Olympia N.P.: A Place Shrouded in Mist and Mystery

We took the ferry from the Seattle area across to the Olympic Peninsula today to embark on the Pacific portion of our adventure. We started our time in Olympic at the Visitor Center, a tactic that has served us will in not only gathering information but getting good suggestions for hikes and camping. This place seemed a little less helpful, but then again it might attract a different sort of Park Ranger than the rugged Tetons, Yellowstone, or Glacier.

From a distance, Olympic definitely seems to be a mysterious place. Clouds envelop the peaks, only to reveal the tops for a while and fit the mountain like an ill-place cummerbund. Upon closer inspection, it still doesn’t reveal itself as the trees seem to be covered in fur…yet it is just moss. That’s what’s really interesting to me about this forest, it seems so desirable to find a place here that they are willing to grow (and tolerate others growing) one on top of each other. It’s the New York City of forests!

The mystery of the park is added to by its many contradictions. You have the aforementioned deep and green forests. But there are the rugged peaks capped with glaciers. And still more! These glaciers run off into lakes so blue I’m not sure if Crayola makes a crayon to color them! Our campsite is near the ocean (just a mile or two away), but from where I sit typing this I’m in the densest and most immense forest that I’ve ever been in (granted, I’ve never been to Hartwick Pines though I doubt that it could muster this much diversity).

I mentioned a comment of Tom’s back in Yellowstone, that it seemed like dinosaurs should be roaming about such a strange landscape. Well, Yellowstone may have seemed prehistoric in its geological features, but scale-wise, this is where the dinosaurs belong! Everything seems super-sized here. The clovers that cover the ground on the edge of the park road are almost as big as the palm of my hand; the big-leaf and broad-leaf plants and trees took this characterization to heart and have stretched their greenness to the max; and the trees, goodness are the trees big! To give you an idea, I stood next to one at the beach that had fallen and on its side, buried in the sand, it was almost as wide as I am tall.

Which brings me to the last point for this evening: the beach. Yay, ocean! I’ve been excited to get to the Pacific and see a little change of scenery. We just walked a bit today after we set up camp but we’re going to go back at sunset tonight. I guess we lucked out with the tide schedule as well; tomorrow should be one of the lowest tides in a while so we should see some good marine life specimens. We plan on walking the beach for a while in the morning and then heading off to the Hoh Rainforest for a little bit and then back to camp. We’re going to stay here tomorrow night and then it’s off to Crater Lake. (I’m saving ocean description stuff for tomorrow when we do our hike.)

On a side note, the trip is starting to make us weary. The rest of the stops should be a nice balance of sight-seeing and moving on to the next destination and the major hikes are probably behind us (possibly with the exception of what we decide to do in Yosemite). By no means do we regret taking this long of trip though; there’s something to be said for full immersion in a pursuit; you definitely appreciate it on more levels and different ways. Although, in all honesty, as we are caught up in the day-to-day, the immensity of our undertaking probably still hasn’t sunk in for us yet (someday though!)

PS-I forgot to mention yesterday that we saw our first Qwik-E-Mart (in anticipation of the Simpson’s movie). Brandon had told us that they redid some 7-11s to be like the Qwik-E-Mart and sure enough, we saw one. I’m going to look for the picture and hopefully post it for you to see…

Catching a Fish at Pike Place

Tom and Me at the Game

…It Won’t be Long Now…

We’re over halfway done with the trip so it’s starting to have the feel of “It’s all downhill from here.” We’ve seen so much cool stuff in the past few weeks that it almost seems like a bit of information overload to process it all. We’ll do our best though for the rest of the trip; give it the “ol’ college try.”

We arrived in Seattle late last night and stayed with Brandon. Today we headed downtown to see if the Northwestern was in port (you know what I’m talking about if you watch Deadliest Catch). Unfortunately, it was out to sea so we didn’t get a chance to see it up close. I saw a bunch of other fishing vessels but it just wasn’t the same. Oh well. We also walked around Pike Place Market. It was cool to see them throw the fish when people order it. However, even more amazing than that was how cheap the fresh bouquets were – and they were huge, colorful, and wonderful. Of course, we also saw the Space Needle (didn’t go up in it, but were next to it.)

To wrap up the day, we went to Safeco Field to watch the Tigers play. Despite the fact that they lost, it was still a great night and believe it or not, this was our first game of the season. We got the chance to watch the Tigers take batting practice which is something that you don’t usually get to see at home. Afterward they all went in the dugout except for Joel Zumaya who stopped to sign autographs (I was waiting with a bunch of other people at the top of the dugout.) I yelled to him that I saw his picture at Dos Pesos, the little Mexican restaurant in Belleville that the owner said he frequents (I guess he lives in Belleville) and he looked up and smiled, so that was cool. I seized the opportunity and threw him my Tigers hat and he signed the underside of the bill. So yeah, that was my Tigers story for the evening and it’s pretty cool.

The Mariners have much better between-inning entertainment than the Tigers. It really made the time fly by and the ground crew's little dance was pretty darn entertaining. They do a lot of cool things for the fans and the fans themselves were actually nice, despite the fact that we sported Tigers' garb. As luck happened, we were a couple of seats down from 5 Tigers fans, including an old lady who was ready with her rally cap in the 9th. It's great how people are baseball fans for life.

Tomorrow we’re off to Olympic for 2-3 nights and then it’s down to Crater Lake and the California Coast. I’m not sure what we’re doing in Olympic, but we might try and do some sea kayaking or something a little different from the hiking we’ve been doing everywhere. I’ll be neat to see a different bit of scenery (the Rockies have been great, but we have broader aspirations!)

Bighorn Sheep - Scroll down for a few days

Goats on the Trail

Logan Pass - Start of Highline Trail

Take the High Road

“It looks like it should be on a putt-putt course.”
(Tom, regarding one of the many little streams that cascade down the rocks in mini waterfalls.)

When you are next to one of the aforementioned cascading streams, there is no mistaking it bubbling and gurgling as that of water making its way over rocks and somersaulting through the air. The sound that is much more common is when there is the barrier of distance, hills, or other obstacle between you and the water. At that point, the sound it makes can best be likened to the wind that rustles the very tops of the ash and maple trees as a storm approaches from a distance. It is to this sound that we hike and fall asleep to (not at the same time, thank goodness!).

We had a chance to get up close and personal with many of these little rivulets while hiking the Highline Trail yesterday. This 12-mile trail parallels the Going to the Sun for the first bit. This is also a very steep and narrow section so they thought fitting to put a cable into the rock to hold onto (mind you, this is not a guardrail, as it’s probably better to lean close to the rock to hold onto something rather than away!). The first 8 miles or so of the trail was actually really casual with minimal grade change. There was a section where we walked along the “Garden Wall” which seemed like an old stone wall in a cottage garden, covered as it was with a great variety of plants and flowers. We were probably a week early to see the best blooms along this section. The view from this Highline Trail was breathtaking/amazing/indescribable/awe-inspiring…you get the idea. From our vantage we could look down at the pine forests and river or across the valley to cascades off the opposite mountain or off in the distance to matterhorns and arêtes. Spectacular. Oh, and we saw a bit of wildlife in the form of mountain goats. The first one I saw was in the distance around the bend and it took my brain a second to register that the light colored thing lumbering toward me on the trail wasn’t a grizzly bear. We passed where it crossed the trail and then turned around to see if we could see it again and it came up the hill, this time with a little kid in tow. Further up the trail we saw 5 more goats, this time coming right down the path. We just stood off the trail a bit and let them pass below us. There was an older goat with what could have been her yearling twins from last year and then 2 young’uns from this year. The little ones were playing as they ran up and down the trail but every time they got too close to the mom she would stop abruptly and turn around and give them “the look” and they would stop completely and just start walking again. Of course, that lasted about 2 seconds and then they were playing and getting into trouble again!

The hardest part of the trail was probably the last 4 miles (but thank goodness we went the direction we did!) as it was a continuous downhill. Now, I know what you may be thinking: 4 miles downhill doesn’t sound that bad (and it sure sounds better than 4 miles uphill!) but it really was quite a strain on the knees and gives new meaning to “toe jam”. Glacier has free shuttles than run throughout the park so we were able to hike this 12 mile trail from one point to the next and catch the shuttle back to our car, which was definitely a good thing!

Today we broke camp and set out for Seattle. Initially, we were going to try to get as far as we could and camp and then make the rest of the way tomorrow but we’ve decided to try and push through to get to Brandon’s and hopefully crash there for the night (I say hopefully because I haven’t had cell reception so he doesn’t know we’re coming yet!! Surprise!!) Before leaving the park today we did a short 3 mile hike out to Hidden Lake because we overheard someone on the bus yesterday say that he saw Bighorn Sheep out there. We made it all the way to the lake without seeing a Bighorn (though Tom swears he was looking for them). A couple there said they had seen a bunch on their way up, but maybe they had went to the trees by now so we began our trip back to the car with a bit of a dejected feeling, sad that we weren’t going to see Bighorn sheep on the trip. Then, as we were crossing a snowfield, one of the other hikers told us that there were Bighorn just around the bend and sure enough, up on the ridge we saw the elusive sheep. I’ll have to use the zoom on the pictures but even from a distance (and through the binoculars) their large curled horns were quite impressive. So one more animal is checked off the list and now we’re on to Seattle and Olympic National Park, where hopefully we’ll see some water animals.

PS-I'm posting from Brandon's in Seattle now...this place is electronics heaven!

Tom at Virginia Falls

Me at a Waterfall