Day 12: Olympic National Park
Well the plan for today was to head back down south and check out Cape Disappointment State Park then head over to Mt. Saint Helens, but as we all know things don't always go as planned. Most of the roads to Mt. Saint Helen's are still closed from snow, so instead we decided to head north.
We drove HWY 101 all the way up the coast of Washington. It ran in and out of the Olympic National Forest and Park the entire way. As the title says for today, we had a variety of weather. The whole morning drive was 5 minutes in sunshine, then 15 minutes in down pour, just to go on to another 5 minutes in sunshine. So during a brief period of sunshine we stopped for a picnic lunch. The entire Northern Coastline of Washington is part of the Olympic National Park, so we had a lovely beach view for our picnic lunch!
After lunch we continued 101 through Forks, yes the same Forks from Twilight...we didn't stay long haha. There wasn't much to see besides a few stores that were selling Twilight merchandise. Then we headed on towards Port Angeles, this is where the Visitors center to the park was. 101 bordered Cresent Lake on the North side of the park, which was a beautiful drive. Because Olympic NP contains a temperate rain-forest, everything is so beautiful and green.
We finally headed into the main entrance at Olympic National Park. We stopped by the visitors center and saw a few exhibits on animal tracks and sounds of nature. They had a video on the park with some cool footage of the area. Once again it reminded me how thankful I am for Teddy Roosevelt for having such a huge impact on the National Parks system!
I've said it before but everyone should go out and #findyourpark! It was such a privilege to enjoy 2 of our parks during National Park week! They were both amazing and so different from each other! Well on to Seattle tomorrow...
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