Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Friday, September 12, 2014
Olympic National Park Day 2
Olympic National Park Day 2
Hoh Rain Forest - Ruby Beach - Beach 4
The road was covered in a heavy fog as I made my way out of the town of Forks and as it slowly started to clear up, it made the ride to the Hoh Rain Forest all the more enchanting.
Along the drive before the entrance to the park the sitka spruce trees were draped in moss with different shades of green and brown that pop on the twisting winding Upper Hoh Road. After passing the entrance to the Olympic National Park Hoh Rain Forest I passed a barely noticeable sign that simply read "Big Spruce Tree" with an arrow pointing to the right. Intrigued I pulled over in to the small parking lot to see just that, a big spruce tree, a really really big old sitka spruce tree.
The aptly named Big Spruce Tree stands over 270 feet tall and measures over 12.5 feet wide and is approximately 550 years old. And while it certainly large, believe it or not, it's only one of the largest sitka spruces in the United States.
Yours truly standing at the base of the Big Spruce Tree.
Once I arrived at the Hoh visitor center, I quickly found the very easy, accessible, and brief hiking trail the Hall of Mosses. Only a .8 mile loop, this little trail offers beautiful and almost eerie views of an old growth forest complete with more moss than you could ever imagine swaying in the breeze.
After I was done, on the wee "hike" I found the infamous phone booth with a moss covered top that I had seen in oh so many photos, however the phone itself was missing. While nature movies on technology is replaced I guess.
Ruby Beach was probably my favorite and most anticipated stop of the day. I had been obsessing about this particular beach for some time now, ooo'ing and aw'ing over photos from other photographers lucky enough to take the tip to this beautiful stone covered, sea stacked beach.
Between the slight mist coming off the ocean breeze through the trees, the dramatic sea stacks rising before me, the gray stones that lay beneath huge piles of drift wood, I didn't know where to start. I ended up taking about 2 hours there, snapping quite a few photos and then just sitting down and taking it all in.
One of the things I was most excited for when going to Ruby Beach was tidal pool activity, unfortunately the tide was starting to come in, and it had already obscured the main areas where sea life would have been most visible.
The path down to the beach from parking lot.
So when leaving Ruby Beach, I drove down the 101 and saw signs for yet another Olympic National Park beach. I checked the clock and had just about an hour to spare if I wanted to have lunch. I pulled in to the less crowded parking lot and was pleasantly surprised.
What Ruby Beach lacked for in tide pool activity due to the encroaching tide, Beach 4 (that's right the name of the beach is imaginatively dubbed Beach 4), more than made up for it. At first I was hesitant to walk the short, but steep trail down to the beach and the somewhat longer jaunt to the small sea stacks, due to time, hunger and tiredness, however I'm so happy that I did.
Once I made it down I saw that the tidal pools were teaming with life from mussels to sea anemone and a couple of ochre stars too!
I stumbled across a rather large Banana Slug on my walk back up to the car.
After my climb back up to the parking lot my stomach started yelling at me for me sustenance, so with about an hour to spare I was off an in search of lunch. The first place on the road that I came across was the Kalaloch Lodge, so I stopped the car and went into the restaurant, where the I was seated at a window with a lovely view and then was promptly forgot about for roughly 15 minutes. After that everything was copacetic and the food was delicious. Before heading back to the car, I made a quick stop at the general store on the Kalaloch Lodge property, picked up a bottle of wine and a few snacks and was off to SEA-TAC to return my rental car.
Despite a couple of traffic jams I made it back to the Seattle-Tacoma airport to return my Chevy Cruz and all with 20 minutes to spare. From there it was a quick jaunt on the Seattle light rail stop to make my way in to the city for my stay at the Panama Hotel, but more on that later.
Next up, Seattle.
Monday, September 8, 2014
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Olympic National Park Day 1
Olympic National Park Day 1
SEA-TAC - Hurricane Ridge - the Town of Forks
I'm not entirely sure when I started to become obsessed with visiting the Pacific Northwest, or more importantly seeing Ruby Beach in person, but just a few short weeks ago I made sure that I checked that travel obsession, along with a few others, off of my bucket list. So with a cruise booked to Alaska, I figured this would be the perfect time to see almost everything I wanted to before hopping on a ship to see the 49th state.
After an incredibly early start to my day, starting off from a friend's apartment in Queens I made my way to JFK and flew over to Seattle, Washington via a pleasurable experience on JetBlue. However, it was after a quick jaunt through the airport to get to the rental car facility that I naturally experienced my first hiccup of the trip. I had originally reserved a compact car through Budget Rental a couple of months in advance, however unbeknownst to me, I had reserved it for the wrong dates. That's right I had reserved my first rental car ever for the day after I arrived in Seattle, instead of the day of. Whoops. To make matters worse, Budget said that they were sold out of cars, but I somehow could pay $700 to rent one of their non existant sold out car from them (it would've originally cost roughly $160 to rent a compact car for less than 24 hours for them). So I said sayonara to the Budget creep and walked the line of other rental car companies and stopped at National who not only took care of me at a decent price, but also made my first ever rental car experience more pleasurable with a free upgrade to a midsized car.
After filling out all the paperwork, I excitedly picked out my car, a 2014 Chevy Cruz with only 1,000 miles (I normally drive a 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis LS, affectionately named Grandma, because it's a car usually driven by the 60 year old and over crowd, with over 145,000 miles on it) got in and drove.
The drive to my first destination within Olympic National Park took roughly a little over three hours. It didn't take me too long to find my way to the scenic route 101, before I started seeing gorgeous views and scenes of kitschy Americana along the way.
About three hours into my drive I passed by what I found out to be Fat Smitty's, and promptly turned my car around to investigate. The wood carvings of who I'd assume to be the man himself, Fat Smitty, a giant bacon cheeseburger and a bottle of Pepsi-Cola were just the tip of a uniquely interesting place. Once I went inside the first thing I noticed were all the dollar bills lining the walls and ceilings, then I smelled the food and realized just how hungry I was. So for about $10, I order a glass of lemonade, a hot chicken sandwhich to go and a bottle of water that I would take along with me to eat when I got to Hurricane Ridge. The food by the way was delicious and came with a bag of chips and a pickle and my lunch view was, well absolutely spectacular, but more on that in just a minute.
After an incredibly early start to my day, starting off from a friend's apartment in Queens I made my way to JFK and flew over to Seattle, Washington via a pleasurable experience on JetBlue. However, it was after a quick jaunt through the airport to get to the rental car facility that I naturally experienced my first hiccup of the trip. I had originally reserved a compact car through Budget Rental a couple of months in advance, however unbeknownst to me, I had reserved it for the wrong dates. That's right I had reserved my first rental car ever for the day after I arrived in Seattle, instead of the day of. Whoops. To make matters worse, Budget said that they were sold out of cars, but I somehow could pay $700 to rent one of their non existant sold out car from them (it would've originally cost roughly $160 to rent a compact car for less than 24 hours for them). So I said sayonara to the Budget creep and walked the line of other rental car companies and stopped at National who not only took care of me at a decent price, but also made my first ever rental car experience more pleasurable with a free upgrade to a midsized car.
After filling out all the paperwork, I excitedly picked out my car, a 2014 Chevy Cruz with only 1,000 miles (I normally drive a 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis LS, affectionately named Grandma, because it's a car usually driven by the 60 year old and over crowd, with over 145,000 miles on it) got in and drove.
My 2014 Chevy Cruz on the Hurricane Ridge Road in Olympic National Park
The drive to my first destination within Olympic National Park took roughly a little over three hours. It didn't take me too long to find my way to the scenic route 101, before I started seeing gorgeous views and scenes of kitschy Americana along the way.
About three hours into my drive I passed by what I found out to be Fat Smitty's, and promptly turned my car around to investigate. The wood carvings of who I'd assume to be the man himself, Fat Smitty, a giant bacon cheeseburger and a bottle of Pepsi-Cola were just the tip of a uniquely interesting place. Once I went inside the first thing I noticed were all the dollar bills lining the walls and ceilings, then I smelled the food and realized just how hungry I was. So for about $10, I order a glass of lemonade, a hot chicken sandwhich to go and a bottle of water that I would take along with me to eat when I got to Hurricane Ridge. The food by the way was delicious and came with a bag of chips and a pickle and my lunch view was, well absolutely spectacular, but more on that in just a minute.
The drive from Fat Smitty' to the Hurricane Ridge visitors center in Port Angeles wasn't too long and since I was tired, hungry and just wanting to see the ridge for myself I bypassed the visitors center and headed right up the Hurricane Ridge Road. About a quarter of the way up the road, I stopped at the ranger station to pay $15 for my national park pass, which was good for up to 7 days.
The drive up the mountain afforded spectacular views and had plenty of pull out spots with information for this snap happy person. Once you got a little closer to the top however the scenery became awesome (awesome in the traditional definition of the word, not the awesome cowabunga modern sense of the word) and a little precarious as the guard rails disappeared and the sheer drop off was immense.
Those three and a half hours of driving fresh off of a 5 hour flight became worth it once I pulled into the Hurriane Ridge visitors center and saw the view before me. At 5,242 feet above sea level, the mountain range you see before you is named so due to the hurricane force winds that blow through.
The visitors center offers a film (which I opted not to see sadly due to my time constraints), other educational materials about the area and of course, a gift shop.
A black tail deer near the Hurricane Ridge Visitors Center.
I still had quite a lengthy drive ahead of me before I reached my hotel in Forks, but I still wanted to take in the scenery around me and decided to walk a short trail. Now I use the term "trail" lightly because while the walk was nice, it's completely paved so if you have any mobility issues, you too, can see all the natural splendor the ridge has to offer.
After my stroll around the trails of the visitor center, it was time to leave and find my way to the Dew Drop Inn, the hotel in Forks that I had originally booked.
On my way heading south on route 101 I passed by the 624 foot deep Crescent Lake, while the sun was setting and decided to take a break from driving and enjoy the breeze coming off the water while snapping a few photos (you can see more on the Flickr link below) in the beautiful ephemeral light.
Much like my earlier incident at the rental car kiosk I realized I didn't fully read my confirmation print out, because although I had originally booked the Dew Drop Inn, in Forks on the National Park Reservations page (and no, I'm not a Twilight fan, the town of Forks was perfectly located for my journey through the park). However my confirmation letter had my hotel listed not as the Dew Drop Inn, but as the Forks Motel just down the street instead. I wasn't miffed this time, the two properties are owned by the same person and the hotel staff were nice, the room was spacious and clean and cheap so I couldn't really complain.
So I retired for the evening, repacked my suitcase and prepared my day pack for my second day in Olympic National Park, the day I was definitely looking forward to the most.
~*~
Quick Tip: If you're like me and have never rented a car before, do you research and save money:
1. Make sure you're reserving the car for the right dates.
2. Call your credit card company and your own car insurance company and see what types
of incidentals that they cover, that way you don't rack up insurance charges via the
rental car company.
3. Also if you have a smart phone, chances are you have navigational GPS, so you don't
have to spend even more money on renting a GPS unit from the car rental company.
4. Also, avoid the Budget Rental Car company (I might be a little biased on that one).
1. Make sure you're reserving the car for the right dates.
2. Call your credit card company and your own car insurance company and see what types
of incidentals that they cover, that way you don't rack up insurance charges via the
rental car company.
3. Also if you have a smart phone, chances are you have navigational GPS, so you don't
have to spend even more money on renting a GPS unit from the car rental company.
4. Also, avoid the Budget Rental Car company (I might be a little biased on that one).
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