Olympic National Park, Day 2

How doing all of you avid Blog readers,

Josh, Ben, Daniel and Anna here ready to give you a write-up on our second day in Olympic National Park on Friday.  Coast, forest and mountain ecosystems combine to create this spectacular wilderness park.  It’s the only park in the nation where you can explore the snow in the morning and ocean tide pools in the afternoon!  Our day on the Olympic Peninsula began with a wake-up call at 6:00 a.m., breakfast and a drive to the Olympic coast.  We pulled into the parking lot of Beach 4 where we began our trek to the beach.  The ½ mile trail wound through a spectacular rain forest complete with a waterfall draining to the beach.  We walked another ½ mile along the gravel beach while waves crashed against the shore.  The rocks were perfect were skipping across the ocean waves.  When we reached a rock area, we discovered the most wonderful tide pools.  The rock pools were filled with water creatures including colorful sea stars, sea annenomies, urchins and barnacles.  Unfortunately, the tide came in quickly so we could only enjoy our sea friends for about an hour. 

We walked through the rain forest back to the van and headed about 30 miles away to an incredible rain forest.  This rain forest is the only one of its kind in the world.  It gets roughly 180 inches of precipitation annually making it a extremely wet climate.  Well we arrived at the rain forest and started out on a 1.3 mile round trip hike to a old homestead.  Once we were below the forest canopy it was like we walked into another world; moss covered everything and there were ferns almost 4 feet high. After we returned from our little hike through the jungle we clambered back into the van and drove off to rendezvous with dad and Gi-gi in the RV. That pretty much sums up our day at Olympic National Park.  

One of the tide pools

Beaches, rainforests and mountains!

Hiking through the rainforest

Look at those ferns!