Hiking the Olympic Peninsula

We are finally getting to the best part of the trip! (Now that I have been home for a month.)  We were able to go backpacking with some good friends through the Olympic Peninsula, the rainiest area of America.  Lee was on his mission with Jon and roomed together at BYU after.  Jon and Danielle were already married when I came into the picture, but they were one of the couples with us on our first date…. In short, very good friends who we don’t do very much with since we have been on the east coast and them on the west.

Lee’s sister, Nixie, watched our girls and Danielle’s mom watched their three little ones, and we were off for an adventure!  We started out by driving through Forks (for all those Twilight fans) and started our hike on the beach. 

It was stunning.  We were walking through a temperate rainforest that was the home to many rare animals.  The beach was lined by tall cliffs that towered 300 feet above us and the ocean on the other side.  If the hike were designed to be easy, we would have hiked straight along the beach for all 20 miles.  It was not an easy hike.   There were many places the cliff went far out into the water and had to be crossed over-land – meaning that we climbed up those 300 feet of cliff to hike a mile over, to drop back down to the beach on the other side.  It was really muddy.  And very steep.  There was definitely a trail, but it was not a nice, well kept, dry day trail.   This one was only for those real serious, backpackers who enjoy the thrill.  I wish I had a picture

 

It was steep.   That was a trail marker on the tree. 

We started out trying to skirt the mud, but by the end we just sloshed through all 6 inches of it.

The first night we camped on the beach right across the water from a Bald eagle nest and could see and hear the pair of eagles.

Speaking of footprints…. We saw a Sasquatch.  We knew we were in that country, but it was a very strange sight to see and we tried to skirt around it without noticing us.  We found the footprint of another.  And cool sea life.

The hike was a total of just shy of 20 miles, over 4 days.  The second day was Sunday and we wanted to keep it a day of rest and not hike much.  But, because of misinformation, getting lost and wandering the rainforest, and there not being a campsite with water where we thought there was…. we ended up hiking about 10 miles that Sunday.  It worked out because then Monday we were only a few miles from the car and finished a day early.

Happy 5th Anniversary!