Olympic National Park

This park has 3 very distinct areas - mountains and glacier, temperate rainforest and Pacific coast. We visited all three, but I can’t give you a favorite, as we didn’t have ideal weather to show any of them off.

We first came into the park in the SE quadrant and explored the Staircase area. There is no remaining staircase, but when the area was first explored in 1890, a cedar staircase was built to get over a bluff in the area. This is old growth, Douglas Fir predominant forest.

I'm not normally a tree-hugger, but as I was beside this giant, I wanted to give a sense of its girth.

And because it’s located in the moist Pacific Northwest, there are loads of mosses and ferns -

There are also huge Red Cedar trees…

… and we got to see the remains of one labelled “Big Cedar,” which had a 14 ft diameter!

We traded this lush, moist area…

… for a stay in Port Angeles, so we could explore Hurricane Ridge. As we drove up to the top…

… we realized we would not have panoramic views, but the views we did have set quite the mood -

We got to see some wildlife…

… including this Sooty Grouse -

The male has yellow over the eye and bare skin patches on his chest for use in courting -

(you'll need to enlarge the center for better detail)

We also were treated to new flowers (really?? oh yes!) -

Harebells

Broad Scaled Owl's Clover

As we descended, we were given glimpses of the views we could have seen on a clearer day -

We were then heading counterclockwise around the Olympic Peninsula to visit the Pacific Coast. On our way, we took in a trail near the northwestern-most point in the continental US. I had read that the trail was quite muddy, but it started off very innocently…

… with some cool fungi…

… before we hit the middle mile of mud -

In the picture above, you can easily see a way around the worst of the mud, but for a good portion of that mile, we felt like “tough mudders”. Not really. We didn’t have to crawl around in it, but there was a lot of balancing (or not) on fallen branches, and general ‘mucking about’.

We made it to Shi Shi Beach!

We had this 2 mile long beach nearly to ourselves.

Above, the collection of sea stacks is called the Point of Arches. As we headed back, we tried not to dwell on the river of mud we had to traverse again.

To finish the story, we did make it back relatively unscathed and drove on to Forks, where we were spending the next two nights. That town was used for filming both “Twin Peaks” and “Twilight”. And there’s your pop culture trivia for the day ;)

Mother Nature is a beautiful artist!

Another post on Olympic NP will be coming soon.