On our third day, we said good-bye to Seattle and headed over to Olympic National Park. Olympic National Park covers a wide range of terrains from the rocky Washington coast to rain forests to mountains. The weather was probably the worst on this day… it started hailing at one point when we were hiking. You can’t actually drive through the park, so most of the park (probably around 95%) can only be accessed by foot. I would love to come back for a backpacking trip… or even just to see the beaches again when the weather is better. Rain isn’t uncommon at Olympic National Park, but it was exceptionally cold and there were gale warnings when we were there. We had planned on camping at Olympic for two nights, but since the weather was so bad, we car camped in our rental Chevy HHR, which actually worked out pretty well.
Us and our rental car rode the Bremerton Ferry west towards the other side of Washington.
Driving through the mountains around Olympic, we stopped to take some pictures at Lake Crescent, an alpine lake.
Our first stop at Olympic was a hike to Marymere Falls.
Most of the older growth forest floor looked like this. Lots of fallen trees with moss and ferns.
Olympic National Park
Rocky beaches at Rialto Beach.
Rialto Beach.
I love how the forest comes right up to the beach. You have to hike out to most of the beaches in Olympic. It’s like discovering a secret place when you finally get there. Maybe because we were there during their off-season, but we mostly had the beaches to ourselves.
Second Beach.
Second Beach was my favorite beach of the day.
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