Written May 2019
Day 1
After a good breakfast, we left early Friday morning to make sure we were able to get a campsite at the Hoh Rainforest Campgrounds. It was early in the season though (first day it was open) and a Friday, so I figured as long as we got there before early evening, we’d probably be ok.
Lake Quinault
We decided to make a stop at the Quinault Rainforest, just south of Hoh Rainforest, first though. I figured we could do a short little hike here, as well as pick up our Olympic National Park pass for the weekend here. Apparently though, after a confusing conversation with the park ranger, the Quinault Rainforest is a part of the Olympic National Forest, and they had their own set of passes which would not work with in the Park. After a quick look at the Lake, we made our way across the street to check out Falls Creek Loop, a short little 1.5 mi hike.
Falls Creek Loop
After this, we drove up the road a little bit, ate our lunch sub for the day, and stopped off to check out a really large spruce tree, which had some some of World Record…maybe.
“World’s Record” Sitka Spruce
From here, it was about another 90 minute drive to get to the Hoh Rainforest Campground. It actually wasn’t that far away, but the last 18 miles I think it was, is on a slow windy road. I must say that most of the road is pretty nice though, as your driving in the middle of the tall rainforest trees.
Hoh Rain Forest
When we finally got there, the first thing we saw was an elk just chilling at one of the campsites. Just grazing away at the grass…minding it’s own business. We considered setting up camp right next to it, but decided to give ourselves a little space. We drove around a couple times looking for a spot – but didn’t really have too many options, so finally just settled on the first one we had seen earlier. This was our first time using our brand new 2 person tent…and man was it so much easier to set up! All done in just a matter of minutes!
Hoh Campgrounds
After we get our tent all ready inside, we made our way to the Hall of Mosses trail, just outside of the campground itself. The trail was under a mile long, but with all of the beautiful mosses to look at and take pictures of, we actually spent quite a bit of time in there. It was a beautiful place, that the pictures below just cannot give enough justice to! I was just a little sad that it wasn’t raining (or at least drizzling), so that we could really get the feeling of being in a rain forest.
Hall of Mosses
After our mossy adventure, we made our way out to the coast to see sunset from one of the beaches. We decided to go to Rialto beach further up north, so that we could check out the “Hole in the Wall”. We had to pass through the Twilight made famous town of Forks to get there – but didn’t see any vampires or werewolves along the way. It wound up being pretty overcast and windy at the beach…good thing we were prepared with some thicker clothes.
Rialto Beach
The Hole in the Wall ‘trail’ was actually just a 4 mile out and back walk on the beach. But this was no easy stroll…as the beach was made up of all small stones, so walking along it was a super tiring effort, since you never had any real stability. Even if you walked closer to the shoreline where there weren’t stones, it was still tough, as the sand wasn’t quite hard enough to be easy…plus you had to always keep an eye out on the tide if you didn’t want to get your feet wet.
Walking to the Hole in the Wall
Well, we eventually made it to the hole in the wall, but unfortunately, our timing was off. I guess you’re supposed to go out there during low tide, so that you can actually walk right up to and through the hole… but we were too late, and the water was too far up the shore, so we could only see it from a far. At least there were these 2 really cool rocks for us to look at over there instead!
As close as we’d get to the Hole in the Wall
As we made our way back, the view of the sun starting to set behind us was pretty nice. We didn’t take it in too much though, as were starting to get pretty hungry, and still weren’t sure if we’d drive back to the campgrounds to make our dinner or stick around here. About halfway back though, as we were walking along the shoreline, I wasn’t paying enough attention to the incoming waves, and as the water came up upon us, for some reason, I just couldn’t move. And since I had my arm around Norina, she was stuck with me. Unfortunately, for her, her feet took the brunt of the wetness, as she was closer to the water than me.
Walking back up the beach
When we got back to the car, we saw there was a picnic table right in front of us, so we decided to just stick around and break out our little camp grill there since it actually wasn’t that windy in that area. So we grilled up some burgers for dinner…and afterwards, walked over to the beach to checkout the sunset. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t much of one since the clouds were pretty thick and far down. Still, a nice end to the day before making our way back to Hoh!
Burgers!
Sunset at Rialto Beach
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