{"id":901,"date":"2016-07-26T03:12:35","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T03:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/?p=901"},"modified":"2016-07-26T03:12:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T03:12:35","slug":"northwest-passage-trip-day-4-5-olympic-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/?p=901","title":{"rendered":"Northwest Passage Trip-Day 4 & 5 – Olympic Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

We recently visited the Olympics. No, we were not in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, but discovered another \u201cOlympics\u201d in northwestern Washington State. Our travels brought us to Olympic National Park-a vast wilderness of almost a million acres. It hosts so much natural beauty and diverse ecosystems it was named both a World Heritage Site and International Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Olympic National Park is a special place. It\u2019s a place where snow covered mountains with glaciers reach to the sky. A place where lush, temperate rainforests receive more than 150 inches of rain each year, and colossal trees are covered with other plants to form a \u201cjungle-like\u201d setting. Around every corner, wild rivers and cold, clear streams hold salmon, steelhead and trout, and cascading waterfalls waiting to be explored. The park also hosts 70 miles of unspoiled, rugged Pacific coastline with big sea stacks, tide pools and windswept beaches. Looking for critters? Olympic NP has a bunch of them from mountains to ocean, including Roosevelt Elk, Olympic Marmots, Black Bear, Mountain Lions, Black-tailed Deer, River Otters, Seals, Sea Lions, Whales and nearly 300 species of birds.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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River Otters peak out of the rocky shoreline of Ruby Beach<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Roosevelt Elk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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A Gray Jay sits and watches us during our hike in Olympic NP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Perhaps the most unique ecosystems are the temperate rain forests. These forests, made up of large Sitka Spruce, Western Hemlock, Douglas Fir, Bigleaf maple and other species, are covered with mosses, lichens, ferns and spike mosses. Storms coming off the Pacific dump huge amounts of rain on these western slope, low-level valleys. Temperatures rarely drop below freezing in the winter, or higher than the 80\u2019s in the summer. Nowhere else in the lower 48 states can you experience forests like these found in Olympic NP, and it\u2019s called a rain forest for good reason! <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"20160624_211557460_iOS\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Rambling through the Hoh Rain Forest<\/em><\/p>\n

During our 1.7-mile hike, it rained five different times-not continuously, but it would start to rain, then the sun came out, then rain again\u2026\u2026As we trekked along the trail, stepping in puddle after puddle, the warm rain rolled down our cheeks as if we just stepped into a shower. Did you ever notice that when you put your hood up on your rain jacket to keep water off your face, it actually works the opposite way. The rain hood acts like a downspout that channels more rain on to your face! After the third rain shower, I had so much water running down my nose and over my chin, I felt like a chunky, walking waterfall! As we strolled along the wet route, it almost felt like I was 9 years old again, romping outside during a summer storm-except the trees were much bigger, and we certainly didn\u2019t have humongous rotten logs laying around with slugs crawling everywhere! These rainforests have been described many times as the \u201cjungles of America.\u201d I get it. As we walked through this abundant, green vegetation, with large moss-covered trees standing above you and vines hanging down near your head, you would almost think that monkeys should be swinging from limb to limb, howling their calls through the canopy! The coolest part of this diverse park is being able to stroll through a rainforest like this in the morning, then by afternoon, be hiking up a trail that takes you 6,000\u2019 up to a snow-covered mountain ridge!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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The trail up to Hurricane Hill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I confess. I had no idea the Olympic Mountain Range of the Cascades were so big! We\u2019ve had the opportunity to hike in the majestic Rockies, visited the massive Sierra Nevadas in California and wandered many times along the ridges of the Appalachians, but the Olympic Mountains are unique in that several 7,000\u2019+ peaks receive over 30\u2019 of snow annually, with the Pacific Ocean only 33 miles away! We were so eager to get out and hike one of these mountain trails, we made a small, but tiring, mistake.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After parking the car in the first parking lot we came to, then walking 2 miles on a supposedly \u201cclosed road,\u201d we discovered a parking area right at the trailhead where we wanted to begin our hike. Since it was getting late in the day, Tyler volunteered to walk back to the rental car and drive it up to the trailhead so it would be closer when we were finished. After waiting for almost an hour for Ty to return with the car, we began to get a little worried, and we hadn\u2019t even started our hike yet. For some reason, I reached in my day pack and to my surprise, found the keys to the rental van. Tyler had walked almost 4 miles round trip and I had given him the wrong keys. I had mistakenly given him my personal truck keys, not the rental vehicle keys! He was a real good sport about it and never complained once about my dumb error. Sorry Ty! <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span>After finally hitting the trail, we reached the peak of a 2-mile hike to a place called Hurricane Hill. It was one of the most awesome, 360 degree views I\u2019ve ever seen. We gazed out to the east and saw mountains in the distance as far as we could see. When we turned to look over our back shoulder, there was the Strait of Juan De Fuca and the Pacific Ocean stretching to the north and west-eyeing up Canada. It was like looking at a dazzling series of post cards. All four of us simply described what we were looking at, as \u201cWow!\u201d The bonus at the top was seeing a big, beautiful Black-tailed buck in velvet grazing on the alpine meadow grasses, along with several Olympic Marmots (kinda like our Groundhogs here in PA), which communicate back and forth to each other by chirping out loud whistles.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Lone Ranger selfie on top of Hurricane Hill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span>The hike was great. The views were fantastic, and discovering Olympic Gold together as a family was a memory we\u2019ll always have! Oh, and Tyler only mentioned his 10-mile hike, (compared to our 5-mile hike) once, after I bought him a cold beer! Cheers!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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We recently visited the Olympics. No, we were not in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, but discovered another \u201cOlympics\u201d in northwestern Washington State. Our travels brought us to Olympic National Park-a vast wilderness of almost a million acres. It hosts so much natural beauty and diverse ecosystems it was named both a World Heritage Site and … Continue reading Northwest Passage Trip-Day 4 & 5 – Olympic Gold<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=901"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":923,"href":"https:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions\/923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodyoutdoors.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}