Washington State, Olympic National Park

 Washington Coast and Olympic National Park          June 2-June 11, 2014

We continued our trip north on Route 101. What an incredible highway. It wends its way through small towns but mostly right along the cliffs of the coast. We stopped frequently at the overlooks to see the crashing waves on the rocks. Our first stop in Washington is South Beach in the Olympic National Park which was founded in 1938. This is a rustic campground with no running water or electricity..dry camping they call it. Similar to all of the time we spent in most of the other National Parks.  We run the generator a couple of times a day to charge the batteries for our lights etc.

South Beach is a treasure. The ranger at the first visitor's center told us to just go grab any sight and relax and enjoy...and that we did. We were camped on the cliff overlooking a field of driftwood and the beach below. The driftwood, however, was much larger than any you could imagine. They were logs of enormous girth and had been there for a while. Now they tend to guard the rest of the sloping hills from further erosion.

Sunset at South Beach

RV view from the beach

Kate in front of beach log

Beach logs protecting the cliff

Imagine and Old Man Reading his Paper

After two days enjoying the sea breeze and solitude, we moved on up the coast about 150 miles to a heavily wooded Mora Park which again is in the National Park where we spent 3 days. Down the road about 3 miles is Rialto Beach, which is another beach heavily laden with huge trees that are now driftwood. We walked this beach down to Hole in the Rock about 2 miles each way.

Ochre Sea Stars

Kate taking pictures!

Hiking on Rialto Beach

Smooth Sculpted Rocks from Wave Action

Hole in Rock

Purple Ochre Sea Star

Sea Anemone

Eagle flying overhead

 There we found wonderful tide pools in the outgoing tide and incredible vistas of rock formations. In the tide pools, we saw bright green sea anemones and ochre starfish, both reddish and purple which we had never seen before, and tons of mussels. We started out all bundled up against the cool wind, but quickly shed the top two layers as the day heated up and the wind subsided.

We encountered two different groups of school children that had hiked down from Ozette to Rialto Beach along the coast trail. Evidently, this is a rite of passage for middle school children here. They all seemed to have enjoyed their five days on the trail and camping on the beach. Maybe more of our adolescents should partake of the outdoors instead of their electronic games!

Driftwood on Rialto Beach

While at Mora, we explored Forks and La Push which is heavily populated with native American Indians. There are eight different native American tribes in the Olympic National Park. They are the Lower Elwha Klallam,  the Jamestown S'Klallam, the Port Grande S'Klallam, the Skokomish, the Quineault, the Hoh, the Quileute, and the Makah who all ceded their lands and water rights and signed treaties with the federal government in 1855 and 1856.  They now all have reservations on the shores of the Olympic Peninsula.  In addiiton, there is a northwest section of the Peninsula where  the Ozette Reservation lies, but for some reason it is not listed as being in the park itself.The closest one to the campground is the Quileute in La Push which has quite a good size and prospering fishing harbor.

Harbor at La Push

On the sides of the road were really pretty flowers which we tried to identify. Tim kept saying one of them was hemlock and it sure did look like it. Come to find out it is called Cow's Parsnip and is not poisonous but can be irritating to the skin...could have fooled me, they were really lacey and looked like Queen Anne's lace! The other was yellow and called Witch's Broom which is really an invasive weed taking over some of the fields of young saplings. Pretty but not good for the environment they tell us.

Cow's Parsnip

Witch's Broom

One day was spent visiting the Hoh Rain Forest. The 50 mile Hoh River runs through it from Mount Olympus down 7000 feet into the Pacific Ocean. It meanders through the rain forest but encounters many log jams as it goes from the falling conifers. We are told that the mild winters and cool summers and up to 12 feet of precipitation produce the giant conifers here in the rain forest. The Salmon spawn there and die leaving protein for the scavenging animals. Nature takes its course. There is an abundance of big leaf Maple and a plethora of mosses, ferns and plants.

Most trees have overgrowth of moss hanging and there are many downed and rotting trees upon which other trees take root. These are called "nurselogs." There is much moss overgrowth virtually everywhere!

Phone booth at Hoh Rain Forest

On the way north along the coast, we would see the typical rough rocked shore with fantastic vistas.

Washington Coast lighthouse

Our next stop was Heart O' The Hills Campground at the base of Hurricane Ridge. We tried to find the most level spot we could on the hills of this campground and actually took a chance on the most level site that had HOST stamped on its signage. Usually, HOST sites are reserved for folks who volunteer to oversee the campground in exchange for free camping. No one was there and judging from everything else we have seen thus far in this park, none of the rangers or hosts really start until about June 20th. So we took the site, paid the normal fee and all was well.

The literature told us the best views of Mount Olympus was from Hurricane Ridge, so off we went on a about a 15 mile ride up a windy road and gained about 3500 feet in elevation. Mount Olympus is the highest in the Olympic Range at 7,980 feet and has the third largest glacial system in the contiguous USA. The views were outstanding! We hiked a trail for about 3 miles round trip and were rewarded with panoramic views of the Olympic Mountain Range.

Our next stop was to be in Tacoma for a routine RV servicing, but we found a local RV shop here in Port Angeles to do it, so our next stop is The North Cascades National Park!