Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park shares the Olympic Peninsula with national forest land, military installations, indigenous tribal reservations, private land holdings, state and county parks, and a smattering of small towns and rural outposts. The borders of the national park are not contiguous. There is a large inland, mountainous unit and several smaller coastal units. To visit the entire park, patience and long drives are required, because you are covering a land area roughly the size of Yellowstone National Park, and with just as much beauty and intrigue.

Read our Olympic itinerary

Our journey to Olympic involved putting our camper van onto a ferry from mainland Washington State to the Olympic Peninsula — a quintessential Seattle-area venture. We departed from Coupeville on Whidbey Island, crossed the Salish Sea (Puget Sound) near its mouth, and landed at Port Townsend. Our first evening was spent at a KOA campground in Port Angeles, the gateway to Olympic National Park.

We were lucky to have completely clear skies that evening and night — a rarity for the Pacific Northwest. These were ideal star gazing conditions, which coincided perfectly with the peak of the Perseids meteor shower.

The girls stayed up way past their bedtime, as we found our way to a very dark space in a field near the campground. For about an hour, we watch meteors, identified constellations, and marveled at the clarity of the milky way stretching across the sky above us.

The next morning, the clear sky was gone. A shift in winds overnight had brought smoke from wildfires in Oregon (hundreds of miles away) to Olympic. The conditions were so bad that the Park Rangers at the Port Angeles Visitor Center advised us to not even make the drive to Hurricane Ridge. One of the most visited vistas in the park was completely socked in.

As we experienced at some point in almost every park, this day was to be a “Plan B” day! We acquired the girls’ Junior Rangers workbooks at the visitor center, and began plan an alternate itinerary.

We cracked our guide book to find a sticky note with a great idea. Weeks ago at Rocky Mountain, we’d been chatting with a Park Ranger about the entirety of our trip. She had worked the previous season at Olympic and told us about an oft-overlooked county park that might best suit our schedule for tidal pool exploration. If the tides at the traditional, Pacific facing beaches didn’t mesh with our schedule, we should try Salt Creek Recreation Area near Port Crescent. “Salt Creek” was written on the yellow sticky note that we had (smartly) placed in the Olympic section of our national parks guide book.

A quick stop at nearby Madison Falls — which required a very short stroll — and we were on our way to the coast of the Straight of San Juan De Fuca. Salt Creek was a welcome stop, and one we would recommend for anyone visiting Olympic National Park. In fact, if you can’t make it to the coastal regions of the national park, this is a must see.

We hit the coast at a low, rising tide and spent hours exploring tide pools and the adjacent beaches. It’s a popular shoreline and campground, but not crowded. We even watched some people on surf boards floating in some pretty decent waves doing something that resembled surfing. (Sorry, for the surf snobbery; we live in Hawaii’i.) However, the water was too cold for us to venture too far out.

Next stop was the south shore of Lake Cresent and an afternoon hike to Marymere Falls (~2.0 miles & 300 feet) — where the trail out was just as beautiful as the waterfall destination. On the way back, we dipped our feet in the lake, which was we estimated was warmer than the ocean water.

After an evening at Sol Duc Campground — where we had to evict a very nice couple who had pitched their tent in our reserved campsite (though, luckily they got the last first come, first serve site in the campground) — we made our way right back to Lake Cresent in the morning.

This was an unplanned visit, but — as all spontaneous adventures seem to be — was a blast. We donned our swim suits on a warm sunny day and dared to wade out into the lake and jump off the dock into chilly, but refreshing lake water. We grabbed lunch in the van and then trekked back into the Sol Duc valley.

The trail to Sol Duc Falls (~2.0 miles & 300 feet) was magnificent, and the falls — spilling from multiple directions into a narrow canyon — were astounding. We walked up the river and sat on an island for a bit. We left in time to make it to our reservations at Sol Duc Hot Springs, a curated experience at a natural hot spring that has been an attraction for more than a century.

Our relaxing soak helped us get a good night’s sleep in preparation for what would be the longest hike of the entire trip. We awoke early to make the nearly two-hour drive to Ozette. It’s a roundabout drive through some pretty wild country. North, then west to Highway 101, east for a few miles, then north to the coast. Follow the ocean northwest, before turning southwest along a winding road, hit the lake, and jog a couple more miles northwest.

This hike is well worth the drive. The Ozette Triangle, also called the Ozette Loop or Cape Alava Loop, is a 9.4 mile hike that follows a boardwalk for about three miles to the beach, then tracks about three miles south on the beach, and then returns via another boardwalk for another three miles. When we reached the beach, we walked a bit to the north to set foot on Cape Alava, the Westernmost point in the contiguous United States. That made our total for the hike 10.3 miles — the longest hike either of the girls had either done.

Along the way, we discovered swings and seesaws made from marine debris found along the beach — old boat ropes, buoys, and wooden planks. We also encountered the rotting corpse of a juvenile gray whale (it could also have been a humpback). From some older photos on hiking apps, we determined that the whale had likely died 3-4 months prior, and the smell — especially from downwind — made that theory quite believable.

Another two-hour drive (still worth it for that hike), and we arrived at Kalaloch campground in the coastal region of Olympic. We took advantage of the late sunsets of early August to venture out on an evening stroll along the beach to the Kalaloch “Tree of Life”, which is the must visit in the Kalaloch area.

The next morning — our last full day in Olympic — took us to the Hoh Rain Forest. We had to wait almost an hour in our car to pass through the entry gate. The park service limits entry to one-car-in-one-car-out once the parking lot fills. Once we got in, we took off on the Hoh River Trail in search of the One Square Inch of Silence.

The One Square of Silence is a location not far off the Hoh River Trail signified by a single red stone and said to be “the quietest place in the United States.” The red stone was place in 2005 by Gordon Hempton, who has made a living studying naturally quiet places. After close to four miles and some off-trail sleuthing, we sat down at the famous red stone. We spent five peaceful minutes in complete silence — no noises, beyond the birds and the wind. It was calming and peaceful.

We enjoyed our lunch at the spot, until another pair of hikers approached. At that point, we abandoned the site for them to enjoy, and proceeded back down the trail. In total, we covered 8.1 miles and 300 feet. It should not go without mentioning that the Hoh River Trail and the entire Hoh Rain Forest Region are awe inspiring examples of the temperate rainforest, and quite frankly one of the most beautiful places in America.

Back at the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center, the girls participated in a Junior Ranger program focused on geology. While they waited for the program to begin, they also dove into the Olympic National Park Ocean Steward workbook. Before we left they were sworn in as NPS Junior Ocean Stewards.

We finished at Hoh and returned to Kalaloch for our last night in Olympic. We didn’t get to everything we wanted to do in the national park, but the places we visited and sights we saw were some of the best we’ve seen on the trip. Beaches and mountains, hikes and tide pools, hot springs and waterfalls, long drives and amazing experiences.

In the morning, we packed up and headed to our final park on the trip: Mount Rainier.

Mount Rainier

North Cascades National Park