view from Hurricane Ridge
After landing in Los Angeles on the way to Las Vegas for a Ninja championship along the lines of American Ninja Warrior, though not in a televised league, my daughter and her crew stopped by for a few days in the middle of their epic road trip. Both my daughter and granddaughter qualified to compete in the world championship of their ninja league, which is what brought them to the USA from Australia where they live. By the time they arrived at my place they had already been to 7 National Parks on their way up the coast, with more to see on their way to Vegas in a side trip from California to Washington then back down to Nevada. Mostly they camped in a sub-par van rented from a discount Australian company based either in California or Nevada, I’m not sure which. The van made a range of noises, though it ran fairly quietly most of the time they were here, perhaps preferring the cooler climate. When they got it the key fob had difficulty opening the door and the back-up key that pulled out of the key fob they were given turned out to be an uncut blank. So when the key fob quit working for good and new batteries did nothing for it they ended up leaving a window a bit open and using a stick to push the unlock button as the only way to get into the van. Which worked until somebody accidently locked it with all the windows rolled up. They had to call the rental company which sent out a tow truck whose driver had a tool that broke into it about as quickly as you could open the door with a key if they’d had one that actually worked.
Rialto Beach
While I’d normally explore a smaller area more in-depth, they wanted to see as much of Olympic National Park as they could in one day while they were here. It’s a huge park covering the majority of the interior of the northern half of Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula and mostly surrounded in national forest. The park includes snow-capped mountains, some with year-round glaciers, forests including temperate rainforest on the coastal side, and beaches along the coast. While not able to traverse the entire park or even the perimeter within a single day, we did manage to visit mountain, forest, and beach. The center of the peninsula is dominated by the Olympic Mountains, which includes one called Mount Olympus so Greece is not the only place with a mountain named Olympus. Mount Olympus is the tallest of the Olympic Mountains and like much of the peninsula’s interior it is within the boundaries of the Olympic National Park. Sheri’s crew included both of her kids as well as a friend and her daughter. They came with somewhat of a planned route of where to go in the park, which we altered a bit the night before swapping out a dog-friendly waterfall for the one they’d chosen which was over a mile’s hike on a no dogs allowed trail and adding in a little hike on a dog-friendly trail near a visitor’s center so that my dog Piper could come along. While dogs are allowed on all the trails in the national forest, there are very few where they can go in the national park. They are allowed in parking lots, campgrounds, picnic areas, roads, and on a very short list of trails.
Hurricane Ridge
We started out early in the morning with a trip up to Hurricane Ridge. Shortly past the visitor’s center the road up the mountain passes through a station where you have to either show a park pass or pay to get in. Sheri and crew had a one-year pass good in all national parks, which they definitely made use of on their trip. It lets the whole carload in regardless of whose name is on the pass. The lower mountain was pretty foggy, but once we got higher up we rose above the fog into sunshine and some spectacular mountain views. The visitor center at the top was not open yet other than one outside restroom with a very long line. Apparently nobody in that line knew if they went just a bit farther down the road there were a couple picnic areas with restrooms and no lines. In the wintertime there’s a ski lift running and skiing at the top of Hurricane Ridge, but this was July so there wasn’t any snow. There are trails there, but not for dogs so we just took in the view from various areas around the parking lot and outside of the visitor’s center.
Peabody Creek Trail
By the time we went back down the mountain the fog in some of the lower areas had gotten so thick we couldn’t even see an oncoming car until it was nearly next to us even if it had lights on, and the road was only visible for a few feet in front of the car. Not the best for a winding road with a steep drop-off and no barrier for much of the way. It cleared up quite a bit by the time we got to the main visitor’s center near the park entrance. We stopped there and Piper and I walked around outside while people without dogs went in. Once they came out we hiked on the trail as the one there is one of the few dog-friendly trails in the park. The sign at the trail entrance says it’s just a short loop, but there’s an intersection out on the trail with the option to take a longer path. Not being familiar with the local flora, Daniel managed to get too close to the greenery and get stung by a nettle. Luckily sword ferns often grow near nettles and fern juice rubbed on a nettle sting will soothe it.
Madison Falls
Our next stop was Madison Falls near the Elwha River. This one was substituted for their original choice of Sol Duc Falls because Madison has just a short dog-friendly trail where Sol Duc is over a mile round trip on a no dogs trail so we could all go without leaving Piper alone in their dodgy van, which we took for this excursion since my car doesn’t hold 6 people. Madison Falls is tall enough to be impressive without being too tall to fit the whole thing in a photo. The trail out to the falls is an easy one to the viewpoint at the end. Steeper dirt trails beyond the viewpoint are probably unofficial, but pretty much everyone there took them down to the little pool at the bottom of the falls. The road was closed just past the parking area for Madison Falls. Sheri’s GPS made it look as if the closure was a mile or so before the falls trail where we’d have had a long hike, but it lied.
Elwha suspension bridge
It’s not part of the Olympic National Park, but in the same general area not far from Madison Falls there’s a pedestrian bridge suspended from one that cars drive over. It’s just a short side trip down 112 to Elwha River Road from Highway 101 and worth a photo stop. The pedestrian bridge is part of the Olympic Discovery Trail, a mostly paved trail with sections all across the north end of the Olympic Peninsula. Also nearby just off Highway 112 there’s a wide spot off the highway with room for about 10 cars to park that passes as a trailhead for the Olympic Discovery Adventure Trail, a dirt trail that goes from there to Lake Crescent. It is also not part of the park at that end though Lake Crescent is entirely within the park. Both the Discovery Trail and adventure trail are dog friendly.
somebody else snagged the lakeside table at La Poel picnic area on Lake Crescent
Lake Crescent boarders Highway 101 with a pull-out for photo ops so it’s easy to get photos of the lake without venturing up to the lodge or any of the area’s trails. The roadside pull-out has a couple informative signs and a parking area as well as a nice view of the lake, but no picnic tables or anything. The map they picked up at the visitors center down the mountain from Hurricane Ridge showed a picnic area called La Poel on the lakeshore a bit farther down the road than the lookout. We decided to go there for lunch. It was a very short distance off the highway and set up like a campground with individual little places for each car, each one with its own firepit and picnic table. Only one of them was right on the lake and of course it was already taken. So was the one closest to it, but none of the others were so we got one just above those with a view of the lake. The Spruce Railroad Trail along the opposite shore of Lake Crescent from where we were is both dog-friendly and a small segment of the Olympic Discovery Trail.
white slug
The picnic table came complete with a white slug on it. I’ve never seen a white slug before. It was most likely an albino banana slug since banana slugs are the native slug species of the area and albinos of that species do exist.
Twilight treaty line sign
On the way to Rialto Beach we passed through the town of Forks, which as all Twilight fans would know is the home of the Twilight books. Bella’s trucks sit out in front of the Forks visitor center, both the book and movie versions. Before reaching town we passed the treaty line sign at a little resort called Three Rivers Resort, which has a restaurant and some little cabins. In addition to book locations around town, there’s also a collection of props from the movie which are free to see at the Rainforest Arts Center. Twilight locations in Forks are from the books as the movies were filmed elsewhere.
Piper in a log on Rialto Beach
Olympic National Park stretches down quite a large area of the north end of Washington’s coast including most of the beaches from Shi Shi Beach at the north end of the park down to South Beach at the southern end. Kalaloch near the southern end is one of the few places with a lodge within the park boundary. Other lodges are at Lake Crescent, Lake Quinalt and Sol Duc hot springs. There are also some campgrounds in and near the park.
Rialto Beach
Rialto Beach is near the center of the park’s beach areas. It has a pretty extensive parking area, which was nearly full the day we went there. It’s the sort of beach that gathers driftwood, which on this beach is mostly whole trees. From the parking lot people go up a little hill and through the driftwood forest to access the beach, which you can’t see from the parking lot due to the rise of the driftwood covered land. The top of the beach is mainly small flat rocks, but there is sand down by the water. Rialto and some of the other park’s beaches are among the few dog-friendly areas within Olympic National Park.
big tree in the Hoh Rainforest
Our last stop on our one-day park tour brought us to Hoh Rainforest, which was the only other pass or pay entry we passed through besides Hurricane Ridge. All of the other places we went didn’t have any of the little toll booths that collect money or check passes and we didn’t see any signs saying passes were required to park there. As with every other rainforest I’ve been to it rained while we were there. The parking area has a visitor’s center, which having the dog I once again did not go inside. Trails there are not dog-friendly, but the kids were tired of walking so they stayed in the van and watched Piper while the 3 adults went for a short walk. (These were not little kids with 2 13-year-olds and the other nearly 11). There was supposed to be a short loop trail that was flat, paved, and accessible, but nobody could find it. The trail started out flat at the entrance which was posted with a sign saying it was that trail, but we didn’t get far before it branched off with names of other trails and none for that one. A large rodent waddled down the trail past a number of people of whom nobody knew what it was. It disappeared down by a small creek just off the trail. After looking it up online later it matched the photos of a muskrat.
elk in the Hoh Rainforest
A short way beyond that we saw a couple people struggling up a small root-filled hill pushing wheelchairs wondering if they were still on the right trail. Since we had no idea if we were still on the short trail either we went back to one called Hall of Mosses and figured to just go a short distance and then back to the van. People were clustered on a bridge looking into a creek and surrounding area. Not surprising since there were 3 elk there, one male with a large set of antlers and two female. On the way back there was a ranger there shooting paintballs at them to scare them away because they don’t want them to get too used to people for fear of them becoming aggressive. That was the second closest I’ve been to elk, with the first being some years ago on a trail ride in the Cascade mountains when a whole herd of them came out of the woods and crossed the trail we were on surrounding us and our horses on their way to the woods on the other side of the trail. The horse I had at the time was terrified of deer, but seemed fine with the elk, perhaps because they were closer to her size.
mossy trees
There was quite a lot of moss on the trees, but being a rainforest it was probably on all of them and not just the ones on that particular trail. Whoever said moss grows on the north side of trees was definitely not talking about a temperate rainforest because moss there grows all over the trees.
Dog-Friendly Trails in Olympic National Park
Peabody Creek Trail at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center in Port Angeles. This visitor center is up Mount Angeles road on the way to Hurrican Ridge, not the one on the waterfront which is the visitor center for the city of Port Angeles.
Rialto Beach parking lot to Ellen Creek (there were lots of dogs on Rialto Beach.) Dogs are also allowed on beaches in the Kalaloch area.
Madison Falls Trail (Elwha)
Spruce Railroad Trail (North Shore of Lake Crescent and part of the Olympic Discovery Trail)
July Creek Loop Trail (North Shore of Lake Quinalt)
Cruise Stories 
Heavenly.💦🫧🐋