Olympic National Park

It was a very, very long day. Totally exhausting, but also totally worth it. We left early (06h30) and went on our way to the Olympic Peninsula. Our plan was to see as much of the Olympic National Park as we could. I guess we wanted to see too much... 

Before entering the Park, we stopped in Port Angeles for information (to the Twilight fans out there: does it ring a bell?). The nice lady from the Port Angeles Tourist Office assured us that our plan was very feasible, and so we believed that. It was funny how she overloaded us with Twilight-information, just because we mentioned we wanted to pass Forks...

From Port Angeles, we drove into the Olympic National Park. Our first stop here was Hurricane Ridge, which has a height of 1598m and an incredible panoramic view over the Olympic Mountains. Our next stop was Lake Cresent and Marymere Falls. The trail towards the falls passed trough a tunnel under the highway, and the world that opened up to us behind the tunnel was just magical. The Olympic National Park harbors one of the few temperate coniferous rainforests that are left on our planet. The humid atmosphere allows the trees to grow over 90m and results in wood that is all-over covered with damp mosses. Those mosses give it a magical-elf-like feeling. According to Alyshia, they look like the moon of Endor. The core of the rainforest can be found along the Hoh river, giving the forest its name: “Hoh Rainforest”. This was our next stop. The “Hall of mosses trail” is the most famous trail and without a doubt shows visitors the most beautiful moss-covererd specimens. 

The Olympic National Park is not only famous for its mountains and rainforest, but also for its rough and unspoiled shores. We chose for a hike along Rialto beach, just North of La Push (yes dear fans: thé La Push). To get there, we had to pass Forks and of course we could not resist to go looking for the High school... (well at least Ann and Alyshia couldn't resist) which was a total bummer. Forks's pretty lame ;-) but we got our picture anyway. We were just in time in La Push for a sunset-on-the-beach. We also hiked up to Split Rock and Hole-In-The-Wall, two nice rock formations on the beach, and were only just in time back to the car before complete nightfall. Hiking after sunset is no good idea, we know, but Hole-In-The-Wall is quite famous and it seemed much closer by than it actually was...

On the way back home we saw a family of 3 racoons crossing the street, a nice surprise to finish our day (that would technically not be finished for another 5 hours – the drive back home).

For more photo's, check picasa