Olympic National Park

Chinook, WA - Copalis Beach, WA

5/29/24 - 5/30/24

Miles Traveled   101
Trip Total          4972
Travel Time       2:35

States visited: FL, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, NM, AZ, UT, NV, CA, OR, Washington

Another rainy but uneventful drive. Leaving Chinook we continued to travel Highway 101 but we have left the coast of Washington and have been traveling along some of the bays.  With such a short drive we attempted to stop for breakfast along the route with no luck.  There were very few restaurants, and the ones we did pass barely hand room for cars, stopping with two RV's towing cars was out of the question.    We ended up arriving at the RV Park long before check-in time.  Sometimes when this happens we end up waiting before we can get into our sites.  This time our sites were empty and we were able to get in early.  Copalis Beach is the farthest NorthWest campground we will be staying on during our trip. We have traveled 5000 miles and as the crow flies we are over 2500 miles from where we started in Inverness FL.

Friday we started a new Shaka Guide audio tour around the western side of Olympic National Park.  The park covers almost one million acres, over seventy miles of coastline, and several distinctly different ecosystems.  From Copalis Beach we stuck with the western side of the park.  We explored two separate rain forest, and the beaches. To fully explore the entire park would take several days and several miles of hiking.  

We started the tour visiting the Quinault Lake Lodge and Visitor Center.  Normally we get very good information stopping at the Visitor Center, this time not so much.  The person at the counter barely wanted to give us a map of the area, never mind any information.  Walking along the lake front, we spoke with a young lady running the canoe rental, and she was more than willing to give us information.  The lady at the information desk could take some customer service lesson from her!     Lake Quinault is a glacier carved lake with over thirty miles of shoreline.  Between our limited time, and several miles of the shoreline road being a dirt road, we passed on driving the entire perimeter route.  We did drive as far as the paved road went, which took us to a short hike to the world's largest Sitka Spruce Tree with a circumference of 58'11".   While it is not as large as the Redwoods we have seen it was still very impressive.

After leaving the Sitka Spruce we hiked the Wrights Canyon Trailhead through the rainforest to a water fall.  The hike we took was listed as an "easy hike", we are all sure the person that did the listing was much younger and in much better shape LOL.  In reality the hikes are getting easier as we do them, but part of is we are back at sea level instead of 6000' above sea level.  As we climbed the hills we were surrounded by ferns and trees covered with moss, and as much as we wanted to see wildlife, there was none. 

Leaving the rainforest we headed to Kalaloch and the Tree Of Life.  The Tree Of Life is a tree that is suspended between two cliffs at the edge of the ocean.  The soil from under most of its roots has been washed away by a stream, yet the tree hangs on gripping onto each side of the cliff.  We arrived at low tide and beach stretched on for a couple of hundred yards, at high tide most of the beach will disappear.  

Our last stop for the day was Ruby Beach.  Ruby Beach is famous for it's abundance of driftwood and sea stacks.  Sea Stacks are large stacks of rocks in the ocean that look like tall stone towers.  There are signs on the walk to the beach warning you to be careful walking of the driftwood.  The driftwood can shift at anytime, especially if the tide comes in.  Most of the driftwood comes from trees that fall into the streams and rivers that flow down the mountains.  Leaving Ruby Beach I stopped to talk to two gentleman that were biking and stopped at the beach for a break.  Both bikes had front & rear saddle bags, and tablets mounted on the handle bars. They left from San Diego and were heading to Canada, then Maine and then down to Key West.  Over all the trip is going to be 15,000 miles, what an adventure.

Leaving Copalis Beach we are going to make our way to the other side of Olympic National Park.