Olympic National Park: Hurricane Ridge

From Patti and Ed's we headed up and around the peninsula, poking in and out of the great Olympic National Park. We had visited before, at the turn of the century/millennium, camping on our way back to Missoula from a professional meeting at Point Reyes in CA. All either of us remember from that visit was the rain forest. This time we vowed to do more justice to this great park, which is easily the most diverse of all our national parks. We stopped first at Hurricane Ridge, 5,000 feet up from the Straits of Juan de Fuca, for a peek at Olympic's alpine environment...relatively high mountains with abundant snow.

Alas, despite the forecast, the mountain views were fairly cloudy, so we settled
instead for visitor center views

Poulsbo and environs, east of the Park

Olympic is diverse for a range of reasons...Alpine country, rain forest, incredible
beaches and coastal scenery...and everywhere, great trees

We were there

 

Mt. Olympus somewhere out there; not reminiscent of the Mt. Olympus we saw
in Greece in 2010; http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2010/12/olympus.html; nor
the Mt. Olympos in Turkey: http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2010/11/chimaera.html

Across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Victoria, BC, where they are unarmed and
have healthcare; so sad...

Dungeness Spit, from the approach to Hurricane Ridge