Olympic National Park
Broke camp early and went to Jack-in-the-box for breakfast. Met a strange, scruffy man who admired Dawn's Glacier Park T-shirt so much, he was going to make it his "life's goal" to make it out to Glacier to get the same T-shirt! OOO-K! Went into the park and stopped at the visitor center. I briefly thought I lost my National Park Passport Stamp book there, but I found it between the seats in the truck. It was a beautiful, clear day as we drove up to Hurricane Ridge for some stunning alpine views. They have another large visitor center and gift shop up there, as well as a picnic area. There were some crazy, spandex-clad bike riders up there, who (ignoring "keep off the grass" signs), were dancing around in the meadow singing songs from "The Sound of Music"! Is everyone here just weird, or what? Olympic Park is often referred to as 3 parks in one, since it has snowcapped mountains, a rainforest, and a seashore.
Our next stop was Crescent Lake, where we hiked the trail up to Marymere Falls. Tyler got wet playing in the creek bed, and Dawn found an interesting piece of coral in the dry riverbed. Coral in the mountains?? Tyler also found a live crayfish along the lake shore. It was almost as big as a lobster, but without the big claws.
Next stop was the trail to Sol Duc Falls. I had seen pictures of this triple waterfall online while doing research for this trip, now I wanted to see it in person. It did not disappoint! It was a nice, scenic trail through the woods to get to the falls and back.
We continued on down to the shoreline, and we were able to get a beautiful campsite right on the beach. You had to cross a creek on foot to get there, so we had to leave the truck in the parking lot and haul our gear down the beach, taking several trips. We arrived there just in time to catch the sunset over the Pacific. Awesome! We gathered up some driftwood for a fire and cooked hamburgers and hot dogs under a full moon. This was the best campsite we've seen so far, and it was also the cheapest...only $10! Wasn't crowded either, only a few surfers camping there to catch the first waves in the morning. We had a large section of the beach all to ourselves. The town was called "La Push", but it was more like a small Native American village.
