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| Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Olympic National Park was the destination we chose for our Spring Vacation this year. Ron and I met brother Scott at the SeaTac Airport, situated between Seattle and Tacoma, on Friday May 17 for a six-day exploration of the Park.
It's been years since my US geography study, and about the only thing I remembered about Washington State was it was "up north". In case you're in the same geographical situation, I'm opening with this map showing the whole state. The Olympic National Park is located on the Olympic Peninsula to the left, which information caused me to realize I wasn't all that clear on exactly what defined a peninsula. Florida came to mind, but the Olympic Peninsula not so much. Defined: "a peninsula is a land form surrounded by water on the majority of its border while being connected to a mainland from which it extends," (Wikipedia.com). Yep, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, the Strait of Juan De Fuca and the Puget Sound, the Olympic Peninsula qualifies.
From SeaTac, we drove north to our first stopping place, Port Angeles. We planned a counter-clockwise drive on the highway shown on the map above as a thin yellow line. The Olympic Peninsula hosts three different ecosystems, and our stay at Port Angeles encompassed the mountain and subalpine mountain portion.
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| The Olympic Mountains from Port Angeles |
As with all of our Spring Vacations, we scheduled this one for just before Memorial Day weekend and the start of the summer tourist season. The trade-off for less busy conditions is that we're early in the season for certain things. Our planned excursion to the Deer Hill area the next day was the victim of that seasonality, with the road not yet in sufficient condition to be opened for vehicle traffic. On to Hurricane Ridge! We stopped at the ranger station at the bottom, which not yet being open for the day, afforded us the opportunity to experience the first of many astounding short hikes we took on this trip. We got our introduction to greenery and moss. We enjoyed it in gape-eyed wonder, little realizing what we would encounter in the following days.
A favorite discovery was a program supported by Friends of the North Olympic Library System called the Poetry Walk. On several of the walks we took, poetry appeared in this form. Click to bring it to reading size.
We then drove up to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center. This is a popular winter sports area, with skiing, snowboarding, tubing, sliding, and snow shoeing all available. There were still traces of snow at the Visitor Center, and plenty on the Olympic Mountains! The deer in this picture were very accustomed to visitors.
We walked in this area, enjoying the views large and small.
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| The lower part of the blue you see is the ocean. |
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| Glacier Lily |
We ended the day with a drive out to Ediz Hook, a sandspit that creates a natural harbor. Though this photo isn't recent, there was no doubt we were in timber country-those are log rafts to the right.
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| Source: commons.wikimedia.org |
Next up: the Pacific Coast ecosystem. Beaches! Tide pools! Sea Stacks! Waves!
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