Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Olympic National Park, Day 4 (Sol Duc and Crescent Lake)

We headed out from La Push and drove for about an hour to reach the Sol Duc area of the park. We stopped at the Sol Duc Lodge for brunch, but decided to skip the hot springs because no one wanted to get bathing suits out. Instead, we headed just down the road to the trailhead for Sol Duc Falls:


Back to rainforest here




Wildflower we had not previously seen on the trip

This part of the trail looked down on a gorge

The falls from the bridge

Falls from the side



From Sol Duc, we got onto scenic 101 and started our way around the beautiful Lake Crescent:


This was the view from Lake Crescent Lodge, where we stopped for lunch. The Lodge had lots of historical plaques -- it is where FDR made Olympic a national park and most of the buildings are original to the first half of the 20th century

We arrived at Log Cabin Lodge around 2:30, but it was too early to check into our room. We had planned to ride bikes along the Spruce Rail Trail that afternoon, but the clerk let us know that the lodge only had three working bikes. We went for plan B and rented two double kayaks:








When we got back with the kayaks at 4:30, we still could not check in because the hotel had managed to lose the only key to our cabin. Finally around 5, they offered to let us in with the master key while they continued to work. At least the view from the cabin was good:


After we settled in and were biding our time, Kevin spotted the key near a set of spare linens, where housekeeping had clearly accidentally left it. We settled everything with the front desk and finally took off for dinner in Port Angeles. Sadly, by the time we got there almost everything was closed. We did get an amazing view of Mount Baker in the distance while we were hunting for a restaurant, though:


On the ferry dock in Port Angeles

We finally found some take out and headed back to Log Cabin, arriving just in time to see the moon rising over the mountain in front of our cabin:





No comments:

Post a Comment