froggy_dear | Independence Day Road Trip

Phew! We ran away to the Olympic Peninsula this weekend and boy are my legs tired. No, seriously, my legs are tired. We left early Friday morning on the four+ hour drive to Port Angeles, where our hotel was. The hotel has a grandiose name, but grandiose it is not. It is however AAA rated and clean. And under a hundred bucks a night. The owner (I think) was really nice when we checked in and pointed out some things on an Olympic National Park map. We took his advice and headed up to Hurricane Ridge that afternoon.

There are more photos beneath the cut than is entirely reasonable.

We'd visited Hurricane Ridge once before, with

luli82 a couple of years ago. But we hadn't really done any hiking that time. This time we headed for the Hurricane Hill trail at the end of the road. It's a 1.6 mile trail (one way, 3.2 miles round trip) with a 650 foot elevation change. It's about 5700 feet above sea level at the top. You can see Canada. And Mount Baker.

From the visitor's center:

Wildflowers along the trail:

Can you believe this scenery?

Deer on the trail:

Marmot!

Looking back down on the trail from about 3/4 of the way up.

From the top of the trail. You can see Port Angeles and Canada.

Mount Olympus and its multiple peaks:

Look! Snow! Also note my footwear. While I love my Dansko Lolita's, they are not shoes for hiking. They were actually pretty good on the way up, but on the way down? I got blisters. Ouch.

Mountain meadows are fragile - the top soil is really thin.

And that was July 3rd! We found a place downtown to grab dinner at, then retired to the motel for the night where we watched the cable teevee.

In the morning we drove out to Ozette to do the Ozette Loop. It's a 9 mile hike - three miles out to the coast, three miles along the coast, and three miles back. For the first leg, we took the Cape Alava trail. Cape Alava is the westernmost point in the continental US. Here's the trail!

Daniel is skeptical about salmon research

This purple is much more vivid in real life

Start of the trail proper.

Boardwalk through coastal rainforest

I'm always the most stylish person in the forest.

Suddenly the forest opened into a meadow. And in the distance, over the trees, you can see mist/fog... the ocean is coming up somewhere.

In which we discover the "foliage" setting on the camera. Mist in the trees.

Coastal forest just above the ocean. Fronds and trees.

Cape Alava, the westernmost point in the continental US.

The coast and ocean was overcast and damp. But really excellent for walking. It might have been unbearable if it was sunny and hot. We had lunch there, and I knit a little.

Daniel adventures over the rocks

Tiny crab. Also, it was dead.

It appears that, on a particularly sandy bar, someone drew Master Shake. Or something kinda like it. him? it? whatever.

We found the petroglyphs I'd heard were on the beach. We ran all over the rocks, collecting photos of all we could find. I love petroglyphs.

Not many photos from the final leg of the hike. Here's a great big slug.

And here I am. Resting. It was a long hike.

And, finally, the entrance/exit to the trail. The ONLY interpretive signage the whole way. Except for the salmon thing in the beginning. But nothing else. We wandered probably an extra mile not knowing where the trails were.

We got to the car and made the two hour drive back to Port Angeles where we found a diner to eat dinner at. It was a fabulous diner. It was straight out of the 1970s, had very careful winter decorations hanging from the ceiling with a few red white and blue things thrown in. The light fixtures were awesome. I wish I'd taken photos. But I didn't. The food was tasty. The Fairmount Restaurant. Not amazing, but exactly what we were looking for. The we stopped by Safeway for snacks and collapsed at the motel. We didn't watch fireworks, just heard them. We were too tired and stiff to do anything more.

I, how do you say? Way overdid it. I'm hobbling like an 83 year old arthritic person. The three mile beach portion was amazing, but hard to walk. A lot of the beach was covered in slippery, smelly seaweed. But it was worth it. In a few days, I should be okay again.

We left this morning, and I didn't take many photos. Except of the Tacoma Narrows bridge. Because, if I'm paying to go across it, I'm darn well going to take some photos of it.