We stayed 4 nights at RV@Olympic in Port Angeles, spent two days exploring Olympic National Park, and still did not see all of the popular highlights. Port Angeles is a convenient location for seeing Hurricane Ridge and Lake Crescent. But it took us two hours to drive to Beach 4 on our second day in the park, so we didn’t bother driving through the section beyond that.
After we got settled into the campsite, we decided to try to find a good seafood restaurant, thinking a town right on the water should have fresh and tasty seafood! We ended up at Downriggers Waterfront Restaurant which had nice views of the Straits of Juan de Fuca. It was a clear day, so we could easily see over to Victoria, Canada. The food was pretty good, but I didn’t feel like it was exceptional. Oh well, still enjoyable. Also, between the two days of sight seeing in Olympic, we hit a couple of highlights in the nearby town of Sequim, which was fun.
DAY 1
Our first stop in Olympic National Park was Hurricane Ridge. The entrance to that area was only about 15 minutes from our campground, but the road takes about 40 minutes to drive to the top. The panoramic views of the Olympic Mountains are definitely worth the drive! When we walked to the first overlook via the Cirque Rim Trail, there was a ranger giving a guided walk/talk, so we hung out with him for about 20 minutes, then did the 1 mile High Ridge Trail loop and up the Sunrise Point. It was a beautiful day, with phenomenal views! On the way back down, we saw a family of Black Tail Deer, which was cool. There wasn’t much else to do up there, since the visitor center burned down and hasn’t been rebuilt, so we drove the back the way we came. If you zoom in on the photo with the white car, you can see tiny people up on the ridge where we hiked.
Our Guide Along app suggested going to the Elwha Valley area to hike the Madison Falls Trail. There were signs warning of a closed road and limited parking, but we decided to go check it out anyways. We ate our lunch beside the Elwha River, then did the quick and easy hike to the falls. We’ve seen so many water falls by now, it’s harder to impress us, haha, so this one was just ok.
We drove past Lake Crescent on our way to the Sol Duc Valley area, planning to stop at the lake on our way back to the RV. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any jumping Salmon at the Salmon Cascades, so that’s still on my bucket list of things to see one day! We hiked about 2 miles out and back to see the Sol Duc Falls, which were nice. I sat down on a bench near the falls to wait on Randy taking pics and started talking to another lady sitting there. We were comparing all the parks we had gone to and telling about our favorites when another lady sat down and joined the conversation. I like friendly people!
From there, we started heading back to Port Angeles and stopped to admire the crystal-clear, glacier-carved Lake Crescent. We had planned to hike to Marymere Falls, but it was getting late and we were pretty tired, so we ended up skipping that one.
DAY 2
While listening to the Guide Along app, we learned that lavender farms were very popular in this area, since the climate is just right for lavender to grow. He mentioned we should definitely try some lavender ice cream while in the area, so we visited B&B Family Farm, Sequim’s largest lavender farm. They gave a free tour, which was super interesting. Then we bought some lavender ice cream, lavender lemonade, lavender chocolate and a sampler pack of jellies, with strawberry lavender, blueberry lavender & pear lavender flavors. It was ALL so good that I can’t decide which was my favorite, but high on the list was the ice cream and lavender pear jelly; and the chocolates were the lowest.
After we finished sniffing the lavender fields, we drove to Dungeness Spit, a narrow piece of land formed by sediment deposits that extends out into the water from the shore. At over 5 miles long, it’s one of the largest natural spits in the world. We didn’t realize when we parked that we would be walking 1.5 miles to get down to the spit, but it was a nice day and an enjoyable walk. (We should have driven into the National Wildlife Refuge instead of parking in the first lot we saw nearby.) We started along the top of the bluffs, then the trail went through a forest before steeply descending down to the coast and onto the spit. We laid out our picnic blanket and enjoyed the sun and the sound of ocean waves for about an hour.
DAY 3
On our last full day, we drove two hours to get to Beach 4, which a French guy named Theo, who we met at Mount Rainier, highly recommended. It did not disappoint! We made sure to leave early enough to get there during low tide so we could walk around the tide pools to see the aquatic life. We saw lots of starfish, anemones, mussels and barnacles and a few crabs, I was worried this wouldn’t be worth the 4 hours of driving required to do, but it was such a unique experience that we were both glad we made the trip.
We could have kept driving south on Hwy 101 to see the Quinault Rainforest, but since we were planning on stopping at the Hoh Rainforest on the way home, we decided to forego driving further away from the RV. On our way to Hoh, we stopped to see the Tree of Life and Ruby Beach. The Ruby Beach area was super congested, with lines of cars waiting in both directions on the main road to turn onto the road to the parking lot. Randy decided to make his own parking spot between a road construction sign and the parking lot road, which worked out well. We had to walk an extra half mile through the parking lot, but it was worth not dealing with the traffic hassle. I decided the view of the beach from the overlook was good enough for me, so I walked back to the truck to eat lunch while Randy walked down on his own. As I was walking back, someone looking for a parking spot asked if I was leaving. I told them I was waiting for my husband and that we were parked way out by the road anyway. Evidently, they didn’t find a spot, and I was able to walk faster than they were able to drive, because they yelled out, “Nice parking spot!” as I was climbing up into the truck and they were turning onto the main road. I’m grateful that we’ve been very blessed to find parking everywhere we’ve wanted to stop; many times taking the last spot in the lot.
The Hoh Rain Forest is a temperate rainforest that gets about 140 inches of rain per year, but it was a nice sunshine-y day when we were there. We walked along the Hoh River Trail for about a mile before turning around. The trail was nice enough, but it really didn’t look much different than a lot of the other trails we had done, with mossy trees and ferns covering the ground. Perhaps we would’ve been more impressed on a different trail, but we decided to start the long drive home instead.
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