Mountains, Rain Forest, Beach

We again woke to a beautiful day, the ground slightly wet from the night before, but not a cloud in the sky. Considering it's Washington, we have been doing pretty well

weather-wise. After packing up camp, we headed to the beach once more. This time we walked to the public access site about a quarter mile from our campsite. There was a little interpretive nature trail that

we took before heading to the shore. This time I brought my camera and we more than made up for the lack of pictures the time before. At this location we encountered many more rocks covered in oyster shells as well as clams and muscles. You could clearly tell that this was the more frequented part of the beach. We wandered around for a bit before I got the bright

idea to turn over some rocks. This opened up a whole new world to us! Underneath almost every rock we turned over there were small crabs scuttling away. We also found many small baby oysters and

muscles, moon snails, and even an eel like grunnel fish. It was extremely fun to explore the beach, especially since we had the entire beach to ourselves. We spent the

entire morning walking the beach enjoying the oddities that we found there both inanimate and living. At noon we had to leave, or otherwise pay for another night, so we headed on our way into the national park. At the visitor center we learned all about the park and all the different terrains that we would be encountering. As the ranger told us over and over again: mountains, rain forest, beach. This was the highlight of the park; all of this diversity within 60 miles of each other. Our first stop was destined to be the mountains. From the visitor center, we took the 12 mile trek up the mountains toward Hurricane Ridge, named as such because the wind frequently reaches over 100 mph along the ridge. We drove up through the clouds only to see more clouds. We were robbed of the panoramic views of Puget Sound and the Olympic

Mountain Range for which Hurricane Ridge is famous for. Though we lost out on this aspect of the ridge, we were treated to stunning views down into valleys with clouds racing through as

the wind blew them by. At the top, we stumbled upon a ranger guided nature walk which we hopped on to, learning all about the surrounding mountains which we could not see as well as much of the flora and fauna. Afterwards, we left the freezing mountain tops, back through the clouds, and headed for a more tropical destination, specifically the Sol Duc Hot Springs. Along the way we made 2 different stops for some short hikes to view some waterfalls. Both were very

beautiful and had the same rain forest feel that we experienced the day

before. We reached the hot springs late enough to get the discounted rate for the day and then enjoyed the next couple hours relaxing and soaking. Though ultimately it was our least favorite hot springs experience, it was nice to heat up our bodies after the frigid cold of the mountain tops and (Katie's favorite part) get free showers!!! The sun had already set by the time we got back on the main road but we trudged on to make it to the coast to the Mora Beach campground which would be our home for the next 2 nights. We made camp pretty quick, as well as a hot meal, then went to bed eager to explore the third element of our Olympic National Park experience, the rain forest!