Seattle/Vancouver Oct 2011 - Part 2: Olympic National Park

Crescent Lake

We got up and picked up a quick bite to eat at McDonald's.  We started driving to the Olympic National Park visitor's center and realized both of our meals were wrong.  Oh well.  We finished at the visitor's center and headed towards the sights.  As we left, it started to rain on us.  We started at Crescent Lake.  This was a very pretty spot to look out on the glacier-created lake.  The water was a bold blue color.  We took a couple of pictures and by the time we left that spot, there was a pretty steady rain coming down.  Our next stop was Rialto Beach.

Crescent Lake

We made it out of the rain briefly and got to the beach.  This was not like any beach we had been to before.  The "sand" was more like gravel.  There were trees laying on the beach with the bark worn off from the ocean waves pounding the shore.  The waves were enormous.  It was definitely not a swimming beach.  We really enjoyed this spot.  It did rain on us a little more there, but it was a cool spot.

Rialto Beach

Next we went to First beach, which was just down the beach, but it was about a 20 minute drive over there.  This was more commercialized because it was not part of the park.  This was a common theme during the day.  There were a bunch of areas that we drove through which were not part of the park and did not fit the area.  There was also a lot of logging going on around the park.  It was pretty easy to tell when you were in the park, not only from the signs, but the size of the trees.  The larger and older the trees, the more likely you were in the park.  Anyway, we made it to First beach and it was ok, mainly because of the commercial growth there.

We moved on and headed towards Hoh rain forest.  I was looking forward to seeing this area.  Olympic National Park has at least three different ecosystems:  temperate beach, coastal rainforest, and mountainous regions.  My goal was to hit all of them while we were there.  On the way to Hoh, we drove through a town called Forks.  Wow, this was an interesting town.  This was like taking Lincoln, MO and moving it to the Pacific Northwest.  The other way it was different is that we kept seeing signs about the movie Twilight.  Neither of us had seen Twilight, so this did not make sense.  Apparently, part of the movie was filmed in Forks and Port Angeles, WA.  That made the town even stranger.  We made it through Forks and on our way to Hoh.  It started pouring on us.  It was about an hour and twenty minute drive from First beach to Hoh and it rained about half of it.  We pulled into the Hoh rain forest and come to find out the visitor's center was closed.  We decided to go on a small hike(walk) and see the rain forest.  Basically it just rained on us.  We wanted to see a rain forest and got to see the rain.  It was pretty cool though.  There was moss all over the trees and moss and ferns covering the ground.  There was a phone booth outside the visitor's center that was covered in moss from all the rain.

We moved on and decided to head back to the hotel.  this is about a two plus hour drive.  We made it to Forks and it stopped raining.  As we got closer back to the park, the rain was following us and catching up fast.  We made it back to Lake Crescent and stopped at the Lake Crescent lodge.  This was a really cool little lodge on the lake.  We went inside and got a couple of souvenirs and tried to wait out the rain.  We were unsuccessful.  We decided to press on and stopped at the next lake turnoff.  The rain slowed a little so we took a couple of pictures and moved on.  As we left the area, we saw another one of the deer that we had seen in the park.  We probably saw about a dozen of them.  This one was starting to grow antlers.  They were the smallest antlers I had ever seen.  we took a couple of pictures and moved on.

Deer with tiny antlers

Rainbow in the trailing rain

We got back to town and decided to go to Bella Italia for dinner.  We were hungry so we went right there before going to the hotel.  This is probably the nicest restaurant in town. I couldn't decide where to put the " ", so add them to the "nicest restaurant in town" where you would like.  It was good.  We were very under dressed though.  There were people in there with ties on.  We were in t-shirts and hiking attire.  It was a long day, obviously, because this is a long post.  We had a good long day.  We went to bed at about 8:00pm.

To say you have been to a park, you need a stamp and a picture.
Here is my picture, and I got by book stamped too.  :)