Olympic National Park

We slept with the windows open last night, enjoying the sounds of the waves crashing on the nearby shore. After enjoying our morning coffee, we set our sights on today’s travel destination: Olympic National Park. Actually, we had traversed the Western sections of the park on our drive up the peninsula. We didn’t feel like backtracking that route today, so we headed up the hill out of Port Angeles to visit Hurricane Ridge.


The Olympic Mountains are magnificent. We can only image how they look covered with snow. On this very warm day they were in their Summer best, with a rich carpet of cedars, pines and firs.

This was the view from our picnic spot. What you can’t see here are the dozens of nasty biting flies and other bugs that were in full force in the heat. We made very quick work of our lunch and were back in the bug-free comfort of the Jeep.

Between the heat and the bugs, we were ready to get back to the water. The temperature rose as we came down the hill. Port Angeles was one steamy place today! As we made a turn toward our campground we didn’t find quite the same relief we found yesterday. Back at camp it was still pretty toasty. But, within a few minutes, we were blessed with a gentle breeze off the water that made everything nice and comfortable.


Fellow fulltimers Deb and Rod are hanging out in Port Angeles this Summer, so we arranged to meet up with them this evening. They made the journey to our cooler environs, where we enjoyed a very comfortable happy hour. We enjoyed great conversation and lots of laughs. We topped off the evening with a trip into town for pizza at Gordy’s.

After a fun day trip and a great evening with friends, we settled in for another night of sleeping with our windows open, lulled to sleep by the sound of waves crashing on the nearby shore.