A couple of weeks ago, we had the opportunity to visit Olympic National Park for the first time.  The park is pretty good-sized and has all sorts of ecosystems.  We dedicated 4.5 days to explore it.   We had a couple of set backs (weather being one of them) that prevented us from truly appreciating the park, but we're still glad we went.

Day 1 of our vacation was a long day in the car.  Fourteen hours from our house to Amanda Park where we stayed in a cute little inn near Lake Quinault so we could be close to the location where we needed to pick up backpacking permits.  Our first day in Olympic was gorgeous, and we had wished we could have been backpacking that day.  Instead, we made several stops along the coast until reaching the Hoh Visitor Center.  Our stops included Ruby Beach, Beach 2 and an enormous Cedar Tree that absolutely dwarfed us.

From the Hoh Visitor Center we did a couple of hikes in the Hoh Rain Forest.  We explored the "Hall of Mosses" and imagined just how luscious it would be in the spring after months of rain.  We also hiked to Mineral Springs, a pretty little set of waterfalls along the Hoh River.  Everything was a different shade of green and moss hung everywhere.  We thought it was pretty cool and unlike most places we've visited.  After our hikes in the rain forest, we drove out to Camp Mora (outside of Forks, WA - where everything is "Twilight" oriented), claimed a camp site and then watched the sun set from Rialto Beach.  The day really was beautiful and we couldn't have asked for better.

Unfortunately, we awoke to cloudy skies the following morning and didn't see any patches of blue until 5 days later when we arrived in Hood River, Oregon.     But, despite the weather, we decided we'd stick to our plan and hike to Toleak Point where we originally thought we would stay for two nights.  The hike out was pretty adventurous.  We were in the rain forest for nearly half of it and hiking along the beach for the other half.  The transitions from beach to rain forest were pretty intense.  In every situation we had to climb up a steep hillside by holding onto rather rough ropes secured to trees at the top.   At one point we climbed up a floating ladder made of 4x4s and wire cables - that too had a rope to hang on to.   The hike wasn't too long, just 6.5 miles.  Toleak Point was beautiful, even amidst the clouds, and we were lucky enough that the rain didn't start until after the tent was up.  We then spent the remainder of the day in our tent.   By nightfall, we decided that rather than spend day two in the tent, we'd hike out when the tide was low the following day.

The next day we were surprised to wake up to cloudy, but not rainy skies.  We second guessed our decision to hike back out, but ended up returning to the trailhead anyway.  Before doing so, we walked out to the sea stacks on the point and had fun looking at dozens and dozens of starfish and enormous sea anemones.  We also realized there were big, white seals out on the rocks that we would have loved to get closer too, but the tide wasn't quite low enough.   We then returned to our packs and started the hike back.  We were awfully glad we decided to leave early, from mid-afternoon until the following morning it POURED.   We were soaked and super muddy by the time we got back to the car.  The steep climbs/descents were dangerous and on the last one with the floating ladder (which was missing a rung), I fell hard and cracked a rib. I slipped navigating the missing rung and although I clung to the rope with everything I had, I flew backwards and landed hard on the rungs and the wire cabling.  It made the last 2 miles out incredibly slow and painful.   But it wasn't until later that evening when it just wasn't getting any better that we realized I most likely had cracked a rib.  It was confirmed two days later when we spent over 5 hours in Urgent Care in Sequim, WA.

The day after I got hurt and the day before our visit to Urgent Care, I tried to be tough and we explored the park.  The rains held off somewhat and we did short little hikes to a few places in the cloudy park.  Our first stop was Hurricane Ridge.  We can only imagine how impressive it would be on a clear day.  Our second stop was the Sol Doc region of the park where we hiked in 0.8 miles to see Sol Doc Falls.  We also did a short walk to Marymere Falls.  And I'm realizing only now that we skipped seeing one we had planned on visiting.  I guess that's what pain will do to your memory....

All in all our visit wasn't quite what we expected.  But, we were still glad we went.  We now have visited 20 of the 59 parks!  If I hadn't cracked my rib, we would be at 21 - but we canceled our trip to Ranier.  We'll just have to find another time to go back up to Washington and explore both Ranier and North Cascades....

Pictures from the trip are here.