Olympic National Park

When we were planning on camping down at Crater Lake with the Bonds last summer, Tracy had done most of the planning. But when we decided to switch to Olympic National Park (because of the smoke), I spent a lot of time researching what to do there. Then we ended up not going there either because the smoke had moved to literally everywhere in the Pacific Northwest. Because of all that time I spent researching, I really wanted to go up there. So when I saw the kids had 2 random days off in early October, I decided we would go.

Going in October was kind of risky because it can already be very rainy that time of year, but we seriously lucked out and had perfect weather for the days we were there. Olympic National Park doesn't do reservations for most of their campgrounds which was kind of nerve-wracking when we were planning on going in the summer, but we knew we'd have no problem getting a campsite in October. It was also so much less crowded than it would have been in the summer. It was seriously such a great trip!

We drove up there Thursday morning. First we got a campsite at the Mora Campground (on the coast) and got our tent and everything set up. Olympic National Park is huge and incredibly diverse. There is so much beauty to be seen, but there is a good amount of driving to get to the different places. To get to the Mora Campground you go through Forks (made famous by Twilight). We never stopped to take a picture, but it was fun to drive through there many times on our trip.

After we got settled at our campsite we drove over to the Hoh Rain Forest. There we did the Hall of Mosses trail (a 1 mile loop). It was beautiful, but not too different from a lot of the other hiking we have done in the Pacific Northwest.

After our hike we boiled some water to cook noodles and warmed up some spaghetti sauce I had made before our trip for dinner in the parking lot.

It's not a visit to a national park without seeing some wildlife.

After dinner we drove back to our campsite and made a fire for s'mores.

Friday morning started bright and early with a hike to Hole in the Wall. The main reason we chose the Mora Campground was because it was so close to that hike. It must be done at low tide and while we were there low tide was early in the morning. It was definitely worth waking up early for - it was probably my favorite thing we did.

To get to Hole in the Wall you walk along the beach for about a mile and a half. It was so beautiful as the sun was rising and the morning fog was clearing out.

These haystack rocks are one of the things Olympic National Park is famous for.

It is the landmark for Olympic National Park on my National Park poster, so I wanted to make sure we saw them.

We probably could have come a little later because it didn't take us as long to get to Hole in the Wall as we had anticipated, but it was nice to have plenty of time to explore and to not have to be rushing to beat the tide.

We had fun playing in the tide pools. I think we all eventually got brave enough to hold a crab.

After playing and exploring for as long as we wanted we eventually decided to head back.

We got cleaned up and a little more ready for the day since we had basically just gotten up and done the bare minimum before leaving for the hike. Then we drove over to Crescent Lake. We did the hike to Marymere Falls that takes off from from Crescent Lake. It was an easy 1.7 mile hike to a pretty waterfall with beautiful scenery along the way.

We stopped and enjoyed the lake for a bit on the way back. It is a huge lake that is impossible to capture in a picture. I realized after we left that a better way to capture it would have been a video while we drove along it.

We made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch in the parking lot and then drove to the Sol Duc area to do the hike to Sol Duc Falls. It was another picturesque, easy 1.6 mile hike.

This mushroom was unlike any mushroom I'd ever seen in real life before.

It was the best waterfall we saw on the trip - definitely worth seeing. 

After that hike we drove back to camp and warmed up some beef stew I had made before the trip. We made some more s'mores and got ready for bed.

Rog had started feeling sick around dinnertime which really was unfortunate. He spent the night going back and forth between our tent and the bathroom (that thankfully had flushing toilets). I spent the night worried that one of the kids was going to throw up in our new tent! I figured we'd all eaten the same foods, so if it was something he ate, we were all going to get it. Or if it was caused by a virus, we'd all eventually get it because we'd been sharing my Camelbak the whole trip. Fortunately none of the rest of us ended up getting it, so it's one of those unsolved mysteries.

We had planned to hike Hurricane Ridge in the morning before driving home, but since Rog was sick we decided to skip it and just go home. I had realized sometime Friday afternoon that we hadn't taken any pictures of the whole family on our trip and pointed that out to Rog. We decided we'd take one at Hurricane Ridge, so unfortunately we don't have one of all of us together from this trip. Hurricane Ridge is ranked as the top hike in Olympic National Park, so I guess we're going to have to go back and do that one someday. It's one of the closest National Parks to us, so that won't be too hard. Maybe we'll be able to convince the Hobbs to join us next time.

It was a quick trip, but we hit almost all the highlights and had a great time (until Rog got sick of course).