One of the first Olympic National Park 'nature trails' we did was the Hurricane Ridge, It was about a half an hour drive from where we were staying in the lake cabin. The road leading to the park was incredibly long, with a lot of turns and stop off points for taking in the views. There was a couple of doe walking around the road so be careful!
As soon as we got to the top we were met with amazing views of the Hurricane Ridge, it felt like I was walking around the set of The Sound Of Music! The views from just the car park were breathtaking.
As soon as with parked up we headed up the nature trail. The trail is pretty easy. It's two miles tops and I saw a girl walking around wearing flip flops just to give you an idea. There was a few places where the snow had not yet melted so some routes were blocked off. I would visit this spot late June onwards to avoid this.
It felt really weird standing on snow on such a warm and sunny day!
There's so many great opportunities to take amazing photos and admire the views. I really recommend taking a couple of hours and visiting this place.
Theres a little gift shop and restrooms at the top, as well as a cafe. We stopped for lunch then headed out.
We realised we had some times to spare so we thought we would visit Forks for shits and giggles. Forks is featured in the Twilight books and films. I'm not a fangirl or anything like that, I was just really curious to see what it was actually like. SO the town is tiny! We literally drove through it in 2 mins. Nothing looked familiar, but there was quite a few Twilight gimmicks the town had come up with due to the volume of tourists ("Come get your Twilight firewood here!"' Taste a Twilight burger!""Have you been to the Twilight gift shop yet?") As we drove away I noticed a sign saying 'La Push'. I heard this area had a nice beach so we drove in that direction. On the way we came across this -
There was a white wooden wall someone had put up by this diner, saying 'Stephanie Meyer's Day' and hundreds of twilight themed graffiti on it. Someone had also painted a Edward and a Jacob next to it. Naturally I posed for a photo, while feeling incredibly dirty.
Quickly moving on, we turned down a very rocky, narrow road and arrived at a beach! It was Rialto Beach. This is a great beach for surfing. It was incredibly windy and the sea looked pretty rough, but still a really interesting and pretty area. There was a ton of driftwood, great for testing your jumping abilities.
I drew an illustration below inspired by our Hurricane Ridge walk.
Next blog post I talk about my favourite place on the trip - Astoria!
