5/28 - Trip to the Olympic Peninsula

      For Memorial Day weekend, the Rodgers Family headed west to the Olympic Peninsula. Our first part of the trip was taking the ferry across the Puget Sound. After a short ferry ride, we were on the Olympic Peninsula. After driving for a while, we parked the car at our first stop - Dungeness Spit. Dungeness Spit is what Dungeness Crab (a type of crab that people in our family like to eat) are named for. The spit is really neat - it's not very far across, but it's about 5 miles long. After walking along the beach and eating lunch ,we got back in the car for our next destination. A little while longer and we got to our hotel in Port Angeles, WA. After checking out the Olympic National Park visitor center just outside the city, we went to sleep on the first day of our three-day journey.
       Day 2 began with a short drive to Hurricane Ridge, in Olympic NP. There was a ton of snow up there, and you could see some of the closer Olympic mountains. We went inside the visitor center, which was just a few feet short of a mile above sea level. After playing around in the snow for a bit, and taking some pictures, we got back in the car for the next part of our day. We headed west again, toward the town of Forks, WA. On our way, we stopped at Lake Crescent, which was just off the side of the road. It was a really neat lake, with a beach and a lodge.
       We spent about an hour at the lake, and then got back into the car for Forks. After dropping our stuff off in the hotel there, we drove south to the Hoh Rain forest in Olympic NP (It's a big park, we drove around it). The rain forest is a temperate rain forest, and it gets 140-170 inches (or 12 to 14 feet) of rain every year! Thankfully, it wasn't raining while we were there. After stopping at the visitor center, we took a short trail through the Hall of Mosses, a path through big trees covered with tons of moss. Then, we checked out the Hoh River, a big river that was only partly filled with water. In the later spring, when the snow melts off the mountains, the river fills up and becomes huge, spilling into the Pacific Ocean. After spending the rest of the day in the Hoh River valley, we headed back to Forks for our last night on the trip.
       The last day of our trip began with a drive to the Western Washington coast, along the Pacific Ocean. There, we spent much of the day at Second Beach. Second Beach was one of three beaches (along with First Beach and Third Beach) in the other part of Olympic National Park. The were rocks, sand, and big pieces of driftwood. The beach was a short hike from the parking lot through the woods. We spent a few hours at the beach, before driving home.
       We drove home nearly the exact route, except we drove south and went across a bridge over the sound instead of waiting in the long lines to drive on to the ferry. We arrived home after our Memorial Weekend trip, and settled down for only 3 more weeks of school.

                                                                                       -Written by Joseph

Here's a map of our trip:

Here are some pictures of the Olympic Peninsula (click to enlarge):

 The Olympic Mountains from Hurricane Ridge

 Hall of Mosses in the Hoh Rain forest








Big clovers in the Hoh Rain forest

 Lake Crescent







Rocks off the Olympic Coast

More rocks off the Olympic Coast