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| Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center |
After leaving the Asford area near Mount Rainier, we made our way northwest to the Olympic Peninsula. The drive around Puget Sound was beautiful, with several quaint, small towns lining the shore. If we weren't hauling a 5th wheel, we might have stopped a few times!
Olympic National Park is just under 923,000 acres, making it the 13th largest National Park, a large portion of the Olympic Peninsula. It's an interesting shape, since it includes the Olympic Mountains at its center, surrounded by a coastal strip to the west, but does not include some of the land between the mountains and the coast. With 3.7 million visitors in 2024, it ranked as the 8th most visited National Park.
Our home base while on the peninsula was a nice, smaller campground just west of Port Angeles. We were only about seven miles from the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center, with a 13-mile, 30-minute scenic drive into the park to reach the Hurricane Ridge trailhead. As with many trails, we often find we end up parking at least a mile away, a good warm-up for the hike! Hurricane Ridge Trail is a paved trail, all uphill for about 1.5 miles. Good thing there are benches to rest, and of course, pausing often to catch our breath and take in the views! Often when hiking we say hi or good morning to hikers passing by. On this trail we glanced at two young women coming up the path, said hi, then a quick pause and Tim said, "hey wait, we know you!" One of them is the sister of a kid that played baseball with our son. So we've been with her at many games. Chatted for a bit and found out that they were also visiting all three national parks in Washington. What a coincidence .... I wonder if we'll see them again at another national park...
We then drove back towards the Port Angeles area and on to Lake Crescent, about 20 miles west, to take on the Marymere Falls Trail. This was an easy-to-moderate hike through an old-growth forest leading to a 90-foot waterfall. The 1.8-mile round-trip trail is known for its lush, mossy trees, two bridge crossings, and a final climb up nature stairs to reach two viewpoints of the falls. The leaves were 'prehistoric' size; as one person said, they reminded her of 'Land Before Time'.
For our second full day in the National Park, we drove to the Mora area and Rialto Beach, known for its rugged, dramatic scenery, featuring rocky shores, giant driftwood logs, and views of sea stacks. Our walk was just about 1.5 miles to a place known as Hole-in-the-Wall, accessible only at low tide. We could definitely see the tide rising even during our 90 minutes on the beach!
Our last hike took us back inland, to the Sol Duc Falls Trailhead. Again, there was limited parking at the trailhead, with such narrow roads that even parking along the road was not an option, especially with a Chevy 3500, so we ended up at a campground over 2 miles away. But this time the hike before the hike was a nice trail along the Sol Duc River. Once we entered the Sol Duc Falls area, we were met with beautiful, lush forests and another amazing waterfall as a reward. We ended up at just about 20,000 well-earned steps for the day!
If I were to ever visit this area again, I would enter the Quinalt Area and be sure to visit the Hoh Rainforest. Apparently you have to arrive by 7AM to get a parking spot (the Park Ranger said Safeway has a bigger parking lot), and that just didn't work out based on where we were camping. Our last stop on our Washington National Parks roadtrip: North Cascades.
</Have you ever been to Olympic National Park or the Olympic Peninsula? Leave your comments below! Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts by following us.
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