Olympic Peninsula

We started our Labor Day weekend with intentions toward activity. The past two weekends we've been sedentary and we needed to do something dramatic to break the cycle. Desi planned a day of hiking on the Olympic Peninsula, specifically in the Hoh Rain Forest, and a day at Mt. Rainier, specifically at Paradise. The idea was to hike on Saturday, rest on Sunday, and hike on Monday.

We started out leisurely on Saturday morning, hitting the 11:25AM ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island. We stopped in Port Angeles for lunch and at the Olympic National Park visitors center near Hurricane Ridge for a map of the park. Afterwards, we were off towards the western side of the peninsula, trying to hit the Hoh before it got dark. We paid our $15 park entrance fee and arrived at the Hoh around 5PM. We spent about 1.5 hours on a leisurely walk, taking us along the Hall of Mosses Trail (.08 miles) and the Spruce Nature Trail (1.2 miles), both loop trails. The Spruce Nature Trail took us along a piece of the Hoh River, which was lovely. Now, if we'd planned this day better, we would've brought an overnight bag, because we were about 4 hours from home and it was quickly getting dark. Plus, we weren't done exploring. But, since we didn't plan the day very well at all, we headed back to the ferry and got home around 1AM.

Sunday morning we awoke to torrential rain. We were pretty anxious to hit the trails again and wrestled with a rainy mountain hike (Mt. Rainier) or heading back to the Olympic Peninsula, where we'd already paid our park admission fee (good for 7 days) but would also have to pay the $35 ferry fare again. Both being equidistant from our abode, and experiencing the same weather, we decided to head to the Olympic Peninsula again because the forests would provide excellent coverage from the rain, whereas we weren't sure of Mt. Rainier's forests and didn't want to hike in mud.

We caught the 12:20PM ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island and stopped in Paulsbo for lunch. We also stopped in Sequim to see the Strait of Juan de Fuca and check out the Dungeness Spit. We didn't walk the spit, but we did do a nice bluff hike along the shoreline.

Afterwards, we headed to the Elwha River Valley.
We stopped right at the entrance for a super short hike to Madison Falls.
Then we headed to the trail head for Olympic Hot Springs. The hike was 4.9 miles round trip and took us 2.25 hours.
There were three river crossings: the first one with no assistance, the second one with a primitive wooden bridge,
and the third one with a solid footbridge.
Though the trail was paved for the most part, the distance and river crossings made this a moderate hike.

We could easily spend a week on the Olympic Peninsula. In the 10 years we've lived in Seattle, this was only our second time in the park. We'd like to spend at least one more weekend there before leaving the area next year. Perhaps exploring the Lake Crescent and Sol Duc areas next time.