2020 has changed many of our normal activities and how we travel is one of them. In our case, we have decided to make short road trips that replace the one long one that we have been doing every year. These new trips need to be close to home and have some kind of camping feel (only because we are bringing all our food to very well equipped rental houses; so maybe it is best to call this glamping 😉 . However we still have the spirit of adventure.

We chose for this visit the west part of the Olympic National Park, a beautiful place where we were very lucky to have good weather, not so usual there. I love maps so I want to show you which part of the world we visited 🙂

Our first stop was in Aberdeen, a small city where Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) was born. I was never a fan of the band but to tell you the truth Grunge with bands like Pearl Jam (my favorite 🙂 ) and Soundgarden, among others, changed music in the 90s. Ramdomly all came from Seattle.

After lunch, our trip continued to Lake Quinault. When we got there we went right away to take a look at the lake and took hikes on the Kestner and Maple Glade Rain Forest Trail. We saw signs warning of bears in the area, and since it was nearing sunset, I thought it was dangerous, a little bit irrational of me 🙂

The next day we continued exploring the area. We went to Fletcher Canyon Trail, a place a little further where we did not see any people or cougars (according to the posted signs they live there). After that we took a more relaxing hike in the Quinault Rain Forest Nature Trail that started in the forest and finished along the lake. It was interesting to see huge fallen trees that were blown down by the strengh of the wind. So you can imagine how strong the winds blow there to make those trees fall. And another interesting is that no motor boats are allowed on the lake so it was great that there were no noises.

Our day finished with a nice fire under a sky full of stars. We looked at constellations and we tried to find the Neowise comet… Mission Impossible 😉

The new day found us taking Highway 101 again to Kalaloch, but before that we stopped at Ruby Beach, a beautiful beach with kilometers (or miles) to walk and walk. One of its characteristics are the stones of different colours that with sunshine appear even brighter. Also we were lucky to get there at low tide so we could see a bit of what goes on when the sea is out just for a little while.

We also went for a hike in the Hoh Rain Forest, an amazing place with giant trees covered by moss and surrounded by huge ferns. We chose one of the routes close to the river. This is an area where it rains most of the year so we were very lucky to have a lot of sun shining through the trees

After checking in to a nice cabin in Kalaloch, another great place with a beautiful beach, we took a walk to look at the sunset. I am a big fan of sunsets.

Our trip continued by going to Rialto Beach. Driving Highway101 I was surprised and a little scared too (maybe because of the speed) of the trucks carrying big logs. Here are some pictures that give you the idea of my fear. Trucks, bears and cougars are not my favorite things to find on the road 🙂

Rialto Beach is another incredibly nice beach; we walked a lot keeping in mind the low tides, and we got there I felt I was receiving a gift from nature as we walked on the seaside rocks that seemed to be sculpted by an artist, in this case the artists being the wind and water. A very nice environment.

On the way to Rialto Beach we passed Forks, a city in which the main commercial activity is lumber. Even though for some years now there are other reasons to visit Forks. This has to do with a movie called Twilight, pretty famous among teenagers and based on the book of the same name. Forks was vampire territory and La Push the werewolves. The movies (there were three) made these places a must-see for tons of fans looking for the places where this fantastic story took place. But one of the things that caught my attention was that they were not filmed here but it seems that nobody cares about that. My memory of the movie is the song Supermassive Black Hole from Muse, I went to watch the movie with my daughters because at that time they were teenagers but I had to Google the story because I erased it from my hardware a long time ago 😉

We drove to La Push, a place that we read that is a «must» to see, but unfortunately it was closed to private cars. I have a theory about that: I think that they thought that we belonged to the vampire group and I have no idea why they thought that 😉

We spent our last day in Kalaloch in a very relaxing mode. Taking advantage of the nice weather we walked on the beach during the morning and we only encountered a bald eagle nest (no people around). Later we checked again the low tide times and went for another beach walk close to the Kalaloch area. We tried to fly our kite but believe it or not, there was not enough wind. We had exceptionally incredible weather. And if you are asking about the water temperature on the Washington coast, it is as cold as in Oregon.

We finished our day watching the sunset close to a nice fire and thinking about coming back to continue visiting the amazing Olympic National Park.

Thanks again for coming with me and to Barnaby for his patient correcting my English 🙂