Olympic National Park - Part 3 of 3

In part 2 we were camped at Sol Duc and finished our hike to Sol Duc Falls and a birthday dinner out for Mr UAW. We knew it was going to rain the next day in the afternoon so we planned to go to Lake Crescent. It was about a 45 minute drive.

Lake Crescent is a beautiful lake, one of the prettiest that I've ever seen. It's a 624 feet deep lake with clear blue waters. The lake has very little nitrogen in it, that limits the growth of phytoplankton, tiny plants (like algae) that float in the water. This makes the water very clear, and you can see down as far as 60 feet. The clarity of the water and the weather that day gave the lake a blue color. The coming storm had no wind to it so the waters were calm, like glass. Apparently there are two types of fish found only here in the whole world-Beardslee and Crescenti trout, and you can fish for them-there is a catch and release requirement though.

We went to the Storm King ranger station. There we found the most helpful ranger I've ever had. He was a wealth of information. We told him what time frame we had and he suggested hikes around the area. He also had information on other places in the Park that we could explore. Mora campground was a possible destination for our next place to stay and he had information on that too.

We started on a hike to Marymere Falls, a 90 foot waterfall about a mile away. The lake was too pretty to just walk by so we had to stop and take pictures.

Calm waters before the coming rain 

I love the pop of red here, just a few more weeks and the trees would change color too 

The clarity of the water was amazing

Continuing on our hike to the falls, we went thru a old growth forest. There were huge trees, moss everywhere (but not as much as the Hall of Mosses), and everything was so green. 

Bridge leading to the falls 

Marymere Falls 

Hiking back to the lake we could tell it was going to rain soon. We had planned to eat one of our backpacking meals but decided to eat in the Lake Crescent Lodge restaurant. Sitting by the window we could watch the incoming storm move over the lake while enjoying our meal that was reasonably priced. 

Before the rain we enjoyed a few moments sitting here 

Lake Crescent Lodge 

It rained harder and harder as we finished our meal. Now we had to find our way back to the car, about a 0.5 mile hike. It turned out to be a longer hike because some of the trail signs were down and we guessed wrong on one of the turns. 

Bench found on our way back to the car

Arriving back at our camp we found most everything ok. Our pop up was starting to leak. The small pin holes in the top allowed too much water to come down. It looked like it was going to be a trash item soon. Luckly we didn't have much underneath it. Since it was raining and we had the whole afternoon to do something, the mineral hot springs at Sol Duc Resort looked like a good idea. They have 3 different pools: hot and hotter, and a kid pool. There was also a regular swimming pool, but it was closed for maintenance. This was also a great opportunity to grab a shower! 

Picture from advertisement- I didn't feel like taking my camera in there. 

That night it rained and rained-the second storm that we went thru-it is the rain forest after all. Next morning most of our stuff was wet under the pop up. I put my chair under the table and that helped to keep it dry. Most of the wet stuff could just be wiped off. Mr UAW's chair was wet tho. Everything in the tent was doing great. We had to pack up and get to our next destination. The rain had stopped which made packing a bit easier. We used all of our garbage bags for the wet things, telling ourselves that we would stop in Forks on the was to Mora Campground to pick up some more. 

Forks was an interesting town. There was only one stop light and we seemed to catch it red all the time. It gave us time to look around. Apparently the Twilight movie series is based here and the town takes all the advertising advantages they can from this fact. Twilight posters for many vampire, werewolf, activities were displayed. On our way back home we stopped in a local diner and found that the kids coloring actives were cartoon pictures of vampires. The information booth for the town has the population as 3,175 and the population of vampires as 8.5. Forks does have a great store in town that has groceries and hardware items. Garbage bags were easy to find as well as a few treats. 

Mora campground was pretty empty and stayed empty despite it being the weekend. Maybe it was the threat of an incoming storm that kept people away. While we were in Forks the locals said another storm was coming in that evening and another one would be there the next day, the second one with 40 mph winds. The evening storm would be our 3rd rain storm to weather. Knowing all of this we still set up the tent - wet from the last destination. We also set up the pop up but put that extra tarp over the top of it, one of the longer ends held up by old tent poles that were saved over the years. 

With camp set up and the rest of the day ahead of us, we wanted to go to to Rialto Beach before the next storm came upon us. Rialto Beach was interesting. There wasn't much sand, just lots of rocks, all flat like skipping stones and in various sizes-from dimes to salad plate size. Of course the sea stacks were amazing and there was sea-carved arch about 1.5 miles north on the beach called Hole in the Wall. And the drift wood! It was all so big and sometimes you had to climb over it to continue up the beach. Silly us we did not take our rain gear with us on this hike. It did start raining but it was just a 20 minute rain. We sheltered under one of the large driftwood logs that were thrown up on the beach. 

You can really see the beach rock here 

Hole in the Wall 

Little me in front of a sea stack 

Notice how big that log is next to Mr. UAW

And the logs are huge and tangled up-did find some sand on this part of the beach

The pelicans were having a feast here. There was some type of fish that were abundant and they were not going to miss out on a meal. I could have watched them all day. Apparently I didn't see this one flying over me....

Back at camp it started to rain. Our tarp over the pop up idea was working great. 

a rather wet tent-on the outside

Our gear weathered the storm overnight however we did notice that things in the tent were starting to get damp. There was no full on water in there, but underneath the sleeping mats the tent floor was somewhere between damp and wet. There was one more storm for us to go thru with 40 mph winds and we only wanted to see one more beach-a short drive from camp. We decided to visit the beach and pack it up for home. So we didn't stay the last night but it was probably a good call. We had seen everything we had come to see and it didn't seem necessary to go thru another storm. The garbage bags we bought came in so handy for this pack up. 

Things we did right for this trip: 

One was to get the big plastic containers for our gear.

Also using the garbage bags was great to keep the wet and dry items separate, that really helped for getting set up the last camp spot. Bringing all the rain gear was a must, hats, jackets, rainpants, shoes. Waterproofing items was a good idea too because you definitely got wet. Using just the jet boil and backpacking food was also a good idea-easy and quick hot meals. 

Things we needed to do better: 

Bring more than 2 tarps for this kind of trip. Our tent bottom might have not gotten damp had we used a dry tarp when setting it up at the last place. 

I needed a rain hat separate from my rain jacket for the hot springs, so don't forget in the future. 

We could have used an extra lantern. 

Remember to bring your rain gear on every hike. 

Car before we left, looking neat and clean 

Car at home before unpacking. Notice garbage bag box out for quick access 

It took a week to dry out from this trip because at home the weather had changed and Fall and rain was upon us. We found a dry sunny day to put things outside and then to make sure they were dry we didn't pack them up, we put them loose in the house. 

It was a great trip and I'd do it again. Next time I would like to see some of the things on the east side of the Park, and maybe the Hurricane Ridge area. And we are always interested in the beach so we will probably end up at Kalaloch again.

Olympic National Park - Part 2 of 3

The last post left off using Kalaloch Beach as a base camp for going to other places in the Park. And I wrote about going to Ruby Beach. We went to one more place while camping at Kalaloch. The Hoh Rain Forest looked like a great place to visit. Donning our rain gear we headed for Hoh.

It took about an hour to get there. Many things in this national park take travel time to see. The place is so big. There were no huge crowds when we arrived at a place, maybe due to the time of year, or maybe because the Park is huge. We met people from all over the country; comparing notes, travel plans, sites seen made for many interesting conversations.

On the way there, you pass by the Hoh River. Today there was a rain storm brewing-no surprise there-it is the Rain Forest after all. We stopped for a picture.

I love the dramatic sky

The forest center at Hoh was informative. They had a weather forecast for the week-rain every day except for one. They also had trails that went to specific places. We decided to do the Hall of Mosses and part of the Hoh River Trail up to Mineral Creek Falls. I had read about the Hall of Mosses, so I wanted to see that one. The trail to the Falls was one of the shorter hikes, 2.7 miles round trip. We also wanted to check out the campground seeing that we needed to find a place to stay for the last few days of our trip.

The Hall of Mosses did not disappoint. Did you know that moss can live up to 7 years? I learned that at the forest center. The trail was short, only .8 mile and it wasn't crowded. The lack of crowds gave us opportunities to get pictures without a bunch of unknown people in them.

 

Mr UAW looking small in the midst of all the moss covered trees

This arch way and the previous setting you can find on google-popular spots in the Park. 

The trail to Mineral Falls was the best part of the hike. Usually I look forward to the object at the end of the hike as the pinnacle of a hike. Not so in this case. The falls were hidden behind many trees and bushes. Altho you could hike up to the top portion of the falls it did not help. Maybe it was because we were there at the end of the summer season and the water flow was not as great. More water coming down might have helped to make this more spectacular. That being said it was still a beautiful hike. Most of the trail followed the Hoh River. While on this hike we heard Elk bugling in the distance.

Bridge at the bottom of the falls

Fall color starting 

I'm sitting at the base of the farthest tree. There's still a lot of moss on this hike. 

We checked out the campground at Hoh. It is a first come, first serve campground and it was not crowded. We decided not to try to come back to this campground. Many of the sites were out in the open and small for our tent. We had other places to try.

On the way back to Kalaloch we passed by this spot again and were lucky to catch a rainbow! 

Rainbow

Back at Kalaloch there was no rain. Good for us because the next day we had to pack up and move to Sol Duc where we had reservations for 2 nights. 

Next day we set up our tent early in the day. We heard that it was going to rain the next day so we wanted to get our major hike in on this day. 

New camp spot 

The only thing to worry about was the deer getting into things, brave little guys. 

When we were at the Hoh Rain Forest center I learned a bit about the mushrooms in the area. And I found this one at our camp in Sol Duc. It's called the Sickener mushroom. As it's name implies, it will make you sick if you eat it but apparently will not kill you. In any case I always stay away from picking or eating any mushrooms that I find in the forest. Interesting that squirrels can eat this with no problems!

sickener mushroom 

The major site we wanted to see was Sol Duc Falls. This waterfall did not disappoint. It was beautiful and I suppose it would be even grander if the flow was greater. This waterfall is wonderful no matter the time of year. I thought it was interesting the way they made the trail to view this waterfall. It was unique. 

The river on the other side of the falls 

This day was Mr UAW's birthday so we decided to go out to dinner instead of eating our backpacking food. Sol Duc has Mineral Hot Springs and a restaurant. On this day we went to the restaurant and had elk burgers. Happy birthday! 

We had more adventures using Sol Duc as a base camp for exploring other areas of the Park. More on that in the next post.

Olympic National Park - Part 1 of 3

Tree of Life at Kalaloch Beach 

We have been wanting to explore the Olympic National Park for over a year. I sent away to AAA for information, I've combed the internet for blogs and pictures, I've gone to recreation.gov to check out campsites, I've found planetware.com-a "group of travel writers who offer their ideas on where to go, what to see, and tips for making the most of your trip", I found internet sites that rated campgrounds and posted pictures of individual sites, and talked to people who have been there. All that information just increased our desire to make the trip. So we decided that this was the year. We wanted to go after school started but before winter. So in September, the week after Labor Day, we decided to go.

Being the frugal people we are, we decided to go tent camping. Tent camping is something we do all the time so we were used to it; the only part of this trip that we really had to think about was the rain. The annual precipitation ranges from 100-170 inches of rain along the coast and western-facing valleys. That could amount to over 14 feet of rain a year! So we knew we would be dealing with rain, more rain than we were used to. In anticipation of all the wetness, we brought a few things to help us. We bought some nice containers to hold all our clothes, jackets, pillows, shoes, etc. this really helped to keep things dry-we usually use some canvas bags. We also bought a smaller version for food-we usually use a cardboard box. And for food we bought a big box of freeze dried food, figuring that with all the rain it would be easier to just boil water and eat something hot. It had enough food for our whole trip, we did supplement with some favorite things in our ice chest. We brought our pop up shelter, and a couple of tarps. Tarps, one for under the tent and an extra-turns out we needed the extra. We also brought lots of large garbage sacks for keeping the wet things and dry things separate. And of course, we brought all of our rain gear.

Camping in the Olympic National Park is interesting. There are only a few campgrounds that accept on-line reservations in the park. The Park is large, it is a large area in the middle of Washington and also has a beach area. Many people I talked to were surprised to learn that the Olympic National Park has a section of the Park that is by the ocean. We made reservations at 2 places, Kalaloch Beach and Sol Duc-the only 2 that took on-line reservations, everything else is first come-first served in the Park. Kalaloch was accepting on-line reservations thru 9/8/19, on 9/9/19 it became first come-first serve. So we made reservations for 9/8/19 and hoped we could stay in our spot for a few more days, since we were the first ones there. And it worked. Sol Duc was taking on-line reservations thru 10/29/19. So we got reservations for 9/11/19-9/13/19. The weekend was booked, so there was no possibility of staying longer, unless we got one of the walk in sites-and those were very few. We decided to leave the last few days of the trip up in the air. Most of the sites in the Park are first come-first served so we figured we'd find something, somewhere. I did research some of the campgrounds in the Park that were on the way home so we had some choices. Mr UAW has a senior National Park Pass and can get campground sites for half price, yay!

We left on a Sunday morning, traffic was great. It took us about 4 hours to get there. Set up camp and headed for the beach.

One of the things I wanted to see was something call the Tree of Life. If you google Kalaloch beach you will see a picture of it. It's a Sitka spruce tree that has apparently been there for ages, it sometimes has a creek that flows down the cliff and underneath it out to the ocean. The tree has a cave underneath it, the roots cling to the upper sides of cave while the trunk sags in the middle of the cave. The tree is not dead and it is amazing that it continues to live.

With the sunset behind me, you can clearly see inside the cave. 

We walked to the northern end of the beach. Along the way we found sooooo many whole sand dollars. We picked up some to take home and also saw some live ones. It's so interesting to see their little hairs move that help them to get around. Eventually we had to stop picking them up, I've never seen so many sand dollars in one place.

               
Towards the end of the beach there is a wonderful hole in the side of the cliff. It made a great opportunity for a picture.

Looking thru this hole makes me want to keep walking to the end of the beach. Turns out holes in cliffs and rocks are a big deal in the Olympic National Park. 

Rain coming. Destruction Island. Google Destruction Island for some interesting history !

That night we weathered our first major rain storm. The tent did fine, some drips under the pop up, but overall pretty good. We stayed 2 more days without rain so that gave us time to dry out.
And it made for some good sunsets the next day.

This was the sunset thru the trees as we walked back to our camp

On one of our walks towards the sound end of the beach we ran into these Arctic Terns. These birds are real athletes in the bird world. They have a long yearly migration. They travel from their Arctic breeding grounds to Antarctica where they enjoy the Antarctic summer, covering about 25,000 miles. I looked it up and found that they feed from the water while flying and can live up to 34 years! The average bird flys more than 1.25 million miles during its life-that's about three round trips to the moon!

Arctic Terns enjoying a few moments on the land

There seems to be a lot of drift wood on Washington's beaches. I noticed that the logs get larger the farther north I went. Look for pictures of bigger logs as the posts continue on the Olympic National Park. Many times we had to climb over the logs to get to the beach.

Most of these logs came up to my knees 

Practicing with my DSLR camera 

We used our camp at Kalaloch as a base camp to explore other areas of the Park. The second day there we went to Ruby Beach. It's called Ruby Beach because of the ruby colored rocks that used to be on the beach. Over the years all the ruby colored rocks have been picked up and the ocean doesn't seems to throw any more on the beach. This beach has wonderful sea stacks. Sea stacks are amazing vertical rock formations standing in the sea or close to the sea on the beach. They were formed by wind and water. The headlands used to go out farther into the ocean. The water and waves and wind creates cracks in the headland, causing the land to collapse and what is left is a steep vertical column or columns of rock in the sea. Many of them are large enough to have trees on them, like little islands. Others are just rock formations. Some have holes in them, a window into another view of the ocean. I took a lot of pictures of these things. They are so interesting.

On the path to Ruby Beach 

Sea Stacks 

This one looked like a gorilla to us 

Evidence we were there 

That small person is Mr UAW

That is enough pictures for one blog post! Except for this one-my tea bag from Good Earth tea. Little did I know how applicable this would be.

Part two coming up!