This weekend kicks off our first US National Park visit. We went to Olympic National Park near Port Angeles, WA.
Having taken Hwy 101, we passed out the town of Forks, WA. If you aren't a Twilight Fan (and I am not, but my wife is), then you know the importance of Forks. Yes, it is now a tourist trap for Twilight movie fans where you will see restaurants and stores related to the movie. Anything to lure a tourist in for a visit. Forks is a cute little town, but we didn't spend much time looking through it which because very important as you will see just a little later.
We spent the first night with Moby at Mora Campground near Rialto Beach. Mora is rated highly by campers and indeed it was a great campsite, however, it is first come, first serve and we managed to snag the last campsite (arriving at 4:30 PM on a Friday night) after a long 5 hour drive from Portland. We should have gotten there earlier, but we started off slow. It is unfortunate though as we had to fight with our Canadian brothers to get this spot.
Here is the situation, the camp hosts direct us around to a couple of different spots that were still available. We drove to the first two and they were taken. Finally, we run into the camp host again in D loop and able to get a tiny little campsite D62. There was a trashcan left there but noone had paid for the site. The camp host would have nothing to do with that and took the trash can and said we could have the spot because you aren't allowed to save a spot and go away. Well later, this guy in an Outback from British Columbia pulls up and said it's his spot. I firmly told him twice to take it up with the camp host who said we had the spot (after all I just gave the camp host the money for the site and well, he didn't). He drove away angry and we were afraid he would come back and try to hurt Moby if we were away. We took the matter up with the camp host just a little later before heading out to Rialto Beach.
They said we were definitely in the right and what happened was the guy tried to hold the spot while he went off to find a better site. When he didn't find anything, he came back and tried to take ours, claiming that his trash can was holding the spot. Just a lesson for you fellow campers, if you are told by the camp host that there are only a few spots left and see people swarming around looking for an empty site, you take what you get and don't try to gamble because as we just learned, the Canadian man lost. The rest of the night was pleasant and we even went to a Ranger talk at 8 PM. They were talking about grey whales. It was quite a nice setup with a projector and everything.
The next day, the plan was to pack up and head to Heart O' The Hills Campground. They easily had just over 100 campsites, but as we knew from Mora, we may not get it as it also doesn't take reservations. We decided that if we didn't get the campsite we wanted, we would eventually find something somewhere and in the worst case, we could sleep on the streets of Port Angeles in the worst case thanks to Moby. With this in mind, we decided to visit Sol Duc Hot Springs which is inside the boundaries of the National Park. Sol Duc Hot Springs basically consisted of 3 pools which use the hot springs water at various temps like 93 F, 103 F, and 106 F. There is also a swimming pool there to cool off. We got there and the place was packed. Very difficult to find parking. What's awesome about Moby is that he fits in a normal size parking spot (i.e. no parking in the limited RV parking spaces). We enjoyed Sol Duc Hot Springs for about an hour before the kids and noise annoyed us and finally the heat of the sun combined with the heat of the pools. Would I recommend this place, sure, but only early in the morning or in their twilight hours or maybe on a weekday. Else, one cannot just relax here.
Making our way over to the Hurricane Ridge park entrance which was in Port Angeles, we finally arrived at the campsite only to find loop A was almost completely available, loop B was full, and loop C had a few sites. Loop A seemed more for real RV's, so we decided not to waste the space on little Moby. But it was 3:30 PM and we had our campsite.
We drove the beautiful drive up to the visitor's center which was 12 miles away. The road has lots of scenic pullouts and even a few small waterfalls and lots of flowers along the way. We apparently arrived on the hottest day they have had all year. When we arrived there, we happen to get lucky and stumble right into another Ranger talk about the mountain goats in the area and how they are caught and how one even killed a man a few years ago.
Another thing we noticed is how acclimated the deer are to people. They get very close to you looking for food (not a good thing if you ask me as someone is going to be stupid enough to try to pet one and get hurt). We finally went on a very short hike in the area before the heat beat us into submission, so back to the campsite we went.
The next day we needed to get to Tacoma, WA for a wedding and decided to drive on Hwy 101 to Gig Harbor and then through a very expensive toll bridge to Tacoma. The bridge did shave off about 45 extra min of driving and probably more than the cost of gas to drive the long way around, so it was worth it. Gig Harbor is a very cute fishing village. It really reminded me of small town America where everyone knows everyone and there are no big businesses but there are locally owned shops and restaurants. It's a good place to come back to and spend the weekend.
Once again, the heat got to us, but we had parked Moby under some big trees and there was a nice breeze. We used this time to basically wrap the wedding present and then drive out to Tacoma to the only known 24 Hour Fitness gym, simply for the joy of taking a warm shower and not trying to stink like campers during the wedding.
We finally ended the weekend driving down I-5 from Tacoma to Portland.
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