in the southeast corner and going counter-clockwise): Staircase, Dosewallips, Deer Park, Hurricane Ridge, Elwha, Sol Duc, Hoh Rain Forest, and Quinault Rain Forest. The most popular regions of these are: (1) Hurricane Ridge (2) Sol Duc and (3) Hoh Rain Forest.

Olympic National Park also protects 73 miles of the Pacific coastline. The areas are (from North to South): Ozette, Mora, Ruby Beach, and Kalaloch. Don't plan on swimming, this is extremely cold water all year-round. That's not to say the beach is not worth visiting, it most assuredly is.

To explore the park for a multi-day stay, I would suggest your home base be Port Angeles: lots of history, ferries to Vancouver or Victoria, and great seafood in the sleepy harbor town. Or, for you vampire fans, the old lumber town of Forks has transformed into a tourist mecca thanks to the uber popular Twilight series. So whether you're on Team Jacob or Team Edward, this will be the place for you. 😊  

Our first stop was the Elwha region, a pleasant river valley, (the road was closed while we were there) for a short hike to Madison Falls.

Madison Falls

Elwha River

Be sure to stop at the absolutely beautiful Crescent Lake along Highway 101. If you have enough time, take the short mile hike to Marymere Falls.

along the hike to Marymere Falls

Marymere Falls

Next stop is Sol Duc region, for the short and pleasant 1.6 mile hike to Sol Duc Falls. This is a gorgeous spot. After the hike, we stopped at the Sol Duc Resort to soak in the hot pools. Totally worth it, even though it rained on us a little bit.

three-pronged Sol Duc Falls

Now it's the long drive to the Hoh Rainforest, which is deep in the interior of the Park. This place receives more rain than any other place in the continental United States, at nearly 160 inches of annual precipitation. And it shows. Enjoy the mile loop hike on the Hall of Mosses Trail or Spruce Nature Trail to get a preview of this unique ecosystem. The vegetation is so thick, the trees take on a ghostly, haunting appearance. Hoh Rainforest is also the home base for the "easiest" 18 mile (one way) hike to Mt. Olympus, at 7,980 ft, the highest peak in the Park. I'd say if there is one place to visit in Olympic National Park, I would make it Hoh Rainforest. We took the Hall of Mosses Trail.

Blue Heron

big black crow (maybe a raven, I'm not sure)

Another must-do is take Hurricane Ridge Road from Port Angeles up to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center. This will take you up above the tree-line for spectacular views of the ocean and the Olympic Mountains. Unfortunately, we picked the wrong day to do it. The weather was nice at the bottom, but once we got to the top is was very foggy and rainy. Fog blocked all the views. It was disappointing, we waited until our last today to go up to the Ridge, if we had gone earlier the weather would have been more cooperative. There's web-cams on NPS website to check the views before you head up.

The other half of the park you need to visit is the rugged, windswept coastline. Our first stop at the ocean was Ruby Beach. It's a short walk from the parking lot down to the coast.

water was COLD!

We also went to Rialto Beach, and then Second Beach (just south of La Push), it's about a 0.7 mile hike from the road down to Second Beach. Amazing sea stacks.

Olympic is truly a park that you need to devote a couple of days to visit. The mountains are beautiful, the lakes and waterfalls are amazing, the rainforest is mesmerizing, and the ocean is breath taking. Entrance fee is $25. More info here: https://www.nps.gov/olym/index.htm