Day 19 - 9/23 - Into Olympic National Park - part one

If we could have ordered good weather, we would have done it for today. Yesterday, when returning to Port Angeles from Victoria, it was too smoky to see Mount Olympus in the middle of Olympic National Park. (A wildfire broke out several days earlier in the park. Since there is no danger to infrastructure the decision has been to let it be put out by the weather.) Today? Damp, rainy weather decided to move in bringing with it a low ceiling and limited visibility. It was not a sunny day. However, it was ideal for helping to extinguish a fire.

It was cloudy and damp feeling when this photo was taken.

It was yet to rain. That came later.

Olympic National Park is similar to Mount Rainier NP in that you can drive around it and into it; you just can’t drive through it. Like Theodore Roosevelt NP, there are no connecting roads to link one major visitor area to another. Like Mt. Rainier, one must drive to different entrances and explore inwardly from the perimeter. By the way, it must be about 160 miles around the edge. US 101 splits at the lower south-eastern part of the park, near Olympia, and wraps around the park, coming back together near Port Angeles.

We started our visit at the Olympic NP at the Visitor Center in Port Angeles. It is located at the north-central part of the park. We entered the center in search of what a ranger would recommend for our two days at Olympic. In the midst of the discussion, we learned the park ranger was also from Louisville, our home base. In fact, he was from Jeffersontown (what we call J-town).

The verbiage of this display provides a good overview of the

varied treasures to be found here. Glacier-capped mountains (when visible),

alpine meadows, spectacular coastline, ancient forests, fish and

wildlife, sparkling clear streams and lakes, native and pioneer history,

exceptionally clean air, biological diversity, and wilderness solitude.

There’s only one national park that offers more — Yellowstone.

Our first stop was Hurricane Ridge which is a drive up to an elevation of 5700 feet. On a clear day, we know that the view would be beautiful. Today, however, Mr. Rain decided we did not need to see the mountains or the valleys more than 1/2 mile in any direction! We drove on the curvy road anyway just to get the experience. From Hurricane Ridge, we headed down and west to Lake Crescent Lodge.

This explains what we should have seen…

…when we actually could only see this.

We encountered steep slopes and three, short tunnels in

our drive to an elevation one-mile high. Some slopes

are too sleep for trees to take root. Others aren’t so steep

yet at an angle that would make hiking difficult.

On the way down we saw a wrecker and two NP cars making an attempt to drag something back up to the roadway. We didn’t see what it was because the bank was too steep to see. Obviously, if it was a car, the driver found that taking the shortcut from one curve to another was not wise.

Lake Crescent is a beautiful lake where the Olympic mountains run right down into the lake. All around the lake, there are steep slopes. At its deepest point, Lake Crescent is 620 feet deep. At the lake, we set off on a 1.6-mile hike to Marymere Falls. It was still raining, but when you’re only in the area for a few days, you embrace the rain and keep going. Quite a few others felt the same way because the trail was busier than we expected.

At Crescent Lake on a day that was damp, cold, and cloudy.

Moss-covered large trees in an ancient forest area where

the 350-foot high trees provide little sunlight to reach the ground.

Many of the trees on the hike to Marymere Falls are huge at

the base and reach up hundreds of feet toward the sky.

The ideal environment for huge ferns exists.

Our final stop of the day was a drive to the Sol-Duc Hot Springs area of the park. Along the way, we stopped at the Salmon Cascades area of the river. Sadly, no salmon were making the trek upstream.

The hot springs at Sol-Duc are open to those willing to give them

a try. Just be sure to have a towel and robe when returning

to change back into street clothing.

In spite of the weather, Olympic National Park is an amazing place. Though similar to Rainier, it is also quite different in several ways. They both are fascinating parks for which we should all be thankful.