How diverse is Olympic National Park?
Long winters make me long for greenery and that’s when I want to take a huge shot of it(more like a gulp) I head to rain forests. Having visited Puerto Rico, Vancouver Island, now was the time to visit Washington’s Hoh Rain forest. So we decided to go from Calgary to Olympic National Park in spring of 2024 for 5 days. We made Port Angeles our base for the next 5 days.
Hoh National Forest
On Saturday, we left Calgary at noon to fly to Victoria. From Victoria we boarded the Black Ball Ferry Line to Port Angeles. Ferries in spring runs twice once in morning 8AM from Port Angeles and other at 4PM from Port Angeles. It takes solid 90 mins to cross the Salish Sea. Do reserve some additional time for the United States customs from the Canadian side. We reached Port Angeles at 6PM, collected some groceries and called it for the day at this cute well equipped Airbnb.
On Sunday, we started early and drove for 2 hours to Hoh Rain forest visitor center. On the way take your time to soak in the views of Lake Crescent(notably at Meldrim Point). Out timing was so good, we were able to witness a beautiful rainbow amidst the mist.
At Hoh, we did the Hall of the mosses and Spruce Bottom Nature Trail. Both the trails are pretty small and kid freindly. From there we drove to Second Beach in La push. This is a 2.1 mile easy trail with access to the beach. The beach has some very cool rock formations and I bet the sunsets here are spectacular. Also this trail is shorter than the third beach trail. We called it for the day and drove back to our airbnb in Port Angeles.
Spruce Bottom Trail
On Monday, we went to Storm Ranger Station. There we did the storm king trail. This is 4.1mile hard hike with steep switchbacks. The crescent lake view from top is spectacular. I would highly recommend you to take hiking poles. Also my suggestion would be to not do this hike when it has rained the previous day as it can get slippery at places.
After a tired hike. we found a picnic table at La Poel and ate warm cooked home made food that we had packed early morning. Then we sipped much needed mexican coffee at Feeling Bueno Espresso place.
We drove further to Cape Flattery and this is a the short broad walk of 1.2 mile to see the western most part of Washington. Post that we called for the day and drove back to Port Angeles.
On Tuesday, this was a relaxation kind of day. We started the day by driving to Hurricane Ridge visitor center. There is ample of parking and the views of the valley are so worth it. This time of the year all trails and peaks are covered with snow so there was not much foot traffic. We enjoyed lunch at our Airbnb and then left for Sequim. Here we went to Dungeness Spit. This was so relaxing trail and the white coloured branches all over the beach felt other worldly. From there we did some shopping Sequim and then left for Victoria on Tuesday by a 2PM ferry.
