Olympic National Park

Day 15: Saturday, July 13

I went out for a run this morning and thought I had found a relatively flat spot to run, but there were some hills going out, which at least meant there were downhills coming back. I ran some loops in the small neighborhood by the campground and at the end, I had a puppy trailing me. I didn’t see where he had come from, but he was right behind me and wanted my attention. I stopped to pet him and he definitely looked like someone’s pet, but didn’t have a collar. I tried to coax him into running back where we had come from instead of exiting the neighborhood onto the main road, but he continued to follow me. I ran down toward the campground and he was still behind me until he saw a lady with her two dogs. He got scared and ran up a driveway and then turned himself around to go back toward the neighborhood. I really hope he went back to where he lives and got there safely! I was really prepared to have him follow me to the RV and having to explain to Sean that we were adopting another puppy!

Once I finished my run, I took my coffee down to the lake and enjoyed the calm, quiet morning. Then Sean and I tackled a big breakfast that the kids had been requesting—scrambled eggs, pancakes, and sausage. It was delicious and just what we needed to be ready for our travel day to our next destination! We had a shorter drive than the past few times and we got on the road around 9:45.

We arrived at the KOA Olympic Peninsula/Port Angeles around 1 pm and did a quick setup before heading into town…we are finally near a real town, Port Angeles, WA!!! We scoped out a place we wanted to go for lunch and beer, Next Door Gastropub, so we headed into town and got our names on the list there was an antique shop next door and Kinsey was enthralled—we had fun looking around and seeing all of the “antique” toys from the 80’s when we were kids, haha! We enjoyed our lunch and some local beers and then went down the street to try to check out the tail end of a classic car show. They were wrapping up, but Barrett and Sean got to see a few cool cars while Kinsey and I got distracted by a cute gift shop. We walked to the waterfront and saw Canada—funny how we went from one border to the other in the span of the last two weeks. Then we found a great bookstore and browsed the used books. I have been looking for a copy of the first book in the Babysitter’s Club series and they had it. We’ll see if Kinsey enjoys it as much as I did when I was a kid.

We headed back to the campground and geared up for all the activities they had that evening—an animated hayride, an ice cream social, and Christmas-themed “slingo” (fast bingo). Our family won big, with each of us winning at least one round and getting to pick a Christmas prize. We now have wrapping paper, gift tags, ornaments, a wine holder, and cookie cutters to start the 2019 holiday season!

We called it a night, prepped sandwiches for the next day, took showers, and got to bed for our early wakeup.

Day 16: Sunday, July 14, 2019

We knew we had about a 2 hour drive to get out to the Hoh Rainforest section of the Olympic National Park so we got up and out by about 6:45 am. The weather forecast called for sun and no rain on this day, as opposed to rain and clouds for Monday, so we opted to go further out into the park and save the closer section for the potentially rainy day. The drive was easy and went by a really pretty lake and next things we knew we were at the visitor’s center about 10 minutes before it was set to open at 9 am. We checked out the few exhibits, the kids got their junior ranger books, and then we set out for our first hike.

We first went on the 1-mile loop called the Hall of Mosses, which was full of ferns and moss (go figure!!), which was a nice change of pace from the more woodsy hikes we’d been doing. Our climbing boy found lots of downed logs and tree stumps to climb on and in, we saw a banana slug up close and personal, and spotted a tree frog.

Next we went on the Spruce Nature Trail, a 1-mile loop, and immediately saw warnings for a bear, a mama elk, and a baby elk in the area--eek! I think Sean secretly wanted to see one of them, but we did not. We did enjoy going down by the river on that part of the hike, thought.

Even though it was only 10:30 when we finished hiking, we were hungry for lunch and decided to eat before driving out to the coast. We stopped in the town of Forks, WA (remember the town from Twilight?!?) for coffee and drinks…and for Barrett to throw up cheez-its in the parking lot (keeping it real, folks!). He felt better after that, so we were on our way!

After a 20-minute drive or so, we were at the coast and walked out onto Rialto Beach. It reminded me a lot of Bishops Beach in Homer, Alaska, and I suppose is typical of a Pacific northwest beach. It had sand, but was also full of beautiful, smooth rocks and tons of driftwood further from the shore. There were some decent waves and some great stacks (large rock formations just off the beach in the water). The kids were eager to splash in the water even though they didn’t have their swimsuits on, and we ended up walking almost 4 miles down the beach and back. We spotted a bald eagle perched high up in a tree, and saw loons, a sea otter, and a seal all in the water close to the shore. We lucked out with sunny, warm weather (for here, maybe 70*) and my beach-loving heart was happy.

A bald eagle

A seal out on the rock

We got back to the car, changed the wet kiddos, and made our way back to the campground. Since we’d eaten lunch so early we were hungry and made burgers, mac n cheese, and salad for an early dinner. The kids ran around the campground playing ping pong, air hockey, and other games with friends they met. Sean started a fire and we made s’mores later in the evening once again—this is camping life! It’s nice that we are staying three nights at this park rather than the two we’ve had elsewhere, so we’ll have another day to explore tomorrow and we don’t have to pack up again so soon.

Day 17: Monday, July 15, 2019

This is the first park where we’ve had two days to explore, so we didn’t rush out quite so early in the morning. I made sandwiches, my very favorite job of this trip 😒

Sean roused the kids awake with some good old rock n’ roll music, they ate cinnamon rolls, and then we were all in good spirits to start the day. We headed into the Hurricane Ridge section of the park and saw several deer as we were driving there. We got up to the visitor’s center and checked out the exhibits and the kids finished their junior ranger books. 

Then we took a short hike out to a lookout point where you could see the coast and Canada from the peak. It was funny because our phones alerted us that we were in Canada and we’d be incurring data charges, haha!

We hurried back to hear a ranger talk about cougars…did you know that there are at least 83 different names for cougars?! We also saw the helicopter that was transporting goats out of the park, which was really interesting. Basically, these goats are not native to Olympic NP and cannot get enough of the salt they need in their diet so they are getting too close to humans and sometimes becoming aggressive in order to lick/eat sweaty clothing (weird, but true!). So, this program is moving the goats from Olympic to Cascades NP, which will be a better environment for them.

Next, the kids talked with the ranger and got sworn in as both marine and land junior rangers at Olympic. We did notice that the marine junior ranger programs are some of the more difficult books to complete—this one was as challenging as the one they did in Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and both required a lot of parent assistance.

It was started to rain lightly so we started down the mountain and then stopped at a lookout for our picnic lunch in the car. We ate, checked out some more views, saw even more deer, and then arrived back at the visitor’s center closer to town. We enjoyed this location because it had a great discovery zone for the kids, complete with ranger station puppet theater, giant floor puzzles, and lots of artifacts to explore. The kids probably could have stayed there all afternoon, but we grabbed our few souvenirs—this time both kids picked a sea otter puppet and have plans to build a puppet theater when we get back home. We shall see!!

We got back into town, ran a few errands, and then hung out at the campground for a few hours. We cooked an early dinner of salmon, rice, and veggies, and then headed to the movie theater to see Toy Story 4. It was cute and of course my Barrett Duke loved the character Duke Kaboom!!

It was nice to be back in civilization for a few days, especially since the weather was the grayest and rainiest we’ve seen on this trip.  

Tomorrow the adventure continues!

Olympic National Park Highlights
BDG-going to the beach, seeing the big waves, climbing on the rocks, seeing the sea otter and seal, and collecting rocks

KPG-going to the beach, collecting colorful rocks, getting wet from the waves

EAG-walking along Rialto Beach and seeing the driftwood and sea stacks

SGG-hiking through the Hall of Mosses