Olympic National Park
After an overnight in the fairgrounds in Port Townshend, we drove across the peninsula to park at the Ozette Triangle trailhead. This would be the start of an overnight easy backpacking trip along the Pacific coast.
Starting our backpacking adventure
A park ranger was in the parking lot when we arrived. I thought he might be monitoring the trailhead, but he was waiting for a helicopter to come and haul out the waste from the latrines. We didn’t see the copter come in there but we would later in the day as they serviced the coastal sites.
Hiking trail through the coastal forest
The hike in was an easy, flat wooded trail with plenty of boardwalks and steps to avoid the muddy marsh spots. Pacific wrens sung to us as we worked our way to the coast, with barking sea lions taking over as we crested the final slope to the ocean.
Trail bunny
Hiding along the path we saw a little rabbit which Apple and Seek both identified as a snowshoe hare, but I’m unconvinced: more likely a juvenile eastern cottontail rabbit.
Our camp at Cape Alava
Our camp was just above the beach and on arrival the tide was going out. Merlin was picking up black oystercatcher calls so we quickly setup and wandered the beach. This area is rugged, with deep squishy kelp beds on the beach with 100s of thousands of flies swarming (millions?). I was surprised with the flat shore water, broken by the nearby barrier islands. The bulk of the sea lions were out at one of the islands, but a sole big male was perched on a nearby rock and continued to call out. I did spot the black oystercatchers, along with lots of cormorants (pelagic and double crested) and gulls.
Sunset from our campground
Sunset was beautiful and the winds were calm. We slept well. It was nice to do a quick trip to checkout our gear (mainly Julie - she hadn’t been for a few years). This is bear country so we used our bear canister to store all the food and smellable stuff, stashing it 100 yards away or so from camp overnight.
The hiking the next morning was slow going along the coast. This area is best done at low tide and we departed about an hour before the low point. The rocks were big, chunky, and slippery at times, plus there was plenty of tree fall blocking the easy paths.
Petroglyphs along the beach trail
We purposely went slow at Wedding Rock to seek out known petroglyphs near the forest line. We found several, some very different than anything we’ve seen before. Apparently they aren’t that old - maybe 300-500 years, so much more recent than anything we see in Cedar Mesa.
After three miles along the coast, we turned back to complete the equilateral triangle and head back to the parking lot.
We backtracked up to Clallam Bay then cruised down 101 to the Hoh River area to find a camping spot at the Hoh Rain Forest area of Olympic National Park.
Bull elk in Hoh Rain Forest camp
This was a great camp, crowded as all of the national parks have been, with a mix of easy short hikes and starting points for deeper backcountry exploration of the Olympic mountains (including summiting Olympus). On our first walkabout through the campground we (and about 50 other campers) encountered a giant bull elk with quite the harem feeding along the road.
Resting along the Hoh River
Our hiking adventure was a jaunt up the Hoh river trail, an easy walk through the rainforest. Our turnaround point offered a nice opportunity to relax in the rocks along the river.
