Tag: Olympic National Park

Attractions, DESTINATIONS, Road Trips, TRAVEL, United States

Day Two in the Rain Forest

Jane Sadek

MAKING MEMORIES: JOY COMES UP AS RAIN COMES DOWN

Welcome to Wild & Wonderful Washington State! I don’t think I found anything more wild & wonderful than Olympic National Park in the state. We drove a lot on this day, but everything we saw was amazing!

A Quiet Morning

I was awake before 6, crept around our dark hotel room and eased out into the hall. As soon as I did, I realized I’d left my phone and my keys inside the room, but no way I was waking up Bill. I figured once I got to the lobby there would be a clock. All lobbies have clocks, right? Wrong!

They did have a gym, but it was not exactly state of the art, so I decided to take advantage of the cozy lobby. I curled up on the big sofa, but no fire had been lit yet. There was also no clock. I had to check with the desk clerk in another room when I wondered what time it was.

It was a peaceful time. I wrote in my travel journal, read some and did a few crossword puzzles. The clerk had told me the Roosevelt Dining Room opened at 7:30, so that would be my signal to go upstairs and start getting ready. The desk clerk did give me a key to get back in, but I had to answer a bunch of security questions, so they were being safe.

Hitting the Road

Breakfast was hit & miss. I’m sure Bill got coffee somewhere, but it wasn’t the Roosevelt Dining Room. We did stop by an internet cafe that I had hoped would have breakfast, but what they had we didn’t want. We ate some of the snacks I’d brought with me and started up the road.

We didn’t know exactly what we were doing, but that was OK, because everything was gorgeous. There would be signs telling us of scenic overlooks. Sometimes we’d stop sometimes we didn’t. One we stopped at educated us on log jams. Another was named Ruby Beach and apparently it was red when the sun shone on it, but there was no sun.

We found the road which led to the Hoh Rainforest, which was just a named rain forest in the forest of rain we were in. That’s when we found a cafe and had what I guess was brunch. The gluten free factor was an issue and I don’t think either one of of loved what we got, but it was sustenance and we were soon on our way again.

Hoh Rainforest Visitors Center

Having only one day in the rainforest was a point of frustration for me. I think I could have spent my whole two weeks going to every stop along the Pacific edge of Olympic National Park, but after a few stops I could tell that Mr. Bill didn’t like all the starting and stopping and seeing the same sort of thing. That’s why I pointed us towards the Visitor’s Center. Only it was down at the end of a road of which we’d just have to turn around and go back on to get to where we needed to go.

If you’re an off roader or a hiker, then this terrain was made for you. You’d drive your 4-Wheeler up to the Visitors Center and then head off on any of the trails it served as a trail head for – but us tourists just had to drive forever to get there and then drive back to where we’d come from. Don’t get me wrong, it’s worth visiting, it’s just inconvenient for the less hearty visitor, like me.

Contrarily, the sun which refused to peek out during our stop at Ruby Beach came out in all its glory as we drove along the Hoh Rainforest Road. The landscape looked a lot like the monotonous scenery we’d seen on the day before on our way to the rainforest. I drove, Bill napped – both ways.

The Hoh Rainforest Visitor’s Center itself was undergoing renovation. Thankfully, there were restrooms. There were also two nature trails. We did both and we loved them. One short path is handicap friendly. It’s the shorter of the two and pretty crowded, but don’t expect much wonder. The other path leads up, down and around through beautiful stretches of rainforest. We loved that part and took our time.

We lingered as long as we could, but we still had a lot of road ahead of us. We needed to be at Port Angeles by the end of the day. I put the pedal to the metal while Bill snoozed.

We made lots of photos throughout the day, but I’ll confess, once I got home it was hard to ascertain which ones went with which stops, so I just made a few photo book spread of it all. Here they are. Enjoy them and then be sure and come back next week and visit our next stops with us.

Accommodations, Attractions, DESTINATIONS, Restaurants & Bars, Road Trips, TRAVEL, United States

Lake Quinault Lodge

Jane Sadek

MAKING MEMORIES: THE CHARM OF THE LODGE

Welcome to Wild & Wonderful Washington State, our 2025 Road Trip Vacation. We’ve just arrived at the famous Lake Quinault Lodge where FDR fell in love with what would become Olympic National Park. We fell in love with it, too. Come along and find out why!

A Little Early for Check-In

The other side of Lake Quinault Lodge is not as inviting as the picture above. It’s taken of the back of the lodge. Up front it’s a crowded drive and appears to be a very old small inn. I knew we were a little early for check-in, so I was directing Bill to drive past and to visit Merriman and the World’s Largest Spruce Tree, but Bill was looking at the antiquated inn wondering what I’d gotten him into this time.

Good traveling companion that he is, he saved his concerns for later and drove on to Merriman Falls. Most of the falls in the rainforest require at least a little of a hike to view them. Not Merriman! It is right by the side of the road and it’s a beauty – a small gem of waterfall majesty with overwhelming greenery. Enjoy our photo session in the slideshow below.

The World’s Largest Spruce Tree was reminiscent of old fashioned roadside attractions. It did require a bit of a hike, but to tell you the truth, the tree was not all that exciting. The walk to it was lovely!

There was also a small general store in the vicinity. I had Bill stop to see if they had a decent map. GPS is great for point to point diving, but not so great for sightseeing. The National Park System offered an interactive map, but the area is so big I could never make heads of tails of it. The best map I’d seen so far was in my trusty old atlas, that I still carry on every road trip. It’s decades old, but not only was it decades old, it was also small. I needed current and controllable.

The small store did have this map of Olympic National Park, but it was more money than I’d hoped to spend. I stood arguing with myself for a few moments and then I remembered what an absolute bear I can be when I don’t have a decent map. So, I made the purchase, got in the car and started unfolding the map. It was huge! And it had some gorgeous artwork. Lesson learned! Buy the map!

Below are some scans I made of the artwork, pieced together in Artisan. As you can see it was worth the price of the map!

Checking Into the Lodge

We’d killed about an hour with the side trips and the front of the lodge was now a parking zoo. Bill stayed with the car and I went in to get our room, along with all the people representing the various vehicles in the parking zoo. Courtesy was rampant, efficiency was not.

We parked across the street in the official parking lot, grabbed a few things to get up through the night and headed through the parking zoo to find our room. WARNING, there are no elevators in Lake Quinault Lodge. The grand rustic staircase was lovely, but we didn’t love hauling our luggage up it, especially Old Red, who was missing a wheel.

I could tell Bill was now even more skeptical about my sanity than he had been when we first drove by. The room was (shall we say) charming, continuing the rustic look with a wooden bed frame and accoutrements. It was the antithesis of luxurious. The black & white checkerboard tile floor may have been there from the beginning of time and the plumbing was two or three generations older than what we had at home – functional, for sure, but not modern.

Bill’s claustrophobia set in and he was ready to escape. Things got better after that, because he walked out to the back of the lodge and fell in love. Who wouldn’t love this view? Before we left home I had booked a pre-dinner boat ride, which had been cancelled due to mechanical difficulties. One look at this and we were really sorry to have missed that.

Bill happily went into photographer mode and now has this photo as his screen saver:

He kept saying, “It’s as if we walked in the front door from America and ended up in somewhere like Switzerland.” I was offended for America and pointed out the many gorgeous places we’d explored here at home. Somehow he was convinced Switzerland was better – not that he’s been there, of course.

I love it when I’ve found something he really loves, so I reveled in his frenetic effort to capture every single angle. I noticed several people were drinking a glass of wine as they sat in the Adirondack chairs and I wished I had some, too. It was so peaceful there. I have Bill’s permission, more like a mandate, to get him back to the Lodge soon.

Dinner at the Salmon House

I’d had hopes Bill’s largesse which got us meals at the Salish Lodge and the Elk’s Temple might get us into the Roosevelt Dining Room at Lake Quinault Lodge, but his largesse had dried up. Instead we drove over to the adjacent resort and ate at their restaurant. The Salmon House was good, but it left the Roosevelt Dining Room on my wish list.

Then he went back into photographer mode looking for a good backdrop for a selfie of us. Mission accomplished, example below, we went back to the room. I was out like a light in moments. Bill probably did his Tik Tok thing for a while, but for all I know he went back outside and danced with the moon!

Come back next week and enjoy our day in the rain forest.