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Blast From the Past - Olympic National Park

This is from I trip I took back in March of 2004.  I had been to park a few years earlier on a family trip, and really liked it. So, when a business trip took me to the northwest, I had to go back.  Sorry about the iffy quality of most of the pictures. My old digital camera didn't do very well in low light conditions.

If you like giant, moss covered trees, waterfalls, seascapes, etc., you need to see Olympic National Park. If I lived closer, I'd probably go there several times a year. As it was, March turned out to be a great time to visit. Most of the trees are evergreen, so the forest still looks pretty cool, and the place is almost deserted. Of course, some of the higher elevation roads were closed with over 100 inches of snow, so summer would be better to see the whole park...



For the first day, I went to the visitor center first, and then headed past Crescent Lake to Sol Duc falls. The drive was great and scenic and mellow, with the light traffic.

I decided to go on the short hike to the actual falls, since it was pretty cool last time. Old-growth temperate rainforest just rock!


Day 1:







I'm not sure how long ago this tree fell onto the hut...






Here is the waterfall itself.
















Day 2:


After spending the night in a crappy motel in Sequim , I headed out along the North edge of the Olympic peninsula, to Neah Bay and the Makah reservation.  It wasn't the friendliest place, but they had a decent little museum giving some history of their tribe.






I know that this is one of the main sources of income in the area, but clearcuts still suck.







Since I was at the narrow part of the peninsula, I cut across to the south and decided to do a hike on the Sand Point trail. It was listed as an easy hike on boardwalks through the forest that ended up at the beach. It was three miles each way, which sounded reasonable.   However, what it didn't say was that the boardwalk was in the form of steps going constantly up and down over every little variation in terrain. Basically it was like being on a stairmaster for 4 hours, which wasn't too much fun with my gimpy knees! I probably should have turned back after the first mile, but I pressed on.







All of the stairs turned out to be worth it however, since I finally hobbled down the last hill, and was rewarded with this completely deserted (except for the deer) beach!  I instantly started humming that old Edie Brickell song, "Me By the Sea"... Seemed appropriate.  "I'm glad no one's here, just me by the sea, I'm glad no one's here to mess it up for me."

It wasn't exactly a great sunbathing/playing in the surf kind of beach, but had tons of cool tide pools and drift-trees (kind of interesting to think of entire trees drifting around in the ocean. Wouldn't want to hit one in boat).  I wanted to spend more time there, but I had to limp back to my car before it started getting dark, since the clouds would have made for a very dark night hike!







Here is a panorama of the lonely beach.



Day 3:

This was my last full day in the area, so I tried to make the most of it. The first stop was the Hoh rain forest, where I went of the Hall of Mosses trail.
It was an awesome trail, and there was definitely a lot of moss!







After that, I found a couple more beaches to check out. These were much closer to the road, which was a good thing..  They had tons of drift-trees, and nice stretches of sand. The second one had a ton of these strange looking trees with tumors. Still not too many people...

Continue to page 2 for the conclusion....

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