By Shelby
Olympia is very different from Yakima. Where Yakima was in a desert, it seems like Olympia is in the middle of a forest. The weather is much cooler, in the 70s and low 80s compared to the high 80s and 90s in Yakima. It’s definitely a good place to be while the rest of the US is in a heat wave. It was very nice not having to worry about the car getting too hot in the sun during the day. I found the weather in the morning to be a little cold for me, but Spencer loved it.
We worked at the Lacey Timberland Library Monday. I think it is one of my favorite libraries. The parking lot is surrounded by trees and the window next to our table looks right into green bushes and trees. It was very nice. For lunch, I had a buffalo tuna wrap, my go-to meal lately. Spencer had a turkey sandwich, his go-to meal. It’s definitely getting easier to eat meals in the car. I typically get the food out of the fridge and Spencer puts it back. He uses his table that attaches to the steering wheel to eat and I use the center console. We have a nice routine going now.
After work, we went to Squaxin Park to do a 2-mile hike in the woods which followed along the coast of a small inlet. The woods seemed kind of rain forest-y. The trees were very tall and blocked a lot of the sun. A lot of the branches were overgrown with moss. The ground was covered in ferns and ivy. At one point, we walked down a side trail that went down to the water. It must have been low tide because according to where we were in Google Maps, we were walking in water. There were so many shells all over the ground. I think I even saw a couple very tiny crabs.
After our hike, we went to the Rock Wood Fired Pizza restaurant for dinner. We got three personal pizzas to share, one had sweet chili oil, the second had lots of vegetables, and the third had a ranch sauce with chicken. They were all very good. Fortunately, we were able to fit our leftovers in the fridge. After dinner, we went grocery shopping for our next meal – a chicken pasta dish with mozzarella cheese.
Tuesday, we worked from the same library. At lunch time, we decided to move to the park to work outside since the weather was so nice. We also planned to make dinner there after work. The park got very busy that afternoon. It seemed like whenever a car pulled out of a spot, a new one immediately pulled in. We decided to cook dinner at a picnic table under a gazebo. Since we had leftover eggs that we hadn’t hardboiled to have with salad, we decided to make fried eggs for dinner. Those turned out pretty good. After dinner, Spencer cooked the chicken while I got the pasta started. When both were done cooking, we combined them along with sauce in 3 glass containers. We drained the pasta water in the sink in the bathroom. The last time we made pasta, we drained it back into the plastic jug where we stored water. The hot water deformed the plastic and we had to throw out the jug. Draining into the sink worked much better. After we fit everything back into the fridge, we moved to a quieter area of the park to hang out before going to Planet Fitness. Wednesday, we worked from the same library. After work, we went grocery shopping and got gas to get ready for our long drive tomorrow. We considered going to a park to go for a walk, but decided against it. We wanted to relax before the next busy couple of days.
We got up bright and early Thursday morning. We had a long drive ahead of us. There is pretty much one major highway that encircles Olympic National Park – highway 101. We decided to drive it in a clockwise direction. This meant we would have a 3 hour drive to the Hoh Rain Forest, our first stop within the park. About 2 hours into the drive, we pulled into a small campground off the highway with access to the beach. This was our first encounter with the Pacific Ocean. It was cold, misty, and slightly raining, but it was beautiful.
After walking on the beach for a bit, we returned to the car for another hour-long drive to the Hoh Rain Forest. Along the way, we saw a group of elk in the road. Shortly before the park entrance, there was a long line of cars waiting to enter the park. There were even signs on the side of the road saying how long the wait would be from the sign. We watched a nature documentary on Spencer’s phone while we waited. The ranger seemed to be letting cars in as cars left the park, which makes sense. It was nice to be able to find parking even though we had to wait in a line. I’m glad it wasn’t just a free for all.
Once we got a parking spot, we headed off to walk the Hall of the Mosses trail, a short loop trail through the rain forest. It was a very popular trail. We decided it was worth the wait to get parking. Despite the lack of rain that day, it definitely felt like a rainforest. There were large ferns lining the path and there were long pieces of moss hanging from tree branches. They were able to survive just on sunlight and air because of the near constant rainfall in the area.
After finishing the Hall of the Mosses trail, we headed back out of the park toward the small town of Forks. Forks is well-known for being the setting of the popular movie series “Twilight”. I used to be a big Twilight fan, so I wanted to stop for some photo ops. Our first stop in Forks was the Swan house, the house said to be the inspiration for Bella Swan’s house in the book. The actual house filmed for the movie is actually in Oregon. Our second stop was the Forks Chamber of Commerce where we were able to see Bella’s orange truck, both the one used in the movie and one that matches the description from the book. After that, we continued through Forks to La Push, a small town on the coast in the Quileute Native American reservation. We made a quick stop at a sign saying that that was the Treaty Line and no vampires are allowed past the line. This is also from Twilight.
Once we arrived in La Push, we went to First Beach to eat lunch. It was a beautiful sandy beach with large rocks in the water. Next up was Second Beach. To get to the beach, we had to hike a little less than a mile through the woods. I liked this beach better than First Beach. It was more secluded and didn’t have a parking lot right next to it. It looked very mysterious with the clouds and fog. This beach was also very popular, but it seemed larger than First Beach. We walked along the beach for a bit and took a bunch of pictures before hiking back to the car and leaving the reservation.
We stopped briefly at a gravel road off the highway to check out a primitive campsite where we planned on sleeping that night. It was far enough off the highway that it wouldn’t be too loud, and it seemed pretty private. We decided that it would work as long as there were still spots available when we returned later that night.
We drove on to the Storm King Ranger Station where we decided to hike the 1.8-mile loop trail to Marymere Falls. This was a difficult decision to make since we were planning on hiking up Mt. Storm King the following morning and this shared part of the same trail as Marymere Falls. We would have to repeat the first section. We also had planned on hiking the Sol Duc trail, but that was way back toward the primitive site. If we drove back to the Sol Duc trail (about a 20-minute drive), we may not have access to another bathroom. We decided to hike to Marymere Falls and then eat dinner at the ranger station, so we could use the bathroom before driving back to the primitive site to sleep. The hike to Marymere Falls was pretty flat and easy for the most part until the end, where it became steep and required climbing up a bunch of stairs. This was a very popular trail, so we saw a lot of people. The falls were very pretty. After that, we returned to the parking lot and ate leftover pasta for dinner. We went to bed early that night, since we were hoping to get another early start the next day. We wanted to make sure we could get a parking spot since this is a very popular area.
The next morning, we woke up early and drove back to the Storm King Ranger Station, this time to do the Mt. Storm King hike. After getting ready in the bathroom, we had breakfast in the car. Spencer had oatmeal and I had yogurt, tea, and a tortilla with hummus. The parking lot was already getting busier. While we were eating, a large white school bus pulled in and about 20 marines got off and started off on the trail. Mt. Storm King was a steep 4 mile trail up the side of a mountain. It was pretty brutal. There were barely any flat areas along the trail. It was switchback after switchback. Finally we reached a small clearing on the trail with a viewpoint over Crescent Lake.
After resting for a few minutes, we continued along the trail, now on top of the ridge. We reached a line that indicated that it was the end of the maintained trail. This is where the trail would get really interesting. We continued on where the trail got very steep and we used the provided rope to pull ourselves up. We continued up through a couple more rope areas. Luckily, it was still early and not too crowded yet. The top of the mountain was a narrow steep ridge. Once we crossed over, we saw the large group of marines camped out at the top. We didn’t stay at the top for too long. It was getting busier and we wanted to get past the rope section before it got too backed up.
The hike back down the mountain was just as brutal as the hike up. The steep grade was pretty rough on the knees and the gravelly sections were pretty slippery. Finally, we made it back to the car. We were pretty hungry by then but we decided to wait until our next stop, the Spruce Railroad Trailhead at Crescent Lake. After lunch, we started on the Lake Crescent trail to the Devil’s Punchbowl. This was a short 2 mile paved trail.
The trail was nice. It went through the woods right along the lake. The Devil’s Punchbowl was a small inlet from the lake surrounded by tall cliffs. The water was an amazing turquoise. There were a few people swimming and jumping from the cliff into the water. The walk back included going through a large tunnel through the mountain. It was very cool. The inside was natural like a cave and not built up with concrete.
When we got back to the car, we continued on to our next and final stop in the park. Hurricane Ridge Visitors Center was an hour away through Port Angeles. We stopped at the Olympic National Park welcome sign for a picture along the way.
The road up to Hurricane Ridge was steep and windy. It was another impressive mountain road. The view from the visitors center was amazing. The ridge of snow-covered mountains sharply contrasted against the wild flower covered meadows closer to us. There were even a bunch of deer eating grass in the hills near us.
From the visitors center, we walked up a short steep trail to Sunrise Viewpoint where we got a view of the mountains all around us. We couldn’t stay for long because we were hoping to make it to Purple Haze Lavender Farm for some Lavender ice cream before they closed at 5. We hurried down the mountain.
Luckily, we made it to the farm just a few minutes before they closed. The small town it was in, Sequim, seemed to be lavender themed. There were lavender plants everywhere and all the benches were purple. The farm was beautiful, with rows and rows of purple Lavender. They looked much better than the Lavender we attempted to grow on our apartment balcony. I got lemon lavender ice cream, while Spencer got lavender white chocolate. I thought mine was very good. It reminded us of fruit loops. After we finished our ice cream, we drove another hour back to Olympia. We were pretty hungry, so we got Chipotle for dinner before going to Planet Fitness to sleep.
Saturday morning we slept in until almost 8. We had to go to the post office when it opened at 9. The cable for our fridge was acting up and causing the fridge to shut off if it gets slightly bumped. We had contacted the company and they sent us a new cable to the post office in Olympia for us to pick up via general delivery. It’s not easy figuring out how to get things shipped to you if you don’t have an address. After we picked up the cable, we started heading south toward Portland, Oregon. Our first stop was Seaside, Oregon, a tiny beach town with a promenade running along the coast. We parked in a small parking lot and walked the promenade to a Lewis and Clarke statue. This is where their journey across the US ended. We walked out to the water where we saw a group of fishermen fishing in the waves. Spencer said the water was cold. I didn’t want to get wet.
Our next stop was Ecola State Park where we ate lunch. We then walked down to a viewpoint of Cannon Beach, a beautiful beach with rocky cliffs. After taking in the view, we walked a short trail through the woods to another viewpoint where we saw Indian Beach, which is featured in both Twilight and the Goonies.
Next up was Vista House, a museum and memorial to Oregon pioneers on the Historic Columbia River Highway, that overlooked a scenic area of the Columbia River. It was pretty busy, but we were able to get parking without an issue. We took a few pictures before moving on to our next stop, Latourell Falls. We hadn’t planned on stopping here, but the falls were right off the road and there was parking available, so we stopped to take a few pictures.
Our real next stop was Wahkeena Falls, the second tallest year-round waterfall in the US. We weren’t able to get a parking spot in the closer parking lot since it was so busy. There was a line of cars waiting to get a spot. Fortunately, there was a second, larger parking lot off the highway 12 minutes away. To get to the falls, we walked under part of the Union Pacific Railroad, a historic Railroad and now the biggest Railroad company in the world. The falls were beautiful. We walked up the hill to walk over a bridge right in front of the falls. It was very nice. When we were finished exploring the area, we returned to the car and had pasta for dinner. That night we slept at a large rest area off the highway. I couldn’t believe how many people were there sleeping in their cars. Nearly every single parking spot in all three lots were taken.
Sunday morning, we drove on to McMinnville to shower at Planet Fitness. After that, we did laundry and then had lunch at Jack in the Box, a west coast fast food restaurant. The food was good, but expensive. Then we went grocery shopping. We are staying at an AirBnB on the coast in Lincoln City Sunday and Monday night. It has an oven that we’re looking forward to making use of. This was another great week and we’re looking forward to the next. As always check out more pictures from Washington State here, and look for pictures from Oregon coming soon here.
Fun Facts from Week 13:
- Seattle is not the capital of Washington; Olympia is.
- An estuary is where fresh water from rivers and streams meets salt water from the ocean.
- The Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park gets the most rain per year in the continental US at 140”/year.
- The tallest waterfall in the US is Olo’upena Falls in Hawaii. It is only visible in the rainy season, where it falls 2953 ft.
One response to “Week 13”
I love reading your blog, I look forward to it.