Olympic National Park is an anomaly of national parks as it has 3 very distinct ecosystems within the park. There are the Olympic mountain range, the coastal region, and the coniferous rainforests. We started our stay on the western side of the park in Forks, WA in order to explore the beaches and the rainforests. And yes, Forks is the setting for the Twilight series, although we did not see any vampires (or werewolves) while we were there.
Our Forks Air Bnb was a nice little 3 bedroom house in a quiet neighborhood. Staley always enjoys when she has a room to herself, so that always wins major points for her at any place we stay. It also had a game room with a basketball shooting game that the kids really enjoyed, so that also won some kid points. And I liked that it was clean, comfortable, well-stocked, and reasonably priced.
Our first Olympic National Park stop was Rialto Beach and doing the 3.3 mile roundtrip beach hike to Hole-in-the-Wall.
We reached Hole-in-the-Wall at low tide as planned so we had lots of time for climbing on the rocks and exploring tide pools.
The tide pools were amazing. We saw lots of sea anemones, crabs, barnacles, sea snails, fish, exotic sea plants (including the bioluminescent plant that Zach discovered),...
and TONS of brightly colored sea stars.
They were our favorites! While exploring the tide pools, Adelie gave each new creature we discovered a name. Naming wildlife and wanting to live everywhere we visit...two things that Adelie is consistent about.
The kids loved climbing and exploring on all the rocks. I had told them, "Don't climb on anything that you can't get down from" to which Staley immediately replied, "Well, that ship has sailed" as she asked me to help her get across from one rock to another when she didn't think she could make it.
After our tide pooling, Adelie and Briggs wanted to wade into the water a bit. Although the water was very cold, they both waded around in the water, ran along the surf, and ended up quite wet before they were all done. Then we hiked back to our car and went back to our rental for a taco dinner and some play time for the kids.
After dinner, we then headed out to Ruby Beach to catch the sunset. The enormous piles of driftwood washed up on the beach was so different from the beaches we are used to.
Unfortunately, the sky was too cloudy to see the sunset, but we still enjoyed exploring the beach. We found a small outlet of water next to the ocean where the water was still so we spent a long time practicing our rock skipping skills.
It was a great first day in Olympic National Park.
Our next day started with exploring the Hoh Rainforest of Olympic National Park. We started off hiking the 1.2 mile loop of the Spruce Nature Trail.
It was such an interesting area with all the lush greenery, moss covered trees, and nurse logs, which were fallen trees that, as they decay, provide the nourishment for other trees that then begin growing out of them.
We had hoped to see banana slugs, which we had read about, but we never saw any.
After hiking the Spruce Nature Trail, we then hiked the .8 mile Hall of Mosses Trail loop.
We enjoyed our exploration of this very different ecosystem.
And, as the icing on the cake, we saw a herd of elk near the end of the trail.
After our picnic lunch in the rainforest, we started heading towards the north side of the park to our next AirBnb. On the way, we stopped to do the 1.6 mile roundtrip hike to Soleduck Falls.
The falls were a very impressive 3 pronged waterfall that was extremely fast moving.
As the kids wanted to climb on the rocks down closer by the falls, we had to talk about risk assessment and making wise choices...all the while their father was climbing on the rocks down closer by the falls.
After hiking back to our car, we then continued our trek to Port Angeles to our next rental. We stopped for authentic tacos at the Corner Restaurant, grabbed some groceries, and then enjoyed the hot tub at our rental before getting all settled in for a good night of sleep so we could enjoy our explorations the next day.
