Olympia National Park

The second half of this vacation was in this National Park with stays at Fairholme CG on a 12 mile long mountain lake, Hoh CG in the heart of Olympia rainforest and Kalaloch CG on the ocean beach.

On Sunday June 28 we got the rental RV and headed to Fairholme. We took the ferry from Edmunds Wa. across Puget Sound to Kingston Wa., then after a stop at Walmart for supplies we headed for our campsite. All that took the whole day and we arrived at or just after dark. Here is our Fairholme campsite…..

Monday Will’s family went to Devil’s Punch bowl to see it and to SWIM!!!. This water is cold. Will and AK jumped in from a bridge and swam a little, Noel got in briefly. The water was an unusual blue color, almost fluorescent. After another hike we met at Fairholme Lake Lodge for an excellent meal. Will and Colleen had the northwest boil for two. Kind of like a low country boil but instead of crawdads and shrimp they had Dungeness crab, mussels and salmon. All our meals here were excellent.

June 29 was hikes to Marymere falls for all of us and Sol duc hot springs for Will, Colleen and co.

Wednesday July 1 saw Will and I and AK go to Sol Duc river to fly fish. No luck but it was a beautiful river and reminded me how much I like fly fishing. Mid afternoon we left to go to the Elwha River Casino to eat supper and watch the USA vs. Bosnia world cup game. Turned out to be a good choice. Food was good, TV screen was huge and the place wasn’t crowded.

July 2 we left Fairholme for Hoh Campground, in the rain forest (to be a rain forest it must get at least 80 inches of rain a year, Hoh gets about 130 in.) Here are some pictures of Hoh Campsite with Will’s RV behind and an RV bus (not ours) in far background, and two pictures showing the moss on trees. A researcher got permission to sacrifice a tree, happened to be a big leaf maple, so she could thoroughly analyze the moss on it. The moss she removed weighed 2, 000 pounds, when dried. It could be several inches thick and essentially became itself like topsoil for other things to grow in.

We all hiked the Hall of Mosses Trail, and attended at least one ranger talk. AK gave a ranger talk too. Intended for just us, we walked to the amphitheater where an actual park ranger happened to be present, he listened to most of her talk. He was quite impressed. We fly fished again, the Hoh river ran right beside our camp. I saw a Roosevelt Elk, the largest elk in the US, it is black from the neck up.

On Sunday July 5 we all went to Kalaloch Campground, on the ocean. We only had that afternoon and the next morning on the beaches there. On that afternoon Will, Noel and Anne Kash played soccer on the beach with another family, a dad and two kids the same age as Noel and AK, but both boys. We watched a world cup game in the rented RV (it had starlink) then roasted hot dogs and made woofums. The next day we went to Second beach (Will’s family) or Ruby Beach (us) being sure to be there at low tide. Here are two pictures. Very different from the southern beaches we are more used to….

Ruby beach here at low tide. I saw a bear picking its way along the drift wood along the edge of the beach and woods. Didn’t linger to watch it as I was walking both dogs. The forest along the ocean is Sitka spruce, it is adapted to withstand salt water spray and acts as a buffer between other conifers and the ocean.

Here is a picture of a tide pool, at low tide of course. Notice the profusion of life, orange and purple starfish, mussels, sea anemone opened up exposing their inner yellow and green color. Sea urchins and crabs are present but the latter are hard to see in this picture.

Time was catching up to us, we needed a day to get back to Seattle to return the RV, and it was important to watch the USA vs. Belgium world cup game. We split up, they drove back across the Olympic peninsula, we headed to the Elwha casino again to watch the game there with plans to ferry across to Victoria British Columbia the next morning. That will be on a later post.