Olympic NP Vacation Day 4: Lots of Driving, Little Hiking

View from Hurricane Ridge

Today we got up at a bit before 6:00 AM to start our journey out to Hurricane Ridge.  It takes three hours to drive from Hurricane Ridge from Quinault, so we wanted to make sure we got an early start.  Leaving at 6:30 AM resulted in us skipping the lodge breakfast, they start serving at 7:30 AM, and pulling off at Ruby Beach to eat a breakfast MRE.  The breakfast MRE was hash browns and bacon with a toaster pastry, crackers, apple sauce, and jam.  After our breakfast we continued up 101 to Hurricane Ridge which took us past Crescent Lake to Port Angles the into the national park.  

This particular entrance to Olympic NP does it right, by having a small parking area for people to pull off into, so they can then get out of their cars to take a picture in front of the national park sign.  Then right after that small parking lot is the entrance to the first visitor center.  The visitor centers are only partially open, in this case the restrooms are open, and the park rangers stands in front of the center handing out maps and answering questions.  Once stopping at the first visitor center, we continued our journey up Hurricane Ridge Rd to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center, which is at the top of mountain. The road up the mountain is full of curves and people biking up the mountain.  I have no idea why anybody would want to bike up the side of a mountain; it just seems like way too much effort.  Once we reached the top, we visited the visitor center, which had the restrooms, gift shop and café open. It should be noted the café was only open for takeout.   We got a map of the area and did the .5-mile loop trail, we decided against adding the extra .3 miles to climb 250-feet to sunrise point.  At the beginning of the trail we saw deer, possibly an elk, and a marmot.  As we traversed the trail, we saw two more deer.  After completing the loop trail, we headed down to the Hurricane Ridge trail head and picknick area, were we had lunch.  Lunch was another MRE, this time the taco pasta and beans.  We decided against doing the 1.6 mile, one-way, trail that climbed 700-feet because Jim was unsure if his knee could handle the coming back down the trail.  So, we headed back down the mountain to the first visitor center to do two .5-mile loop trails that were relatively flat.  From there we started our journey back to Quinault.

On the way back to Quinault we stopped at the Storm King Ranger Station, just because it had a cool name. We lucked out there because there was a parking spot right in front of the sign.  The rest of the drive back was uneventful.  I’m not sure what we are going to do tomorrow because it is supposed to rain, so we will have to wait and see.