Yesterday was a very big, very long day for us! I have been dying to go the Olympic beaches/Olympic National Park for some exploring for some time now. Since this weekend was shaping up beautifully, Catherine and the kids indulged me (yeah!!).
We had thought about driving there on Friday and camping, but since we were late to the party there were no reservations available. So we decided to just make the long drive (2 1/2 hours, maybe longer) in the early morning since there was a Ranger-led tidal pool walk just north of Kalaloch. I loaded up the car the night before, laid out all of our clothes, and then woke everyone up at 4 am.
We were on the road shortly after 4:30, and had the road pretty much to ourselves. Everyone else slept most of the way, which is what we had planned. We arrived at the meeting place for the beach/tidal pool walk with about 10-15 minutes to spare. This was the beach where we explored, below:
The Ranger that gave our walk and talk was informative and a bit fun. The kids absolutely loved walking on the beach, exploring the tidal pools, drawing in the sand, getting their feet wet - the list could go on. The big kids did, too. Though the sun, fresh air, nice breeze, and sounds of the surf were pretty awesome too.
After the walk on Beach 4, we made our way a bit to the north to Ruby Beach. I had read that there were some good sea stacks there. There were some, just not as many as I had hoped. There was a nice pond and river leading into the ocean with this huge sea stack standing sentinel.
The beaches were strewn with HUGE logs that get washed out from the rain forests upstream. They get thrown into the Pacific and tumbled about, eventually washing up on the shoreline. We generally didn't play much on the logs since we were more concerned with the tidal pools and the surf, but towards the end we did explore the upper portions of the beach a bit.
All this fun took us up to about lunch. For all you Twilight fans (no, I'm NOT a fan. I still don't understand why Catherine wanted to punish me by watching one of the movies together . . . but I digress ;) ) we made our way to Forks where we had a nice lunch. From there we headed back in the direction of home, with a detour to the Hoh Rain Forest in the Olympic National Park.
It was a nice walk through the rain forest (over 130 inches of rain per year - which sounds impressive, but the mountains have had over 900 inches of snow this past winter, which is still lingering!!!), but it was lacking in rain. I've read that it is best to visit in time of rain/fog for the right atmosphere, which I'm inclined to believe.
Have a happy 4th of July everybody. I'll be working at the hospital (blah). There was a last minute change to the duty roster, and guess who got picked! Oh well, I'll have the 5th off instead. Cheers!
Marc
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